tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/in-conversation-504/articlesIn Conversation – The Conversation2018-09-24T12:36:30Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1003552018-09-24T12:36:30Z2018-09-24T12:36:30ZShould we edit the genomes of human embryos? A geneticist and social scientist discuss<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/235664/original/file-20180910-123110-1sjjjpb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/group-multiethnic-babies-crawling-isolated-on-144900358?src=1eUR-dDDVFwjE22c02M5GA-1-22">Sirtravelalot/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This is an article from <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/head-to-head-62019">Head to Head</a>, a series in which academics from different disciplines chew over current debates. Let us know what else you’d like covered – all questions welcome. Details of how to contact us are at the end of the article.</em></p>
<p><strong>Felicity Boardman</strong>: The birth of a child with genetic disease is generally an unexpected event. The parents of these children typically won’t have a family history with the condition, or even be aware that they are genetic “carriers”: that they can transmit a genetic condition to their offspring, but do not have it themselves. Indeed, there are currently only two carrier screening programmes active in the UK that are implemented during pregnancy (one for for thalassaemia, and the other for sickle cell trait). So for most parents, discovering the condition in their family occurs through their child’s diagnosis, either through the <a href="https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/pregnancy-and-baby/newborn-blood-spot-test/">newborn heel prick test</a>, or following the onset of symptoms. </p>
<p>Even in cases where a genetic condition in the foetus is identified during pregnancy, the options for would-be parents remain extremely limited. Many of the most common genetic conditions still lack effective treatments or cures. This means that, for many parents, the information leads to a decision about whether or not to terminate the pregnancy, or continue in the knowledge that the child will have the condition.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237127/original/file-20180919-158213-1pdwaq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237127/original/file-20180919-158213-1pdwaq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237127/original/file-20180919-158213-1pdwaq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237127/original/file-20180919-158213-1pdwaq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237127/original/file-20180919-158213-1pdwaq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237127/original/file-20180919-158213-1pdwaq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237127/original/file-20180919-158213-1pdwaq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Sickled red blood cells in liver tissue.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/x3e4ekce?query=Sickle+cell+disease">SB Lucas/Wellcome Collection</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>The introduction of <a href="https://theconversation.com/scientists-edit-human-embryos-to-safely-remove-disease-for-the-first-time-heres-how-they-did-it-81925">genome editing</a>, however, signals a dramatic departure from this usual pathway through reproductive care. Although the foundations of genome editing were laid initially in the 1960s when proteins were first used to “cut” DNA, the recent development of new techniques and technologies (such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/crispr-15704">CRISPR-Cas9</a>) has made genome editing more precise, more cost-effective and consequently more accessible than ever before. </p>
<p>By intervening before a child is even born, the use of genome editing in human reproduction has the potential to alleviate some of the complicated and painful decisions around pregnancy termination – by providing a reproductive option that has, up until now, not been possible. That is, the possibility of removing the disease-causing genetic variant, while simultaneously preserving the life of the foetus. </p>
<p><strong>Helen O’Neill</strong>: Genome editing indeed marks a significant shift, and not only in the area of reproduction, but also in the direction of tailored treatments and personalised medicine. It offers hope to those who, before now, have not had any better options than prescriptions and palliative care.</p>
<p>It’s an incredibly exciting time for such research both in terms of discovery and diagnostics. The advent of CRISPR genome editing has catapulted previous efforts in genomics and is being adopted globally. My research, for example, uses CRISPR genome editing to assess the treatment and understanding of sex chromosome disorders and neuromuscular disorders. There are <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-treat-gene-editing-differently-in-two-types-of-human-cells-51843">two ways</a> in which genome editing could be used for both treatment and prevention: somatic cell therapy, which could be used in newborns and adults, and germline genome editing, which would be used in an early embryo to prevent a disorder. In this second type, genome editing would aim to alter every cell of a resulting baby, and therefore these changes would be passed on to future generations, meaning that disease causing variants would be prevented from being passed on.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237120/original/file-20180919-158213-7115hv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237120/original/file-20180919-158213-7115hv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237120/original/file-20180919-158213-7115hv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237120/original/file-20180919-158213-7115hv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237120/original/file-20180919-158213-7115hv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237120/original/file-20180919-158213-7115hv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237120/original/file-20180919-158213-7115hv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">CRISPR-Cas9 allows scientists to target and activate or silence specific genes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/dna-molecule-structure-strand-repair-editing-774492757?src=fsLzr20sTEzmuh_eWpHdWg-1-10">Vrx/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
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<p>The use of genetic technologies in reproduction is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/04/editing-human-genome-consumer-eugenics-designer-babies">frequently criticised</a> for harbouring <a href="https://theconversation.com/three-person-ivf-has-nothing-to-do-with-eugenics-but-its-time-for-a-designer-baby-debate-23996">eugenic undertones</a>. But genetic selection occurs with or without these technologies. For example, we make decisions about the genetics of our future offspring when we choose our mate. We make decisions about the health of our future offspring when we take supplements such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/folic-acid-in-pregnancy-mthfr-gene-explains-why-the-benefits-may-differ-95302">folic acid</a> and improve our diet during pregnancy. Decades of research have yielded <a href="https://theconversation.com/complex-guidelines-on-eating-fish-when-pregnant-mean-that-mothers-and-babies-are-missing-out-83587">ever-increasing information</a> about how we can protect and nurture our embryos, not only by including essential macronutrients but also by excluding harmful exposures such as alcohol and tobacco. We don’t ignore these welfare warnings. Nor is it considered elitist to adhere to them by choice to deliver a healthy baby.</p>
<p>But when comparing these genetic prompts to more purposeful permutations of our genetics using gene editing technology, the rationalisation for wanting a healthy baby somehow becomes displaced with irrational ideas about the creation of a “perfect” baby.</p>
<p>It is true that advances in research rarely lend themselves so quickly to clinical adoption. But safety is obviously the number one prerequisite for any research development to become medical practice. Proceeding with such medical advances will always be subject to rigorous oversight. So <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/2179920-revealed-what-the-uk-public-really-thinks-about-the-future-of-science/">for many</a>, genome editing – and the era of <a href="https://theconversation.com/personalised-medicine-has-obvious-benefits-but-has-anyone-thought-about-the-issues-59158">personalised medicine</a> – is not something to be feared but embraced.</p>
<h2>Mistrust and myth</h2>
<p><strong>FB</strong>: While caution is a good thing, fear of the technologies can make meaningful and progressive debate quite difficult. The association of genome editing with “<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-case-against-designer-babies-falls-apart-45256">designer babies</a>”, for example, although making for catchy headlines, masks the intended uses of the technologies. The connotations of frivolity, commercialism and superficial decision making that comes with the term “designer” does a great disservice to the parents in these difficult situations who are facing complex and often deeply painful decisions.</p>
<p><strong>HON</strong>: Yes: the term “designer” suggests that there is an element of choice and privilege to a baby that may be born with an edited genome. In fact, the opposite is more likely to be true; people will not edit the genomes of their embryos out of choice, but because they have no choice if they are to deliver a healthy, viable baby.</p>
<p>And as it stands, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05462-w">we are still debating</a> the number of genes in the human genome and certainly do not know what all of the genes do. Even if we did, the unpredictability in the mechanism of genetic crossover between parental genomes precludes any realistic control or prediction of the majority of traits. Choosing partners based on what we see on the outside is a far more reliable method for designing our babies’ appearance.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237728/original/file-20180924-85785-1y6nasc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237728/original/file-20180924-85785-1y6nasc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237728/original/file-20180924-85785-1y6nasc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237728/original/file-20180924-85785-1y6nasc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237728/original/file-20180924-85785-1y6nasc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237728/original/file-20180924-85785-1y6nasc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237728/original/file-20180924-85785-1y6nasc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">All babies are ‘designed’ to some extent when we choose a partner.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/parents-their-newborn-baby-boy-on-729856267?src=XHAK_BLe7vsMGnO_t72a9w-1-0">Jacob Lund/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>There is no doubt that a subject like this needs widespread discussion and debate and in fact <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/2179920-revealed-what-the-uk-public-really-thinks-about-the-future-of-science/">recent surveys</a> show that the public are optimistic about genome editing for curing diseases, but there can also be a lack of trust about the intended use of this technology. The distraction from the good that this technology can do is frustrating as a researcher. We should not extrapolate the worst possible outcome which encourages unrealistic and disingenuous ideas focusing on dystopian scenarios.</p>
<p><strong>FB</strong>: I think some of this mistrust stems from fear of the unknown and a concern that this technology stands to alter not only our biology, but also our society. People with genetic disabilities, for example, those with spinal muscular atrophy, haemophilia and <a href="https://theconversation.com/discovering-the-ancient-origin-of-cystic-fibrosis-the-most-common-genetic-disease-in-caucasians-100499">cystic fibrosis</a> (who I work with during my research), are set to be impacted by the consequences of genome editing, yet they are not always included in stakeholder debates as much as they could be. This is in spite of the fact that people with disabilities have much to contribute to our understanding of what life with genetic disease is really like. Insights that are highly relevant to decisions about which conditions are suitable candidates for genome editing.</p>
<p><strong>HON</strong>: But the use of genome editing can also be seen as addressing some of the objections to prenatal testing and pregnancy termination raised by disability rights supporters. By treating the foetus’ or embyro’s condition, rather than terminating them, genome editing may be an attractive alternative for those who disagree with pregnancy termination or embryo disposal on the grounds of disability or otherwise. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237114/original/file-20180919-158219-1ogp1mi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237114/original/file-20180919-158219-1ogp1mi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=661&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237114/original/file-20180919-158219-1ogp1mi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=661&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237114/original/file-20180919-158219-1ogp1mi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=661&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237114/original/file-20180919-158219-1ogp1mi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=830&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237114/original/file-20180919-158219-1ogp1mi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=830&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237114/original/file-20180919-158219-1ogp1mi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=830&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Separation of DNA fragments.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/gkhb2nrc?page=3&query=DNA">Guy Tear/Wellcome Collection</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What’s at stake?</h2>
<p><strong>FB</strong>: That’s of course true, but for some, this development is regarded as coming at a cost. Genome editing not only changes the genome of the embryo it treats, but also that of every generation that comes after it, and so critical questions still remain about how and when it would be ethically and socially appropriate to implement it. Indeed, it <a href="http://nuffieldbioethics.org/project/genome-editing-human-reproduction">has been suggested</a> that over time, genome editing could effectively remove particular disease-causing traits from the human gene pool.</p>
<p>While this may seem a positive development to many people, the question of which conditions and traits genome editing should be used to treat, and which it should not, is far from straightforward. <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30196552">Research I have conducted</a> with families living with a range of conditions that could all one day be candidate conditions for genome editing, for example, has revealed that a person’s relationship to their genetic condition is often complex. For some, their disability is an integral and valued part of their identity, while for others, an unwelcome burden. As such, ascertaining the quality of life of a person with a genetic disorder (particularly before birth) is a near impossible task.</p>
<p>As genome editing technologies move into mainstream healthcare and become widely adopted, it is possible that would-be parents will feel under pressure to use them. This is a concern that has long been raised in relation to informed consent and antenatal screening <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20947230">for Down’s Syndrome</a>. The potential stigmatisation and branding of parents who forgo the technologies as “selfish” or “irresponsible” needs to be seriously considered, as well as the possibility that this stigma could extend to the disabled people already living with “editable” conditions (the numbers of whom are likely to reduce over time).</p>
<p>Indeed, the public profile of these (often rare) genetic conditions will shift and alter through the use of genome editing – from conditions once considered “chance” occurrences, to preventable diseases. This change is likely to have social consequences, as well as biological ones.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237284/original/file-20180920-129877-1b14sjq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237284/original/file-20180920-129877-1b14sjq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237284/original/file-20180920-129877-1b14sjq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237284/original/file-20180920-129877-1b14sjq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237284/original/file-20180920-129877-1b14sjq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237284/original/file-20180920-129877-1b14sjq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237284/original/file-20180920-129877-1b14sjq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fibrous deposits in pancreas due to cystic fibrosis.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/sbbr52xk?query=cystic+fibrosis">Anne Clark, University of Oxford/Wellcome Collection</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<p><strong>HON</strong>: It is essential to put genome editing in context with what is already available in terms of screening and pre-implantation genetic diagnosis – which has been available for 30 years. With this, every single condition needs to be appraised and legally approved before it can be tested for. And ultimately, the decision comes from the parents.</p>
<p>It is also important to remember that we cannot predict the pattern of genetics or the heritability of disorders. So suggesting that conditions would be “eliminated” is certainly not the goal of researchers, nor is it realistic. Not all genetic disorders are inherited from the family line, many are sporadic or “<a href="https://www.cancer.gov/publications/dictionaries/genetics-dictionary/def/de-novo-mutation"><em>de novo</em></a>” mutations which occur through chance. While germline genome editing certainly has consequences for future generations, many current standard treatments are not ideal and have unwanted side effects, but they are the best we currently have. Take for example cancer radiation therapy, which not only alters, but destroys, the germline.</p>
<p>More research is critical. We know less about the early developmental stages of a human embryo than we do of mice, worms, flies and fish. Knowledge is the most powerful prescription you can give, but it comes with a burden. It is important that with each new discovery we are able to fully consolidate our knowledge before advancing to the next level in research.</p>
<p><strong>FB</strong>: I agree – and also think it’s important to note that we need more research that explores the technologies from a range of vantage points. Currently, there is a lack of dialogue between the various disciplines working in this area, including geneticists, scientists, bioethicists, sociologists and disability studies scholars. By removing some of the disciplinary divisions, we may better be able to see the full consequences of the technologies for everyone whose lives will be affected by them, the list of which seems to be ever-expanding.</p>
<hr>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Academics from different disciplines come Head to Head in this series to tackle topical debates.Felicity Boardman, Assistant Professor in Social Science and Systems in Health, University of WarwickHelen O'Neill, Lecturer in Reproductive and Molecular Genetics, UCLLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/603922016-06-02T12:38:50Z2016-06-02T12:38:50ZGrattan on Friday: In Conversation with Tony Abbott<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/124989/original/image-20160602-23258-i5dx5o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tony Abbott has so far been the low-key team player in the 2016 election campaign.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Mick Tsikas</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Just as there is a “good Malcolm” and a “bad Malcolm” so there is a “good Tony” and a “bad Tony”. As the Liberals went into this election, there was some nervousness about which Tony Abbott would be on show during the campaign.</p>
<p>No wonder really. Everyone remembers the 2010 campaign: former prime minister Kevin Rudd, the leaks, the awkward joint appearance with Julia Gillard to try to display a unity that wasn’t there. Equally, everyone also knows Abbott remains unforgiving about what happened to him last September. So the potential for trouble was always there.</p>
<p>To the relief of the government in what has been a tough first half of the campaign, Abbott has so far been the low-key team player.</p>
<p>The cynical point out that Abbott can be the good guy while his former chief-of-staff Peta Credlin, a commentator on Sky and in News Corp tabloids, says some of the more critical things he might think. Possibly, but the fact remains that Abbott is being very restrained and very careful, given his continued strong feelings.</p>
<p>It’s in his interests to be so. If Malcolm Turnbull wins well, Abbott’s legacy fares better if he has behaved. He can argue that, whatever Turnbull might say, a lot of the election policy was a carry-on from his, Abbott’s, time.</p>
<p>If Turnbull holds power only narrowly, nobody will be able to blame Abbott for the poor result if he has been supportive. And his case for a frontbench role would be stronger – though it is unlikely that even a weakened Turnbull would grant him that.</p>
<p>In the wide-ranging interview with The Conversation on Thursday, Abbott:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>staunchly defended the government’s superannuation policy, which is under fire from some in the party’s base, including donors;</p></li>
<li><p>opposed the Liberals preferencing the Greens in any seats;</p></li>
<li><p>made it clear he’d put his opposition to same-sex marriage in the proposed plebiscite but would vote for the enabling legislation if the yes side won;</p></li>
<li><p>said, when asked about the performance of Bill Shorten as opposition leader, that while Shorten had very bad policy “at least he’s had the guts to come up with a plan”. In contrast Turnbull said in Sunday’s debate: “they have no plan for economic growth and no plan for jobs”.</p></li>
<li><p>hinted the party would constrain how far a re-elected Turnbull could follow his own path; and</p></li>
<li><p>hoped that despite their recent bitter rift he and Bronwyn Bishop could one day be friends again.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Below is an edited transcript of the interview, done in Abbott’s Parliament House office.</p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> Tony Abbott, where have you been campaigning and how have you found the mood of the electorate?</p>
<p><strong>Tony Abbott:</strong> Mostly in Warringah, Michelle, because I’m running to be the member for Warringah at this election. Most weeks, though, since the campaign has begun, I’ve been out of the electorate for a day or two. This week, for instance, I helped in Deakin where Michael Sukkar is a very strong local member and I also went up to Wide Bay where, as you know, former deputy prime minister Warren Truss is retiring and Llew O'Brien, a terrific country policeman, is the new National Party candidate up there.</p>
<p>So my objective in this campaign is to be a strong candidate for my own seat and to be as helpful as I can in a low-key way around the country.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> So are you going where people invite you? Or do you volunteer yourself?</p>
<p><strong>TA:</strong> Well essentially where I’m invited. Obviously, there are some people who are keener than others to have me. But I’m available within reason to be as helpful as I can to people who think that I can be an asset to their campaign.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> Has HQ asked you to do anything?</p>
<p><strong>TA:</strong> Yes they have. I’ve gone to a couple of fundraisers at HQ’s request. I’ve made a couple of little announcements yesterday on the Sunshine Coast at headquarters’ request and, again, without expecting to be front and centre of this campaign, I want to be as helpful as I can be because it is absolutely essential for our country’s future that the Turnbull government be returned.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> So how have you found the mood of the electorate?</p>
<p><strong>TA:</strong> I think the electorate has been pretty disengaged up until now …</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> We’re talking generally of course …</p>
<p><strong>TA:</strong> Just generally. Yeah, I mean, there are always groups that are passionate about politics. The Green left are passionate about politics and Bill Shorten is more and more pandering to them, particularly with his 50% renewable target and his 45% emissions reduction target by 2030. This 50% renewable target, if the Grattan Institute is to be believed, requires almost a $50 billion over-build of renewable capacity and consumers will have to pay for that.</p>
<p>So, the Green-left activists are being courted by Bill Shorten.</p>
<p>Obviously there are some issues with the superannuation among staunch Liberals, and the point I keep making to them is that we cannot avoid tough decisions. We cannot avoid doing some things that will upset people if we are to boost the economy and at the same time get the budget under control.</p>
<p>So, there’s engagement by some groups but my sense is that the community at large is yet to be passionately engaged in this campaign and I guess that’s got to be good for the incumbent government.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> Just before we leave your campaigning – are you going to go to Lindsay and are you going to go to Indi?</p>
<p><strong>TA:</strong> I certainly have been talking to Sophie Mirabella about how I can help her because, as you know, Sophie’s a friend of mine. We’ve been mates for 20-odd years. And I was very, very disappointed that Sophie didn’t win Indi in 2013 because I expected her to be a strong member of the Abbott cabinet.</p>
<p>As for Lindsay, look I’ve certainly done a lot of campaigning in Lindsay over the years but Lindsay was the designated donee conference for my [electorate] conference. This time the designation donee conference is Dobell on the Central Coast. So I think you’re much more likely to find me in Dobell than in Lindsay.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> And on Indi, you might go there?</p>
<p>TA: Well, it’s really up to the campaign team in Indi but certainly I have a lot of time for Sophie Mirabella. I think it’s very much in the interests of the people of Indi that they have as their local member someone who can be a strong part of a government, rather than an independent who inevitably is going to be a voice in the wilderness.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> Barnaby Joyce has said the government will take a haircut – the question is how much. What’s your assessment?</p>
<p><strong>TA:</strong> We had a very, very strong result in 2013 and it was always going to be hard to hold onto all of those seats. Nevertheless I have the impression that all of our marginal seat members are working hard. </p>
<p>There’s no doubt that Michael Sukkar in Deakin, for instance, is working incredibly hard. I know people like Andrew Nikolic and the others of the musketeers, the three musketeers in Tasmania, are working incredibly hard. Karen McNamara in Dobell is working very hard. I was with George Christensen up in central Queensland a week or so ago back. He’s working very hard, so look I don’t think there’s anyone who’s not working hard …</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> But hard work doesn’t always do it …</p>
<p><strong>TA:</strong> It doesn’t always do it but nevertheless it means a very great deal. It’s interesting, if you go back to 1998, the marginal seat members who relied on the national campaign to get them over the line tended to lose. </p>
<p>The marginal seat members who had done an enormous amount of grassroots work in their electorates, who’d actually done the hard yards door knocking, phone canvassing, attending to the needs of people who walked in the door of their offices, they were the ones who survived and became in many cases great stalwarts of the Howard government.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> Your performance as opposition leader was generally recognised, I think by both sides of politics, as highly effective for its purpose. I wonder how you rate Bill Shorten’s performance, leaving aside the content of what he’s selling, but as an opposition leader.</p>
<p><strong>TA:</strong> Well, you should never underestimate Labor. That’s the first point to make. Labor have enormous campaigning skills. Let’s face it, Labor has this permanent campaigning arm – the union movement – which has thousands of organisers on the payroll. It has about a billion dollars a year at its disposal from membership fees and these days the union apparatus is more and more interested in campaigning and less and less focused on the actual workplace. So, we should never underestimate Labor.</p>
<p>As for Bill Shorten, look, he seemed to lose his mojo a bit in the latter part of last year but he’s obviously lifted himself this year. And whether you agree with the policy or not, and obviously I think it’s terrible policy to hit our people with $100 billion worth of new taxes over the next decade given that we’re already over-taxed, I think it’s very bad policy but at least he’s had the guts to come up with a plan. </p>
<p>It’s a thoroughly bad plan but it is at least a plan. It’s a tax-and-spend-and-borrow plan. It’s the most left-wing program that Labor has had probably since Doc Evatt but, nevertheless, it is a plan.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> How well does the government need to win for Malcolm Turnbull to have a strong mandate?</p>
<p><strong>TA:</strong> Well, a mandate depends not just on the size of the majority, it also depends on the policy platform that you take to the people. I think that our policy platform is a strong one. There’s a company tax cut to boost investment jobs and prosperity. There’s a middle-income tax cut because they’re the people having a go, there’s an absolute determination to throw the book at dodgy union officials and corrupt union governance, which has done so much damage to our country over decades.</p>
<p>And, of course, we are the only people you can trust to keep our borders secure and our country safe. So, I think that if the government is returned we’ll have a strong mandate for all of those policies.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> You said previously that Malcolm Turnbull at this election would be campaigning on the Abbott government’s record. Is this turning out to be the case?</p>
<p><strong>TA:</strong> Well, there’s no doubt that we can go to the people at this election with a very strong record of achievement …</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> The Abbott government record?</p>
<p><strong>TA:</strong> Well, don’t forget Malcolm Turnbull was a senior member of the Abbott government. He was a member of the cabinet that made all these decisions and effected all these changes for the better. </p>
<p>The boats are stopped. No-one thought we could do that. The carbon tax and the mining tax are gone and everyone thought those taxes were forever. The three free trade agreements that had defied previous governments for a decade are well and truly in place and they’ll set us up for decades to come. We’ve made a very strong start to budget repair, although there’s obviously a lot more work to be done there. </p>
<p>Infrastructure is going ahead massively right around the country except in Victoria and that’s the Victorian government’s fault. And we’ve kept our country safe in the face of unprecedented national security challenges. </p>
<p>So, it’s a very strong record and it’s a great record for the prime minister to build on.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> If Malcolm Turnbull got a big majority, do you think or fear he might take the party in a very different direction to the one he inherited from you?</p>
<p><strong>TA:</strong> Well, the interesting thing is that as party leader you are very much a product of the party in a way that you aren’t quite when you are simply a senior frontbencher. </p>
<p>As you might remember from my own past, Michelle, at times as a frontbencher, even in government I would strike out on my own a little, sometimes with the tacit encouragement of the prime minister, sometimes without any encouragement. </p>
<p>You become party leader and you don’t have the luxury of a private view anymore. You are there to represent the team to discern what is best for the team, to discern what is going to keep the team together, if you’re prime minister what’s going to be best for the country and what’s going to keep the country united and cohesive, and you’ve got to go with that.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> So what do you think will be the nature of the post-election parliamentary Liberal Party? Will it be more conservative or more moderate than we see at the moment?</p>
<p><strong>TA:</strong> I think it will continue to have strong voices who are on the more liberal side and strong voices who are on the more conservative side.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> So it won’t change much from now?</p>
<p><strong>TA:</strong> Not much. I mean, if you look at the people who we’ve preselected for seats that we would expect to hold, we’ve got someone like Tim Wilson in Goldstein, you’ve got someone like Julian Leeser in Berowra. I think it would be fair to say that Tim is probably more on the liberal side. Julian Leeser is probably more on the conservative side. </p>
<p>Someone like [candidate for Tangney, WA] Ben Morton – very smart person – I think a sensible pragmatic conservative. I think we’ve got good new members coming into the parliament or likely to come into the parliament this time and I think one way or another they will all be within the Liberal mainstream.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> Will you seek to be an active leader of the conservatives post-election, the conservative group in the party?</p>
<p><strong>TA:</strong> Well, my plan is to be as useful as I can be in the next parliament. Now, obviously first and foremost, I’m going to be a strong local member and there are a lot of things that need to be done in my seat. </p>
<p>Obviously there’s the standard representational work that every member does but it’s vital that having worked with the state government to get a new hospital for the northern beaches that I work with the state government to ensure that we finally get the new transport infrastructure that is long overdue for our part of Sydney. </p>
<p>We desperately need a road tunnel under Mosman. The Baird government has it on its medium-term planning list once WestConnex and NorthConnex are truly underway and it will help our area to get that if the local member is someone of national standing.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> But nationally, would you seek to be a leader of the conservatives?</p>
<p><strong>TA:</strong> Well, look, I want to be as useful as I can be and that will mean standing up for what I think are good Liberal, conservative positions. Those are the positions of our party. Let’s never forget, Michelle, whether we use the broad church terminology of John Howard or the big tent terminology of John Brogden, our party is, if you like, a coalition. It’s a formal coalition with the National Party but within that broad coalition there are a range of different voices and that’s healthy. That’s healthy and I’ll certainly be contributing to that after the election.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> Now some of these voices are speaking up at the moment on superannuation. How serious is this revolt? You promised not to touch super, do you think your view has been vindicated?</p>
<p><strong>TA:</strong> Michelle, there obviously is some disgruntlement among some people who are normally very strong Liberal supporters. But the point I keep making to them is that superannuation is not about building up your wealth, it’s about giving you a reasonable income in retirement. Now over the years some people have seen it as a vehicle for wealth creation.</p>
<p>The government, quite understandably in the circumstances, wants to return superannuation to its original purpose. The Labor Party, likewise, wants to return superannuation to its original purpose, which is why Labor has some rather similar proposals on the table to ours.</p>
<p>The other point I keep making, Michelle, is that sure, superannuation is going to be less tax-advantaged for people with very large superannuation balances, but there is no way of doing the sorts of things we have to do with company tax without finding the revenue from somewhere.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> But you would never have taken this decision.</p>
<p><strong>TA:</strong> Well, I went to the last election with a position. As you know, the prime ministership changed and the cabinet took a position as part of the budget process. Now I think there are strong arguments for the position that the government has taken and I’m certainly out there prosecuting those arguments.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> And have the people who are in the party, the parliamentary party, who are criticising this, have they tried to enlist your support?</p>
<p><strong>TA:</strong> Look, the short answer is we are all supporting the government’s position. We accept that superannuation for a small percentage of people is going to be somewhat less tax-advantaged under our proposals than is currently the case. But if you want to deliver a very important company tax cut that over time will add 1% to GDP and massively boost investment, jobs and prosperity, it’s got to be paid for somehow.</p>
<p>Labor thinks money grows on trees. We know that if you are responsibly to provide concessions in one area, you’ve got to address concessions in another area and that’s what we’re doing, we’re acting in a responsible, prudent way.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> Could it change after the election or is it set in stone?</p>
<p><strong>TA:</strong> I don’t expect it to.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> We’ve been in Melbourne this week in Batman and Wills where the Greens at least have a fighting chance in those Labor seats and if they got Liberal preferences, they’d perhaps have quite a good chance. The Liberal Party at the moment is considering that question – whether to give the Greens preferences. Do you think the Greens should be preferenced in those seats in exchange for a deal that would help the Liberals in outer suburban seats?</p>
<p><strong>TA:</strong> Well, Michelle, this is a matter for the lay party.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> You’ve had strong views in the past.</p>
<p><strong>TA:</strong> Yes, yes. And certainly as a general rule I think that more responsible parties should be preferenced ahead of less-responsible parties and for all the Labor Party’s faults it is, in the end, the alternative government and heaven help us if the Greens were ever the alternative government. So, you can probably draw a conclusion from that if you want, Michelle …</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> I think I can take that as a no but …</p>
<p><strong>TA:</strong> But, in the end, this is the matter for the party organisation.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> But I can accept that as a no?</p>
<p><strong>TA</strong>: It’s a matter for the party organisation.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> What would be the danger of preferencing the Greens?</p>
<p><strong>TA:</strong> Well, as I said, we are the party of strong economic management. We are the party of national security and the Greens are the opposite …</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> But you’d wreak havoc in the Labor Party …</p>
<p><strong>TA:</strong> They are the absolute opposite and it’s very important that people understand that the Liberal Party is a sensible, principled party; that the Coalition is a sensible, principled coalition; and we don’t play footsie with people who would destroy our economy and damage our national security.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> Now I know you’ve said in the past that the Abbott era is over but it’s always hard to believe that a former leader doesn’t still have the baton in there somewhere and anyway isn’t that a decision for the parliamentary party? You’ve always said you’d serve the party.</p>
<p><strong>TA:</strong> But as I said and as you reminded me Michelle, the Abbott era is over. It was a very decisive vote in the partyroom back in September of last year and I just can’t imagine that it will be revisited.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> After the election, if the opportunity presented itself, would you like to serve on the frontbench?</p>
<p><strong>TA:</strong> This is a matter for the prime minister … I’m not asking for advancement. I’m not expecting advancement. I am running to be the member for Warringah. I’m very happy to be the member for Warringah, should I be returned. There are all sorts of things I can do as the member for Warringah which I think will be a useful contribution to the next parliament.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> I think we might take that as a yes. You’ve been really, really restrained at this election. How hard has that been?</p>
<p><strong>TA:</strong> Well, again, Michelle, I’ve always tried to be a team player. Now, that hasn’t meant that at times in the past I haven’t tried a few initiatives of my own. But always, always with the intention of strengthening the team, of helping the team and I don’t intend to change now.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> But you’ve had breakouts even when you were a senior member of the team and yet we’ve seen nearly a month of this campaign and it’s been very much the “good Tony” hasn’t it?</p>
<p><strong>TA:</strong> Michelle, look, as I said, I’ve always been a team player. It is imperative that we return the Turnbull government at this election, absolutely essential for Australia that we return the Turnbull government. Bill Shorten is a clever politician but a Shorten government would be worse than Rudd, worse than Gillard. It would be the most left-wing Labor government in our history and that’s the last thing we need.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> You spoke about other ways of serving if you’re not on the frontbench. And it has to be said that Malcolm Turnbull hasn’t given any encouragement to the thought that you would be on the frontbench. So what other ways are there of serving as a parliamentarian?</p>
<p><strong>TA:</strong> Well, as I said, Michelle, a local member speaks up for his or her electorate, makes a vigorous contribution to the partyroom, and can have a voice in the debates that our nation faces. And, look, on a whole range of subjects I think I’ve got constructive and useful things to say. I made some constructive and useful speeches over the last few months since leaving the prime ministership and that will continue.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> Well there are two very big debates that are coming up. One is the Indigenous referendum and the other is the same-sex marriage debate. On the Indigenous referendum issue – how do you think that’s going and would you be really active in that campaign?</p>
<p><strong>TA:</strong> I think it’s now being mulled over by people at a grassroots level. There are the community consultations that Bill Shorten and I agreed upon back in July of last year that are now going ahead. There’s an Indigenous stream, there’s a general stream. They’re taking place. </p>
<p>Hopefully, in the next few months, a proposal will crystallise, a proposal which can unite our country rather than divide our country, and provided it is about recognition and it’s not seeking to do a whole lot of other things that might be more properly be the preserve of the parliament, I see no reason why I won’t be there campaigning strongly for it.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> And you think it can be carried?</p>
<p><strong>TA:</strong> If it’s about recognition and not about a whole lot of other things, yes I do.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> And in the same-sex marriage campaign, which looks as though, if the government is returned, will be this year, will you be campaigning for the “no” case?</p>
<p><strong>TA:</strong> Well, again, I have a well-known position on this. I’m a traditionalist on this. I accept that good people can disagree on this and I accept that a position which was almost unthinkable a decade ago is now strongly supported by lots of people in our community. </p>
<p>I think of my sister – the arguments I’ve had with her. She was not interested in this five years ago but now she’s passionate about it, as is her right. But I have a position. It’s been a very consistent position and in appropriate ways I’ll be putting it.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> So you would expect individual Liberal MPs – backbenchers – to be able to campaign for “yes” or “no”?</p>
<p><strong>TA:</strong> Well, I certainly think that the whole point of a plebiscite is that politicians become less important and people become more important. I mean that’s the whole point of a plebiscite. It takes it out of the hands of the parliament and puts it into the hands of the people and Tony Abbott’s opinion is no more important than anyone else’s opinion.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> But MPs would be free to put that opinion…</p>
<p><strong>TA:</strong> Well, again, this is a matter for the partyroom to thrash out. But I’d certainly expect that there would be some people on one side, there will be other people on the other side and that will be true of the Labor Party as well.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> And some of your colleagues, for example I think Eric Abetz, have suggested that if the “yes” vote got up they would still feel free to vote against the enabling legislation. Would that be your view or would you think that if the “yes” vote got up that would be an instruction to MPs, as it were, from the electorate?</p>
<p><strong>TA:</strong> Well, my view is that by putting this view to the people at a plebiscite, we’ve effectively said that the people are sovereign on this matter rather than the parliament.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> So you’d vote for enabling legislation …</p>
<p><strong>TA:</strong> You’d have to respect the outcome.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> Do you undertake to serve a full three years?</p>
<p><strong>TA:</strong> I do.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> And just finally you’ve got James Mathison, who compered Australian Idol, in your electorate standing against you. He obviously won’t win but do you have any message for the disillusioned young people that might be inclined to vote for him and did you follow the program at the time?</p>
<p><strong>TA:</strong> Michelle, first point to make is that I am not complacent about the result in Warringah and I take nothing for granted. I’m certainly campaigning very vigorously in Warringah this time around. There are a range of candidates and the gentleman you mentioned is just one of them. Look, I can remember watching Australian Idol a few years ago and really enjoying the program. But there’s a world of difference between hosting a TV program and being a strong and effective member of parliament.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> I know I said that was the last question but perhaps I should add one postscript and that is: you used to be very close to Bronwyn Bishop and as we know that relationship fell apart over the speakership, the helicopter, the preselection and so on. Have you been in contact with her at all since she lost preselection?</p>
<p><strong>TA:</strong> No, I haven’t. Look …</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> Any reconciliation possible there?</p>
<p><strong>TA:</strong> I would certainly like to think that at some point in the future the long friendship could be resumed. But there’s absolutely no doubt that the loss of the speakership was a very hard blow for Bronwyn, and I can understand that. And I guess the difficulty with the things that have happened over the last 12 months is that a number of relationships have been strained. </p>
<p>That doesn’t prevent people from doing what needs to be done in the interests of our party and our government and our country but there’s no doubt that things that have happened in the last 12 months have strained some relationships.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> Tony Abbott, thank you very much for talking with The Conversation today.</p>
<iframe src="https://www.podbean.com/media/player/88dj6-5fd20e?from=yiiadmin" data-link="https://www.podbean.com/media/player/88dj6-5fd20e?from=yiiadmin" height="100" width="100%" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" data-name="pb-iframe-player"></iframe><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/60392/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As the Liberals went into this election, there was some nervousness about which Tony Abbott would be on show during the campaign.Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/582882016-04-25T20:14:43Z2016-04-25T20:14:43ZIn Conversation: Mark Scott on his decade in charge of the ABC<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119780/original/image-20160422-4752-eb1c7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mark Scott has altered the ABC in profound ways.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Mick Tsikas</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Mark Scott is to step down as the ABC’s managing director in May following ten years in charge of the national broadcaster. These years have been marked by technological change and significant disruption in Australia’s media landscape.</em></p>
<p><em>Scott recently caught up with University of Melbourne Vice-Chancellor Glyn Davis to reflect on his time as ABC managing director. You can listen to listen to their discussion below in audio produced by <a href="https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/the-policy-shop">The Policy Shop</a>, a monthly public policy podcast based at the University of Melbourne.</em></p>
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<hr>
<blockquote>
<p>If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Mark Scott, the ABC’s outgoing managing director, cites the <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/45bb2ef4-de3a-11df-9364-00144feabdc0.html">famous quote</a> from Giuseppe Di Lampedusa’s The Leopard to encapsulate his time at the helm of the national broadcaster.</p>
<p>Scott joined the ABC in 2006 with major technological change about to hit. There was “no smartphone, no tablet, no fast broadband, no big streaming services, no social media”, he recalls.</p>
<p>Yet the wave was on its way. If ABC was to be “as loved and respected for future generations as it had been in the past”, concluded Scott, “then change was an inevitability”.</p>
<p>There are parallels for those in public universities. There, new technology is challenging long-standing practices. Yet as the ABC has demonstrated, it is possible to embrace change and thrive.</p>
<p>Scott’s leadership at ABC is recognised for innovation and new digital initiatives. Podcasts, online catch-up service iview and its 24-hour news channel, ABC News 24, have proved critical to sharing Australian content and building internal capacity within the ABC.</p>
<p>The right decisions may only look clear in retrospect. The decision to proceed with podcasting content was not initially obvious or strategic. Scott says:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It was really a bunch of people at Radio National saying “have a go at this”. It was an experiment, an innovative moment. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Downloads of ABC podcasts will reach 160 million this year.</p>
<p>iview, another success from Scott’s time at the ABC, started with a conversation about audience expectations:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>With iview we didn’t know whether it would be a streaming service that would be important or a download-to-keep service that would be important. We just knew people wanted to catch up with programming.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Scott set two teams to work on the problem. This initially small but ambitious program now supports around 35 million iview plays a month.</p>
<p>Scott believes News 24 proved transformative for the ABC well beyond its initial remit. For Scott, it was almost a Trojan horse:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You were going to put this behind the wall of the ABC and the ABC would be different forever as a consequence.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The lessons from News 24 flowed back into state-based news broadcasting, and reshaped how the ABC now develops all news broadcasts, Scott says.</p>
<p>Again, there are interesting similarities with universities, as the campus <a href="https://theconversation.com/moocs-learning-about-online-learning-one-click-at-a-time-30782">embraces online learning</a>. It requires new digital, pedagogical and production skills to deliver high-quality online content, yet public universities have proved skilled and sprightly. </p>
<p>At the University of Melbourne nearly one million students have now enrolled for a Massive Online Open Course, with content developed for an online setting also available for the classroom.</p>
<p>Digital media is ubiquitous. It allows international players to offer content directly to Australians, requiring the ABC to find a distinctive voice for its offerings. </p>
<p>As Scott notes, the ABC serves fewer than 25 million people who speak English, a language used by more than 700 million people worldwide. The challenges become more obvious as Netflix and other aggressive new media services seek out global markets.</p>
<p>Scott says:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The world’s content is going to flood in. You can listen to great radio from all around the world. But who will tell Australian stories? Who will have local voices on the ground, all around Australia? Who will celebrate Australian culture? I think that is the space the public broadcaster will increasingly need to play.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A global media accentuates the difficulties funding local media. Scott points to the challenges for newspapers groups like <a href="https://theconversation.com/fairfax-media-holds-steady-on-digital-strategy-54959">Fairfax</a>, where he worked as a senior executive. The loss of traditional advertising income bodes ill for the traditional newsroom.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is very hard for traditional newspaper companies to find a revenue model, either through advertising or through paywalls, and I think they are still challenged by that. </p>
<p>I don’t think it’s that they won’t survive. I think the challenge is what kind of services will the revenue model allow them to afford. And part of the pain at Fairfax is coming back from big staffing numbers that were funded by classified monopolies, to the reality that they face today.</p>
<p>It is almost easier for The Guardian in this country to build up from nothing than it is for Fairfax to come back from where they were.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Scott is clear: if the ABC is to survive such challenges, it will be sharper, more strategic and more relevant than ever before.</p>
<p>Scott is a thoughtful chief executive who has altered the ABC in profound ways to preserve its core mission as the place that tells Australian stories. As commercial rivals succumb to internet economics, only the ABC with its public funding can support a national newsroom and multiple channels. Maintaining the independence and public trust of such an institution is a significant responsibility for any managing director.</p>
<p>Scott will hand to Michelle Guthrie a much-transformed ABC – one that does the same things in very new ways.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/58288/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Glyn Davis is Vice-Chancellor of the University of Melbourne, and host of The Policy Shop.</span></em></p>Mark Scott will hand to Michelle Guthrie a much-transformed ABC – one that does the same things in very new ways.Glyn Davis, Professor of Political Science and Vice-Chancellor, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/536132016-02-16T01:45:27Z2016-02-16T01:45:27ZIn Conversation: Australia’s ambassador to France, Stephen Brady, on terrorism and multicultural societies<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109972/original/image-20160202-32257-haz2u2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Sydney Opera House was illuminated in the colours of the French flag following the 2015 Paris attacks.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/58827557@N06/23072314381">Clint Budd/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Arnaud Mercier, president of the board of directors of The Conversation France, spoke with Stephen Brady, Australia’s ambassador to France, about Australia’s role in the fight against terrorism, and his own country’s approach to creating a multicultural society.</em></p>
<p><strong>Arnaud Mercier: Did the Australian people feel a particular solidarity with the people of Paris after the November attacks?</strong></p>
<p>Stephen Brady: The attacks on November 13 affected Australians very deeply. There was a huge outpouring of emotion that hadn’t been seen since the Charlie Hebdo attack and, before then, not since 9/11. All around the country, in cities and in towns, major public buildings were lit up in French colours – the Sydney Opera House, Parliament House in Canberra, in Brisbane. There was an immediate public need to express solidarity with France. </p>
<p>One of the reasons for this, I think, is that nearly one million Australians travel to France each year. That’s huge given that there are only 24 million of us. So, it wasn’t a distant event. Most Australians would identify with France through our shared values that were threatened, but they could also visualise the <em>arrondissements</em> where the attacks took place; they could visualise the stadium. They had a sense of the deep revulsion.</p>
<p>The Australian prime minister, the leader of the opposition and two ministers have since travelled to Paris. All have insisted that they go to the Bataclan and the areas around. You can be cynical about such gestures, but I can say that I’ve been with politicians for decades and have never seen such profound anguish and disgust. They were really expressing the whole country’s sorrow and solidarity with France.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109202/original/image-20160126-19667-1jkl7zb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109202/original/image-20160126-19667-1jkl7zb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=831&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109202/original/image-20160126-19667-1jkl7zb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=831&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109202/original/image-20160126-19667-1jkl7zb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=831&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109202/original/image-20160126-19667-1jkl7zb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1044&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109202/original/image-20160126-19667-1jkl7zb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1044&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109202/original/image-20160126-19667-1jkl7zb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1044&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Stephen Brady, Australia’s ambassador to France.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Australian Embassy</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>What is Australia’s current level of participation in the fight against Islamic State (IS)?</strong></p>
<p>Until recently we were the second-largest contributor militarily in Syria and Iraq, and now we’re the third. France has overtaken us. It’s not perhaps recognised that the Australian contribution is that significant. </p>
<p>Australia is supporting the air operations over Iraq and Syria. That involves 400 personnel. We have six F-18 Hornet aircraft, a refuelling aircraft and an early warning and control aircraft. </p>
<p>In addition, we have about 300 people training regular units of the Iraqi army as part of the US capacity-building mission as well as a couple of dozen advisers to the Iraqi counter-terrorism service. The Australian contribution proportional to our population is actually very significant.</p>
<p><strong>Why is this for so important for Australia? The Middle East is so far away, after all.</strong></p>
<p>It’s important because IS is an evil … I won’t even dignify it to call it an ideology. It’s a group that seeks to impose its world view on people through violence and intimidation. And it’s a terrorist group that wants to establish a religious tyranny. And that tyranny is contrary to the precepts of Islam itself. </p>
<p>The Australian government has been steadfast in the fact that a values-based society like Australia needs to demonstrate, in practical terms, to fight, to provide the defence materiel that is required.</p>
<p><strong>What co-operation is there between France and Australia in this area?</strong></p>
<p>The most tangible military asset that links Australia and France is a KC-30 aircraft that allows the French Rafale fighters to refuel. </p>
<p>But, just as importantly, we’re working very closely in counter-terrorism. We were already working closely after the Charlie Hebdo attack. Our prime minister came to Paris in April and, in discussion with French President Francois Hollande, they agreed that there would be even further intensification of those intelligence links. </p>
<p>And now, after November 13, there’s a recognition that there can’t be any gaps. We need to share, and we are sharing. And that’s one of the most important aspects of our bilateral relationship.</p>
<p><strong>You’ve experienced terrorism in Australia, sadly. So what protections and legislative measures were taken after, for example, the shooting in the café in Sydney?</strong></p>
<p>The attack in Sydney was in a café that any person in Sydney on that day could have been in – like in Paris. After the siege, a review was called for, and a number of measures were implemented. These included tightening immigration procedures, extra efforts to counter violent extremism in the community, and better ways of liaising with community groups. </p>
<p>But the most important has been at the legislative level. Legislation has been passed that will remove Australian citizenship from dual nationals who are involved in terrorist conduct overseas or who are convicted of terrorism in Australia. All the major parties agreed that this legislation was required. </p>
<p>The Australian parliament is now considering even further national security legislation which would extend the “control order” regime and simplify the procedures for monitoring – like in France.</p>
<p>We’re constantly reviewing our laws in this area. We constantly have to see if our legislation meets the demands of this situation. </p>
<p><strong>In France there is debate about the equilibrium between civil liberties – our principles – and the necessity of action to fight terrorism. Is Australia having the same debate?</strong></p>
<p>In any free society there’s going to be tension between civil liberties and the need to fight terrorism. The nature of this struggle makes it imperative that in healthy democracies there’s a debate, and the media play a critical role in that. </p>
<p>Australia and France are two of the great success stories of modern times, so such measures will always be subject to debate – as they should. But the first responsibility of government is to make sure that its people are safe. Your government and the Australian government are seeking extra powers to protect their citizens from further attacks. Debating the issue in public is the best guarantee of getting the balance right. </p>
<p>The state of emergency in France has, in my opinion, been successful. It has provided at a critical time the capacity for French authorities to act and we can see good results.</p>
<p><strong>You know well that the goal of Islamic terrorists is to create a divide in our multicultural society, particularly between Muslims and people of other religions. It’s clear that in France there exists Islamophobia. Is the same problem present in Australia?</strong></p>
<p>The best way I can answer this question is by telling you something that our prime minister has said, including to French Prime Minister Manuel Valls when they met here several weeks ago. He said that the Muslim communities in Australia and France are our most important asset in the fight against terrorists.</p>
<p>And, for all freedom-loving nations, the message is clear: we want to preserve the values that underpin our democratic societies; we have to work with each other to defend and protect those freedoms. There is nothing to be gained and a lot to be lost if we single out a particular group. </p>
<p>Australia sees itself as the most successful multicultural society in the world, and as such we value the contributions of each community to our national life. </p>
<p>Governments can’t win this battle alone. Community leaders and groups have a key role in denouncing extremism. They have a key role in teaching unity in diversity, and that’s how Australia acts. We have to have mutual respect instead of hatred. </p>
<p>And Islamic leaders, like everyone else, have an important and a vital role in the deradicalisation of possible extremists. We have to be careful in how we approach this discussion. In France there’s clearly an even greater sensitivity because of the size of your Muslim population. But we need to be clear that IS is trying to create a wedge in our societies, and we have to avoid falling into the trap of allowing ourselves to be separated. </p>
<p><strong>IS theorised this.</strong></p>
<p>Yes. Anyone who singles out a particular group, such as the Muslim community, plays into IS’s hands. It wants to create a religious tyranny, one that is contrary to what Islam itself is about. It’s a notion that’s rejected by the vast majority of the Muslim community in Australia. The vast majority celebrate being Australian and celebrate what our being Australian means and our way of life. </p>
<p>The issue of radicalisation itself, particularly among young people, is a very complex one. We’re all struggling to understand what it is that would make a 15-year-old radicalise in a matter of weeks.</p>
<p>We are committed to supporting communities that are on the forefront of prevention, and it will be absolutely essential that the Muslim communities in France and Australia continue to actively participate in promoting the values that underpin what it is to be a French citizen and what it is to be an Australian citizen.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/53613/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Arnaud Mercier ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>Arnaud Mercier spoke with Stephen Brady, Australia’s ambassador to France, about Australia’s role in the fight against terrorism, and his own country’s approach to creating a multicultural society.Arnaud Mercier, Professeur en Information-Communication à l’Institut Français de presse, Université Paris-Panthéon-AssasLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/517302015-12-08T19:11:51Z2015-12-08T19:11:51ZNazis, lies and spying private detectives: how thalidomide’s maker avoided justice<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/thalidomide-series">THALIDOMIDE SERIES</a>: In December 2013, a class action by Australian and New Zealand victims of the drug thalidomide reached an A$89 million settlement with Diageo, the company that now owns Distillers, which distributed the drug in the region.</em></p>
<p><em>Michael Magazanik was one of the lawyers involved in the case and wrote the book <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/silent-shock">Silent Shock</a> based on that work. As part of our series on thalidomide, he spoke to Ian Freckelton about his research for the case and his book.</em></p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Ian Freckelton</strong>: What inspired you to write your book, Silent Shock?</p>
<p><strong>Michael Magazanik</strong>: The book grew out of my involvement as a lawyer in the litigation for survivors of the notorious drug, thalidomide. We won a multi-million-dollar settlement for our lead plaintiff, Lyn Rowe, and then an A$89 million settlement for the class suit that followed. </p>
<p>After all that was done, I turned my attention to writing about what really is the untold history of thalidomide and the appalling behaviour of the companies concerned. But also the heroism of the survivors and their families, and some of the remarkable characters – many of them doctors – who were involved along the way.</p>
<p><strong>Ian Freckelton</strong>: Why did you call it Silent Shock?</p>
<p><strong>Michael Magazanik</strong>: Grünenthal, the German company that developed the drug and marketed it in the 1950s and early 1960s, didn’t apologise for thalidomide until 2012. Then Grünenthal’s chief executive came out and said the reason it’s taken us so long to apologise is what we did to you sent us into silent shock. </p>
<p>It only served to enrage thalidomiders around the world, who felt that they were the ones entitled to silent shock, not the company. So that was one basis for the book’s title.</p>
<p><strong>Ian Freckelton</strong>: You’ve referred to Grünenthal, and there’s also the company Distillers involved in the case. What’s the relationship between those two?</p>
<p><strong>Michael Magazanik</strong>: Grünenthal was the German company that developed the drug. It was born after World War II, during the hunt for synthetic drugs around the world. They knew it was new, they didn’t know anything else about it. They tested it on animals and they say they found it acted as an effective sedative and hypnotic.</p>
<p>Grünenthal entered into contracts with other companies in other parts of the world. For our purposes, the main one was Distillers, which was the leading whisky company in the world that had developed a pharmaceuticals offshoot. </p>
<p>So 50 years on, when we looked for defendants, the obvious ones were Grünenthal, the developer of the drug, and Distillers, because they distributed the drug in Australia.</p>
<p><strong>Ian Freckelton</strong>: There was a culture around this period of the late 1950s and early 1960s in relation to treating women for anxiety conditions and similar, wasn’t there?</p>
<p><strong>Michael Magazanik</strong>: There was and there was a general culture of respect for authority at the time too. Women accepted what their doctors told them and just took the pill. There wasn’t any consultation with your patient about what you were giving them, or the wisdom of it. Or whether this was a new drug or whether it was effective or what it was for.</p>
<p><strong>Ian Freckelton</strong>: In terms of people’s mistrust of big pharmaceuticals, has thalidomide had a big role to play?</p>
<p><strong>Michael Magazanik</strong>: Well, thalidomide really has. In the wake of the disaster, the pharmaceutical companies, especially Grünenthal and Distillers, really wanted to perpetuate the myth that not much had been known about the risks of medicating pregnant women. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Why ‘Silent Shock’?</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What they wanted people to believe was that nobody really knew there was a risk. That was the line that was disseminated: by the standards of the time, those pharmaceutical companies could have done nothing to avoid the disaster.</p>
<p>We knew this was going to act as a barrier to successfully litigating. So we had to dig down into the medical journal articles that were around at the time, talk to early doctors about what they knew, and look at teaching materials from universities to find out what was known. And it was really clear that what was known at the time was pretty sophisticated.</p>
<p><strong>Ian Freckelton</strong>: What did the manufacturers know about the risks of the drug? </p>
<p><strong>Michael Magazanik</strong>: When thalidomide entered the marketplace, the first side effect that the drug companies became aware of was nerve damage, or peripheral neuritis. Sometimes, it was a really agonising torment; people ended up in psychiatric institutions as a result of thalidomide-related peripheral neuritis. </p>
<p>Grünenthal ended up buried under an avalanche of these reports. So I went to an archive in Germany with translators and we looked at this material, and it was unbelievable. The company’s response to the reports of nerve damage had to be seen to be believed. </p>
<p>They denied them, they minimised them, they pressured editors of medical journals not to publish critical articles, they hired private detectives to spy on doctors, they got people to pose as patients and go into doctors’ offices. It felt like reading a Hollywood script.</p>
<p>Grünenthal was promoting the drug as absolutely super safe and were telling doctors and anyone who asked that it was safe to use in pregnancy, yet at the same time they knew that it was causing a massive amount of nerve damage. They knew they’d not tested the drug on a single pregnant animal and they knew they’d never followed up on a single pregnant woman who’d taken the drug to check the results. To us it was a clear picture of outrageous culpability.</p>
<p><strong>Ian Freckelton</strong>: What do you think enabled the senior executives to maintain that zeal to make profit in spite of the fact that they were on notice that it could be having incredibly detrimental effects on consumers? </p>
<p><strong>Michael Magazanik</strong>: I have wrestled with that. It’s not a question for lawyers or doctors. It’s imponderable, kind of unknowable.</p>
<p><strong>Ian Freckelton</strong>: And what about the fundamental breach of ethics by these companies? There are all sorts of assertions that other pharmaceutical companies have behaved similarly. </p>
<p><strong>Michael Magazanik</strong>: Grunenthal emerged in the mid-to-late 1940s. The man in charge of thalidomide at Grünenthal had been a Nazi doctor in the German army, had done experiments in occupied Poland during the war, had been charged, made it to Germany, and was employed at Grünenthal. </p>
<p>If you take a doctor with a dubious wartime history, a forceful personality, put him in charge of a pharmaceutical lab and incentivise him to sell more and more of the drug, then I think that’s part of the way to understand why Grünenthal behaved the way it did.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">How thalidomide became the ‘morning sickness drug’</span></figcaption>
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<p>And then in the 1970s - this is what I still find hard to believe - Grünenthal was so brazen that they appointed as the chairman of their board a man who had been convicted and jailed for mass murder at Auschwitz – Otto Ambros. </p>
<p>Now, there were lots of Nazis at the end of World War II, of course, and those people had to find jobs - but there weren’t many convicted mass murderers. </p>
<p>For Grünenthal to provide a home to a convicted mass murderer in the 1970s is astonishing. And for me, it’s the prism through which to view the Grünenthal of the period. The Grünenthal of the period when thalidomide was on the market behaved in ways you would hope aren’t quite replicated today. It would astonish me, to be honest, if they were.</p>
<p><strong>Ian Freckelton</strong>: Grünenthal were prosecuted in Germany. When did that take place and tell us about the outcome?</p>
<p><strong>Michael Magazanik</strong>: Thalidomide was pulled from the market at the end of 1961. It had gone on sale in Germany in 1957 and it really wasn’t until early 1961 that this surge in malformations was even identified. And there was trouble. </p>
<p>There were thousands of malformed infants in Germany and around the world. There were many thousands of people with nerve damage as a result of the drug. Their licensees were furious with them. The police were raiding their headquarters looking for documents. </p>
<p>But it wasn’t until 1968 that the trial started. It was the biggest trial in Germany since the war crimes trials and Grünenthal employed the most expensive and efficient lawyers around. The prosecution was severely over-matched. </p>
<p>The first thing the prosecution tried to do was establish that thalidomide caused malformations – a bit like cigarettes cause cancer. By that stage, the drug had been withdrawn all over the world and thalidomide’s teratogenicity (tendency to cause congential malformations) was just a fact. Yet Grünenthal found people to come along to court and say that there was no proof, you couldn’t show the nexus, the biological mechanism was unknown, and they fought and fought and fought.</p>
<p>In the end, there was a settlement. The heat went out of the criminal prosecution and out of all of that Grünenthal also got immunity from suit in Germany for ever after. For Grünenthal, it was really a legal triumph. Through a very determined and ruthless and efficient legal effort, they managed to escape. </p>
<p>In our litigation, I always felt it had entered Grünenthal’s DNA that they were just not legally responsible for the deformities, malformations and deaths as a result of thalidomide because they felt they had faced a trial in Germany and there had been no conviction. And their belief in this idea that they were innocent victims of thalidomide is profound.</p>
<p><strong>Ian Freckelton</strong>: Let’s come to Australia then. Was there any litigation before the litigation brought by Slater and Gordon?</p>
<p><strong>Michael Magazanik</strong>: There was some litigation in the 1970s for survivors of the drug. It was not a full-scale litigation. At the time, there were 36 known Australian victims of the drug and so Distillers settled with 36 or 37 Australians. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The known risks of medicating pregnant women.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>They were pretty paltry settlements. People with terribly profound injuries got one-off payments that were never going to be enough to provide them with care.</p>
<p>By the time that I became involved, most of those survivors had long run out of money and were reliant on their own endeavours. Some of them had established successful careers, others were reliant on welfare. But it was clear that what had been done for them in the 1970s was nowhere near enough.</p>
<p><strong>Ian Freckelton</strong>: There’s a real spectrum of thalidomide effects, isn’t there? It’s not just people with no arms and legs.</p>
<p><strong>Michael Magazanik</strong>: That’s right. No arms and legs is probably relatively unusual. There’s this idea that took hold in the 1970s that they had to be perfectly bilateral, so you couldn’t have a full arm on one side and half an arm on the other side because any injuries as a result of thalidomide had to be bilateral. </p>
<p>There were all these very strict, exclusionary criteria, which had the effect of excluding some people who were clearly thalidomiders.</p>
<p>And the Rowe family, for example, just never came forward. Wendy Rowe was given Distaval early in pregnancy by her doctor and Lyn was born without arms and legs. She clearly had a thalidomide injury, but when Wendy talked to the doctor in the aftermath of Lyn’s birth some months later, the doctor said no, this couldn’t have been thalidomide, it was a virus you had during pregnancy.</p>
<p><strong>Ian Freckelton</strong>: So she wasn’t one of the 36 or 37?</p>
<p><strong>Michael Magazanik</strong>: She was not. She was entirely uncompensated. Our class action was for people who had never received a cent.</p>
<p><strong>Ian Freckelton</strong>: And how did Lyn Rowe become the lead plaintiff?</p>
<p><strong>Michael Magazanik</strong>: We had good evidence for exposure. Wendy had good memories of having been given the drug. Other members of the family remembered her being prescribed the drug. One of them remembered the name of the drug. </p>
<p>We found the doctor who delivered her, we found the pharmacist who dispensed drugs to the family at the time. We pieced together a coherent story. So we had good exposure evidence, which is no small thing 50 years after the event.</p>
<p><strong>Ian Freckelton</strong>: Who were the technical defendants?</p>
<p><strong>Michael Magazanik</strong>: Grünenthal and two Distillers companies, who are now subsidiaries of Diageo. After a lot of talking, we settled this claim for full value and Diageo picked up the tab. In a sense, Grünenthal is lucky they have a responsible co-defendant in Australia. </p>
<p>In the book, I do speculate about why Diageo settled. I think the company is motivated by doing the right thing in relation to thalidomiders. I think you can draw a sharp distinction between them and Grünenthal. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Thalidomide’s links to Nazi Germany.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Grünenthal is going to defend these things to the bitter end. It offers insulting apologies and recently refused to contribute to the German fund for compensating thalidomiders there.</p>
<p>I think that Grünenthal behaves very poorly in relation to thalidomiders. For Diageo, a very rich company with a multi-billion-dollar income, settling Lyn’s claim just made sense on a whole bunch of levels.</p>
<p><strong>Ian Freckelton</strong>: The litigation in Australia is completed but there has been a further investigation in Germany, has there not?</p>
<p><strong>Michael Magazanik</strong>: There’s an investigation into the collapse of the criminal trial in 1970. The English thalidomiders, a very powerful group, very active lobbying group, and the German thalidomiders too are keen to get to the bottom of how the trial collapsed and how Grunenthal ended up getting immunity from suit in Germany. </p>
<p>There are allegations there were secret meetings between Grunenthal and the German government at which the deal was secretly stitched up in the absence of any victims and so on. </p>
<p>I’m personally pessimistic about whether much will flow from it but the hope is, I think, that they will find there was a stitch-up. And that somehow Grunenthal will be pressured to pay compensation to people overseas and extra compensation to German thalidomiders. </p>
<p>I think that Grunenthal ought to pay more to German thalidomiders and to people overseas. It was Grunenthal’s drug. Wendy Rowe swallowed the drug that was made at Grunenthal’s headquarters in Germany. Grunenthal made the drug there, exported it to the UK, packaged the raw powder into pills and sent it to Australia. Any Australian who took thalidomide was taking a German-made product. </p>
<p><strong>Ian Freckelton</strong>: And what’s happened to similar claims in overseas countries?</p>
<p><strong>Michael Magazanik</strong>: Right now, there is litigation on foot in the US and the UK. The US litigation has been bogged down for some time. That’s against a couple of licensees, one of whom investigated the drug and trialled it a little bit in America and didn’t proceed to market. And another one who were dead keen on proceeding to market but whom the FDA wouldn’t allow to. </p>
<p>The UK is moving along very slowly and it has, like Australia, the same two defendants – Diageo or its subsidiaries and Grunenthal. And that’s moving along slowly, too. </p>
<p>The Australian litigation ended up in a settlement. So there’s no judgment, there’s no public exposure of the evidence, there’s no judicial pronouncements on the strength or otherwise of claim and counterclaim. But what it does is give plaintiffs elsewhere hope that it’s possible. That you can mount a strong claim, you can marshal an argument and you can put forward such a claim that you force a settlement. </p>
<p>The other place there’s been litigation is in Spain. Actually, the Spanish thalidomiders won a case against Grunenthal the year before last, got a judgment that Grunenthal had to pay limited compensation to a limited number of Spanish thalidomiders, but lost on appeal. Grunenthal appealed, naturally, and won on appeal. </p>
<p>We had the Spanish decision translated, it’s still a little hard to understand, but it seems they won on appeal mostly on the basis of statute of limitations – that it was all just too long ago and a fair hearing wasn’t possible. </p>
<p><strong>Ian Freckelton</strong>: Michael, thank you. Silent Shock is a riveting read, sobering, confronting, distressing. But very very accessible. Thank you for talking to us. </p>
<p><strong>Michael Magazanik</strong>: Thank you.</p>
<p><em>Stay tuned for other instalments in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/thalidomide">thalidomide series</a> this week.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/51730/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ian Freckelton have received ARC grants relating to projects on expert evidence.</span></em></p>Journalist-turned-lawyer Michael Magazanik worked on recent Australian thalidomide lawsuits. As part of our series on the drug, he spoke to Ian Freckelton about the book he wrote, based on the case.Ian Freckelton AO QC, Professorial Fellow in Law and Psychiatry, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/483222015-12-07T19:17:31Z2015-12-07T19:17:31ZIn Conversation with journalist, author and thalidomide campaigner, Harold Evans<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104595/original/image-20151207-22683-15ou4h4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C166%2C2060%2C2060&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Led a major campaign in the 1970s.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/shankbone/4608101994/">David Shankbone/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/thalidomide-series">THALIDOMIDE SERIES</a>: Sir Harold Evans, editor of Britain’s Sunday Times during the 1960s and 70s, led a major campaign to support of the victims of thalidomide. Here he talks to Richard Sambrook, professor of Journalism at Cardiff University, about the paper’s moral campaign against thalidomide’s manufacturers, the fight for political validation and the rise of investigative journalism</em>. </p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Richard Sambrook:</strong> When did you first hear about thalidomide and the problems it was causing? </p>
<p><strong>Harold Evans:</strong> I was editor of <a href="http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/">The Northern Echo</a> in 1961/1962 in Darlington [Northeast England] and I saw some photographs, in the Observer, of thalidomide babies who were at Chailey hospital, without legs [or] arms. I was touched, and so I arranged to publish some of those photographs in The Northern Echo. </p>
<p>To my astonishment, it was regarded as a very bad thing: a number of readers complained, “we don’t want to see these terrible sights.” I was very shaken by that, because I thought it would be regarded as bringing attention to their difficulties. </p>
<p>At that time, of course, I had no idea how shocking this scandal was. How corrupt everything was. How the press had been totally, hopelessly supine. How the politicians had lied. How the law was totally ineffective. At that time, when I put those photographs in, I had no idea of that. </p>
<p>When I got to be the editor of The Sunday Times, by one of those coincidences, a very good reporter called John Fielding told me he had access, he thought, to some documents by Distillers, the company that manufactured these drugs, on the license from the German company called Chemie-Grünenthal. </p>
<p>I arranged to see the expert witness who had these documents on disclosure. And they revealed how the marketing campaign to sell thalidomide to pregnant women as a sedative was a completely dishonest and deceitful campaign, altering results and medical reports and the like. </p>
<p>So, having the planning documents – a lot of them, eventually, and also having documents from Sweden where similar cases were pending – I appointed <a href="http://phillipknightley.com/about/">Phillip Knightley</a> to go through the German documents [and] get them translated. It was completely appalling – and it was only the beginning. </p>
<p>I was mainly concerned, then, about when the cases would be settled, and were no longer sub-judice, so we could actually say “look here, this wasn’t properly investigated”. </p>
<p>The assumption at the time was that there would be no trial, because it would be [so difficult for the] families trying to bring these children without legs and arms, or maybe with arms, or partly arms, or internal injuries; this whole range of problems. </p>
<p>And why, you might ask, why were they in this situation of having to go to court to take compensation for a drug which had been prescribed on the national health service, and passed as safe by the government medical advisory committee? </p>
<p>Why didn’t the government:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Have an inquiry, as we do after a train crash, or an air crash? i.e. What are the facts here? How did this drug get to be sold as safe for pregnant women when it wasn’t? </p></li>
<li><p>If it was still sold, who did it, and why? </p></li>
<li><p>How did it get past all the supposed barriers to poisoning people?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>And of course, the first and most appalling thing of all, is that <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/iainmartin/2010/01/14/the-thalidomide-scandal-and-the-forgotten-role-of-enoch-powell/">Mr Enoch Powell</a>, the minister of health at the time, refused point-blank to have a public inquiry. Which is amazing. It’s like saying we’ve had an air crash, but we’re not going to have a public inquiry. Why not?</p>
<p>He said, his advisers said, and every single newspaper – The Economist, The Guardian, The Times, The Telegraph – all said the same thing: this isn’t a scandal. This is one of those accidents. Nobody knew at the time – they chorused – that a pharmaceutical could cross the placental barrier and reach the fetus. So nobody’s at fault.</p>
<p>This lie – this ignorant piece of bullshit – was bought by every newspaper. And how, you might ask, did that come about? Why wasn’t anybody smart enough or wise enough to just check what was happening at that time around the world, so far as the knowledge of a pharmaceutical being able to pass the placenta was known? It was: various drug companies – in Britain, the ICI, for instance – already knew this, and had already taken steps to make sure various chemicals were tested for toxicity – <a href="http://www.chw.org/medical-care/genetics-and-genomics-program/medical-genetics/teratogens/">teratogenic</a> effects in the case of thalidomide. </p>
<p>So we now have a situation in which the government, having sponsored a drug; the press, supposed to be the watchdog; parliament, supposed to be the watchdog – all of them were utterly useless. </p>
<p>So, I thought this was an agent for us to spring out of our den. </p>
<p><strong>Richard Sambrook:</strong> At what point did you decide to really get into campaigning mode?</p>
<p><strong>Harold Evans:</strong> Once the minister for health, Enoch Powell, had told them there was to be no public inquiry, the families struggling to bring up these children had no recourse except to mount a legal campaign. They didn’t have the means, these several hundred families, to take on a giant corporation legally; they couldn’t afford it. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104600/original/image-20151207-22680-tj79tm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104600/original/image-20151207-22680-tj79tm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104600/original/image-20151207-22680-tj79tm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104600/original/image-20151207-22680-tj79tm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104600/original/image-20151207-22680-tj79tm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104600/original/image-20151207-22680-tj79tm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104600/original/image-20151207-22680-tj79tm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104600/original/image-20151207-22680-tj79tm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Enoch Powell, 1912-1988.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Enoch_Powell_4_Allan_Warren.jpg">Allan warren</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The legal aid given by the government was originally very restricted. And the next step was that the lawyers failed to see the scientific case that there had been negligence and unscrupulous marketing. The lawyers acting on behalf of the families were prepared to settle the case out of court, on sums that they could agree with the drug companies, which would then be sanctified by a judge. This took a long time. </p>
<p>In the meantime, we got more and more engrossed by what we were discovering. What happened was that the German trial was about to begin, and we had the German documents. We were advised by a renowned QC that we could, under no circumstances, publish anything about the German trial, because it would prejudice the British courts against the British distributors of the drugs. </p>
<p>When my brilliant legal advisor, James Evans, and I walked away from this meeting in the counsel’s chambers, I said: “We can’t tolerate this, James, we can’t be put in this position. We can’t report the German trial when we already know from the German documents that there’s a scandal.” So he got a second opinion from Mr Peter Bristow (later a judge) which was somewhat more relaxed.</p>
<p>So I decided to go ahead. And Godfrey Hodgson wrote a major report – the front page of the Review section in the Sunday Times – which set out how the drug company had just ploughed ahead and misled and deceived people. </p>
<p><strong>Richard Sambrook:</strong> I read in your autobiography that you said it’s no use publishing the truth once, it has to be a long-running campaign. Just explain your thinking behind that.</p>
<p><strong>Harold Evans:</strong> The German criminal trial hadn’t begun, and thanks to the legal advice of James Evans and the work [at The Sunday Times] of Godfrey Hodgson and Phillip Knightley, I thought the lawyers for the families would then go to the Distillers company and say “look, we’ve got a fantastic case here, let’s have a generous settlement”. </p>
<p>No, they didn’t. They were prepared to settle, still, on a completely inadequate sum, while the parents were struggling with these children. It was the most appalling thing. </p>
<p>When the judge approved of this derisory settlement, without taking into account any actuarial evidence, Nicholas Harman, who had joined us from The Economist, wrote a piece which I published on the Sunday Times opinion page: “What Price a Pound of Flesh”. As I was about to sign off on it, the duty lawyer said “you can’t do that, it’s contempt of court!” We’d already taken the chance with the German report and we went ahead with the opinion piece. </p>
<p>But it’s no use publishing the truth once. The news of this first settlement was a sensation to several hundred families who hadn’t been joined in the first cases. Remember, nobody knew just how many mothers had been affected. Many families hadn’t realised that their children’s disabilities were a result of a defective pharmaceutical. But now the statute of limitations laid it down that after three years claimants lost the right to sue. When the parents petitioned to sue, there were court hearings where lawyers said, among much else, there hadn’t been any settlements anywhere.</p>
<p>David Mason, the art dealer [and thalidomide parent activist], was very enterprising. He flew to the United States and found that a case had been settled. This impressed Judge Denning, Master of the Rolls, who gave approval for the suits. So that was good work by David Mason.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104604/original/image-20151207-22706-jxjb2t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104604/original/image-20151207-22706-jxjb2t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104604/original/image-20151207-22706-jxjb2t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104604/original/image-20151207-22706-jxjb2t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104604/original/image-20151207-22706-jxjb2t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104604/original/image-20151207-22706-jxjb2t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104604/original/image-20151207-22706-jxjb2t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Many more parents came forward, having realised their child’s disabilities were likely to be caused by thalidomide.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pack_of_Thalidomide_tablets_c.1960.JPG">Stephencdickson</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But now Distillers were faced with nearly four hundred claims. They had an answer to that. Their proposed settlement said, if any one parent objects, nobody gets anything. Another piece of outrageous banditry. The law officers of the crown then got a court verdict that deprived Mason and four other litigants from having any say. They were deprived of their rights as mothers and fathers. The Daily Mail ran a great front page: SCANDAL. Denning soon stopped that nonsense.</p>
<p>But the all-or-none blackmail was just one atrocity. Now Distillers were offering even less – actually, half – of what the first group had been offered. Phillip Knightley came into my office and said: “we can’t stand this”. I said: “no we can’t!” I called up James Evans, the lawyer in our company, and I said, “James, I’m going to publish. I cannot sit by and see this scandal. I don’t care what happens.” And he said, “hang on a minute, let me think.” </p>
<p>The result of this talk was that he came up with a brilliant scheme. He said, “let us argue the moral case here, and not get into the legal case, so that we’re not going to be accused of contempt of court.” </p>
<p><strong>Richard Sambrook:</strong> So you’d take moral liability, not legal liability?</p>
<p><strong>Harold Evans:</strong> That’s what we’re saying, exactly right. </p>
<p>So with Bruce Page, Elaine Potter, Knightley, and also Marjorie Wallace, we had a strong team. Bruce Page had written a long memorandum to me on how inadequate the settlements were, in the professional judgment of another hero in this saga – an actuary John Prevett, whose calculations showed that they were asked to settle for less than half of what they ought to get for a lifetime of pain and suffering, and care, and so on.</p>
<p>That’s the famous moment. In September 1972, having waited basically for eight years, I published this huge splash in the Sunday Times, saying: children on our conscience – we cannot let this continue. There’s a moral obligation on the company, Distillers, and a moral obligation on the government to make a settlement which is satisfactory. At least, not one which is punitive, and I still believe there should be a public inquiry into how this scandal occurred. </p>
<p><strong>Richard Sambrook:</strong> But you were pulled into a parallel campaign really, weren’t you – because you had to continue the campaign over thalidomide on behalf of the victims, but you’re also pulled into a campaign on free speech and the way in which the contempt laws were being used as well, which went all the way to Europe, didn’t it?</p>
<p><strong>Harold Evans:</strong> Exactly right, that’s a very good point. When the campaign began, it began as a protest on behalf of the thalidomide children. And of course, accompanying that was a protest about the fact that the press had not been able to expose the scandal because of the restrictive press laws in Britain, where the law of contempt basically came into operation much earlier than in other countries, if at all. </p>
<p>Why? Because the Daily Mail front page scandal led to them getting a letter from the Attorney General. They backed off and wouldn’t touch thalidomide anymore. Nobody in the press would pick up the amazing scandal about this compensation that we’d now published – nobody. The only single thing that I got into the public eye, apart from our own publication, was a short interview on the BBC, with a lawyer standing by to make sure I didn’t say anything outrageous. So it went on – week, after week. Dead silence. </p>
<p>However, Jack <a href="an%20old%20friend%20of%20mine">Ashley</a> called me up, just before he was appointed cabinet minister. He came over to my office and met the team, and said, “I’m going to stop working in my office; I’m going to spend my time trying to get these cases ventilated.” Alf Morris, the Minister for the Disabled, an old school pal of mine, also took the same attitude: that they must bring it to the floor of parliament, and get national attention and national action, and this could not be tolerated. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104603/original/image-20151207-22680-n37kvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104603/original/image-20151207-22680-n37kvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104603/original/image-20151207-22680-n37kvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104603/original/image-20151207-22680-n37kvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104603/original/image-20151207-22680-n37kvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104603/original/image-20151207-22680-n37kvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104603/original/image-20151207-22680-n37kvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Edward Heath, 1916-2005.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Edward_Heath_11_Allan_Warren.jpg">Allan Warren</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So what happened? Well, [Ashley and Morris] tried to get it discussed in Parliament and were ruled out of order. Mr Edward Heath, the Prime Minister, said: this is not a matter for the parliament, this is a matter for the courts. After all these years, we’ve documented this scandal, we’ve exposed it, but we still cannot get it ventilated in Parliament. Enoch Powell had started this appalling attitude.</p>
<p>Fortunately, there was a moment – a real key moment in the whole thalidomide campaign, if there is any one single moment – when I published the first article on the financial scandal. I said at the foot of the article, on the advice of James Evans, a future article will examine more of the scandal (it didn’t say when it would be published). </p>
<p>The Attorney General got alarmed at what we might say in a future article, and sent me a letter saying I was liable to be summoned for contempt of court for what I’d already published, but it would be examined when he got back from Europe. About ten days later, he got back from Europe, and I got one of those foiled, embossed envelopes from the Attorney General. He said, “in the circumstances, I’ve decided not to proceed against you, for this first article on the moral campaign – but if you go any further….”</p>
<p>The letter was really vindication on the moral campaign. So I called Jack, and I’d just got him in time. That very day he was going to see the speaker, former Tory minister Selwyn Lloyd, to argue the case for the legitimacy of a Commons debate. I shouted down the phone, which his wife lip-read to him: “Jack, the Attorney General is not going to proceed against me on the first article on the moral grounds. You can argue this with the speaker.” </p>
<p>So Jack went to the Speaker, and pointed out that the Attorney General was not proceeding against Harold Evans on the first moral article. </p>
<p>And Jack got me to see Harold Wilson. Harold Wilson said to Jack Ashley and Alf Morris and me: I’m going to give you the opposition time if you can get permission to raise it from the speaker. And overnight, Selwyn Lloyd, the Speaker, said Ashley and Morris could bring the motion, an early day motion, before the house of commons. </p>
<p>That was a fantastic breakthrough. Because as soon as Jack Ashley got up in the commons and made his speech, followed by Alf, the floodgates were opened. And MPs of all parties joined in. </p>
<p><strong>Richard Sambrook:</strong> So getting that political validation really transformed the position of the campaign?</p>
<p><strong>Harold Evans:</strong> Indeed. I said to the team: “I want the story every week now, on the front page, on thalidomide.” And they said: “But we can’t keep it going,” and I said: “yes we can!” We’ll keep it going for a year, on what’s happening to these 400 children, and then the next year we’ll say what’s happened in the year since. We’ve got to continue this until the very end of time. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104605/original/image-20151207-22689-1ieqa0z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104605/original/image-20151207-22689-1ieqa0z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=762&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104605/original/image-20151207-22689-1ieqa0z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=762&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104605/original/image-20151207-22689-1ieqa0z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=762&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104605/original/image-20151207-22689-1ieqa0z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=957&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104605/original/image-20151207-22689-1ieqa0z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=957&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104605/original/image-20151207-22689-1ieqa0z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=957&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Terry Wiles (right) is one of the many thousands of children born with phocomelia due to thalidomide.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Len-terry-wiles.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Marjorie Wallace had done such fantastic work by going around and meeting the families, and getting to know them. Some of the most moving stories, on how these families were coping, and so on. Distilers gave in. A group of shareholders had begun to agitate; sales were affected; and Ron Peet of the Legal and General Insurance company made a big difference saying that it made commercial as well as moral sense to achieve a decent settlement. So victory on the compensation after some four months.</p>
<p>Bruce Page then had initiated another stroke of very brilliant investigative reporting. He asked Elaine Potter to discover what other drug companies were doing about fetal testing at the time when Distillers was doing none, at the time Grünenthal was doing none. So off she went, around the United States, and Britain, and of course came back with conclusive evidence that Distillers had been ignorant about what scientific progress had been made, and that it was standard to test drugs for teratogenic effects. So we now have this other element of the story, and so we began to write that. </p>
<p>We [also] wanted to expose the truth in a full article. When we announced we were going to now go into everything anew, having started the moral campaign, we were now going to go into the legalities of things as well. The Attorney General took me to court. He won a verdict against us. The House of Lords ruled that the article must be suppressed. The chief law officer had a very curious argument. He said “we have decided it is alright for the Sunday Times to have conducted the moral campaign of opinion. But it is not permissible to publish the facts on which the campaign is based!”</p>
<p>I decided to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, with the leadership of James Evans, Anthony Whitaker and Anthony Lester. So we flew in bumpy planes to Strasbourg, and eventually, we won the verdict the government had breached Article 10 of the Human Rights Convention. It meant the law had to change in favour of the free press. Hooray! </p>
<p>But we still couldn’t publish the full and most damning article of all on how reckless the German company and its British licensee had been. It was now banned. In response to Distillers’ argument that we had broken their “confidence”, Mr Justice Talbot said that the law of Confidence meant that a breach of the company’s confidentiality could be justified only on grounds of national security. </p>
<p>Since that time, the British government has formally apologised. The fortunes of many of the victims have mostly been transformed in Canada, after a huge and brilliant campaign by <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/">The Globe and Mail</a>, inspired by <a href="http://raynesmccarty.com/about-us/firm-history/">Mr Stephen Raynes</a>, a lawyer from Philadelphia, who succeeded in getting compensation in Canada increased to give the 100 or so victims a chance of a decent living. That was a far-sighted decision by the Canadian government. How did Stephen Raynes get into the story? His father won a case in the United States. </p>
<p>But the originating German manufacturer Grünenthal is resisting paying any compensation to Spanish victims. And yet, the outstanding scandal that remains is that Chemie Grünenthal, the company which created the disaster, will not admit its technical fault or legal liability at all, and keeps saying “we did all the standard tests at the time.” It’s completely untrue! The standard tests at the time by reputable companies included tests for toxicity in the womb. </p>
<p><strong>Richard Sambrook:</strong> Looking back over this, the whole campaign and investigation, you did an extraordinary thing in 1972 in managing to get through the legal hurdles and really force focus onto this, and had real tangible outcomes for obviously the victims and for principals around the free press and around the drug companies. It’s not over, as you said. But it was an extraordinary investigation, and one of many that your Insight team led at that time. </p>
<p>Do you think, looking at journalism today, that that kind of campaign could be run today, given the very different economic circumstances and commercial pressures around newspapers and so on? You must have felt the commercial pressure at that time as well, which presumably you had to resist.</p>
<p><strong>Harold Evans:</strong> That’s a good point, Richard. I told my chairman Denis Hamilton that I was going to go ahead with this exposé of the scandal. I said: “we’re taking a risk,” and he was supportive. </p>
<p>As I was about to sign off on the articles, I got a call from the advertising director, Donald Barrett. He said: “Harry, I hear you’re going to publish an attack on Distillers. I want you to know it’s our largest single advertiser.” He said: “I know it won’t stop you, and it shouldn’t.” I thought that was really quite interesting. </p>
<p>The atmosphere in the company encouraged a relentless search for the truth. It was due to Lord Thomson, and the Thomson family, who afforded their editors the right – and duty – to make professional judgments on public affairs. The company has to this day maintained this faith and trust in the integrity of good journalism. It is an act of trust to give the editor the freedom and the editors the responsibility to honour it. Yes, we took large risks, and yes, the owners and management tolerate the fact that investigation might be expensive. We were commercially successful, which helps. </p>
<p>But the important thing is that we couldn’t do this kind of investigation unless the [company was] … a kind of family, with the editors in the middle. First of all, you have the ownership recognising the professional skills, if you like, of the editor, and trusting his judgement, and secondly, the editor [must have] the skills and dedication of really skillful people. I mean, in all my career, I’ve not come across a brighter bunch of people. </p>
<p><strong>Richard Sambrook:</strong> And that applies to the lawyers as much as to the journalists, of course.</p>
<p><strong>Harold Evans:</strong> The journalists and lawyer were prepared to take on any subject: get to the bottom of molecular biology, get to the bottom of civil engineering. They weren’t just one-off guys, they were capable of doing any kind of [work]. </p>
<p>I was very, very lucky. Partly because my predecessor Denis Hamilton had a lot of really smart people, and encouraged them. I was able to recruit some people also, and [had] James Evans’ legal advice and Anthony Whitaker and my poor secretary Jill Thomas, who I had typing 365 individual letters overnight. That kind of thing couldn’t have been done without that wonderfully inspiring collection of people working together. </p>
<p><strong>Richard Sambrook:</strong> Absolutely. When you look back, do you think there’s anything in hindsight you would have done differently, or do you think you fought the battles that had to be fought in the way that was available to you?</p>
<p><strong>Harold Evans:</strong> Looking back, I think I could have taken the risk earlier than I did. I think I could have taken the risk maybe six months or a year earlier. But the circumstances were very pernicious at the time, because I’d been endlessly attacked. </p>
<p>And don’t forget, while all this was going on, the world was blowing up! New terror; this that and the other; war in the Middle East. So I kind of excused myself, that I was running a world newspaper, with the world collapsing around us. So it was to be expected, perhaps, that I couldn’t have done it earlier. </p>
<p><strong>Richard Sambrook:</strong> Well, very few newspapers and very few editors have the kind of impact that the thalidomide campaign had, and you as an editor – of the Sunday Times in particular, but elsewhere as well – have had.</p>
<p><strong>Harold Evans:</strong> Any worthwhile editor, given one, the onus and two, the staff that I had, would have done what I did. </p>
<p>At least, I think so!</p>
<p><strong>Richard Sambrook:</strong> Well, I hope so – but I do think that you in particular, and the paper that you ran at that time, was exceptional. And it’s been a great pleasure to hear your recollection of it, and to talk to you about it. Thank you very much indeed. </p>
<p><strong>Harold Evans:</strong> OK Richard, thank you. </p>
<p><em>Stay tuned for other instalments in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/thalidomide">thalidomide series</a> this week.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/48322/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Sambrook does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Sir Harold Evans talks to Richard Sambrook about The Sunday Times’ moral campaign against thalidomide’s manufacturers, the fight for political validation and the rise of investigative journalism.Richard Sambrook, Professor of Journalism, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/515082015-12-06T17:21:58Z2015-12-06T17:21:58ZMary Robinson: climate change ‘very likely’ to increase radicalisation<p>Former Irish president Mary Robinson is one of the world’s leading voices on climate justice. Appearing at the UN climate summit in Paris, Robinson has argued for warming to be <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/nov/30/major-powers-pledge-20bn-for-green-energy-research">kept within 1.5°C</a>, to protect the nations most at risk from the effects climate change. She has also <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/01/women-victims-climate-change-keys-climate-action?CMP=share_btn_tw">campaigned for women</a> to be front and centre in the negotiations, citing their increased vulnerability in a warming world.</p>
<p>Robinson was President of Ireland from 1990-97, after which she was appointed United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. She has been a UN Special Envoy for Climate Change since 2014. She is president of the <a href="http://www.mrfcj.org/">Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice</a>, and a member of <a href="http://theelders.org/about">The Elders</a>, a group of world leaders founded by Nelson Mandela which lobbies on peace initiatives and human rights.</p>
<p>Six of The Conversation’s top experts from around the world put their questions to Robinson about climate justice, women’s rights and the progress being made in Paris. Her answers reveal optimism about the negotiations, a concern about the link between radicalisation and climate change and a challenge to the world’s biggest fossil fuel emitters.</p>
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<p><strong>Yves Petit, Université de Lorraine:</strong> <em>What do you think the risk is of climate change aggravating conflicts between nation states?</em></p>
<p>I do not think this is just a risk. I feel it is already a reality. Climate change is a threat multiplier – it exacerbates poverty and water scarcity, it compounds food and nutrition insecurity and it makes it even harder for poor households to secure their rights. </p>
<p>During the opening day of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/paris-2015">COP21 climate talks</a>, I was particularly taken by <a href="http://unfccc6.meta-fusion.com/cop21/events/2015-11-30-14-45-leaders-event/his-excellency-mr-enele-sosene-sopoaga-prime-minister-of-tuvalu">the words spoken by Enele Sopoaga</a>, the prime minister of Tuvalu, in offering his condolences to the people of France on the terrorist attacks of November 13. He said that the global community must target the root causes of these barbaric attacks, including “the lack of opportunity to do good”. People without such opportunity are easily drawn to ideologies that they see as striking out against the system that limits their prospects of living full lives. </p>
<p>In a world where climate change exacerbates the stresses of daily life on people already disenfranchised by poverty or social standing, radicalisation is very likely. We are seeing more and more evidence emerging of the links between conflict and climate change. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-hastened-the-syrian-war/">recurrent drought in Syria</a> towards the end of the last decade, which destroyed harvests and forced rural communities to migrate to the urban areas, is now seen as a key aggravating factor in the lead-up to the civil war that has eviscerated the country. Research on other conflicts seems to indicate that higher temperatures and extreme precipitation correlate with <a href="http://web.stanford.edu/%7Emburke/papers/Hsiang%20and%20Burke%202013.pdf">greater incidence of conflict</a>.</p>
<p>We are now seeing world leaders recognise the security threat posed by climate change. US president Barack Obama has said that climate action is a <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/12/01/us-climatechange-summit-obama-resources-idUSKBN0TK4LW20151201">security imperative</a> and UK prime minister David Cameron has described it as an <a href="http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/opinion/2371770/david-cameron-climate-change-is-one-of-the-most-serious-threats-facing-our-world">issue of national security</a>. </p>
<p>I appreciate this message may be effective in a world so sensitised to security issues as ours is today. However, it saddens me that action would be motivated by the worst aspects of human nature, rather than the best – immediate climate action will help save the people and cultures of small island states like Tuvalu. Surely this should be motivation enough.</p>
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<p><strong>Cathy Alexander, University of Melbourne</strong>: <em>It seems that it’s people on lower incomes with fewer resources who have the most to lose from climate change, while they have to face well-resourced commercial interests who may wish to block climate policies. How can citizens who are not well-resourced successfully push for climate action, and overcome a lack of financial backing?</em></p>
<p>There are many inequalities that must be overcome if the world is to successfully turn the tide on climate change. These start in the rooms where the negotiations are taking place – countries with great resources have a structural advantage over poorer countries that face personnel and capacity constraints. These asymmetries mean that the concerns of some of the world’s most vulnerable citizens are sometimes not even heard in negotiations. </p>
<p>In recent weeks we have seen hundreds of thousands of citizens around the world <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/live/2015/nov/29/global-peoples-climate-change-march-2015-day-of-action-live">march for climate justice</a>, standing in solidarity with those people whose lives are being devastated by the impacts of climate change and calling for real leadership to avert this crisis. The truth is that we are all in this together – climate change confronts us with the reality of our interdependence. I believe that there is a growing awareness of our role as global citizens in the face of climate change and that the movement growing out of this is becoming an irresistible one. This movement will only accelerate as the impacts of climate change become more apparent.</p>
<p>There are no interests, commercial or otherwise, that can block the will of a global movement of people calling for real action, regardless of how well-resourced they may be.</p>
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<p><strong>Gail Whiteman, Lancaster University:</strong> <em>As a leading political thinker on climate justice, and a grandmother, who are your heroes and what gives you hope at COP21?</em></p>
<p>I often think that when Eleanor Roosevelt was drafting the <a href="http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/">Universal Declaration of Human Rights</a> she could never have imagined that human-induced climate change might force whole countries to go out of existence. But that is the reality we face today. In Geneva in early March, I participated on a panel at the <a href="http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/ClimateChangeHumanRightsIssue.aspx">Human Rights Council</a> with Anote Tong, president of the Pacific Island state of Kiribati. He described vividly the threat to his people’s very ability to remain on their islands posed by climate change. He has <a href="http://time.com/4058851/kiribati-cliamte-change/">bought land in Fiji</a> as a precaution, but if he has to move, what becomes of the identity, sovereignty and heritage of a small island people?</p>
<p>Another woman who fought for human rights, gender equality and sustainable development was my dear friend <a href="http://www.greenbeltmovement.org/wangari-maathai/biography">Wangari Maathai</a>. She understood that meaningful development could not take place without both environmental sustainability and respect for human rights. As the world moves to take action on climate change, we must ensure that in saving the planet we don’t trample on the rights of people made vulnerable by poverty or social standing.</p>
<p>The value of a human rights framing for the new climate agreement has been recognised by the Climate Vulnerable Forum, initially a group of 20 countries on the front lines of climate change – a number that is likely to expand to 43 by the end of the climate talks. I was very happy to be a part of the <a href="http://www.thecvf.org/worlds-vulnerable-open-gateway-to-climate-safe-future-at-paris/">third high-level meeting</a> of the Climate Vulnerable Forum where the member states declared that they will aim to achieve full decarbonisation of their economies and run their countries on 100% renewable energy by 2050. This is the type of leadership we need from all nations – this gives me hope.</p>
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<p><strong>Catherine Gautier-Downes, University of California, Santa Barbara:</strong> <em>What role do you think women from both developed and developing nations can play in the years to come in helping achieve the substantial emission reductions that are necessary for warming to remain below 2°C?</em> </p>
<p>Women across all sectors of society are already leading the way in efforts to build resilience and adapt to the impacts of climate change, and they are demonstrating their unity, collective ambition and willingness to act with urgency, regardless of their societal or political position. Women’s agency plays a significant role in driving climate action and their participation in the climate debate is a key factor for a fair and equitable climate agreement.</p>
<p>Too often, women are categorised as vulnerable with little acknowledgement that they are already offering solutions. They offer hope for successful adaptation and low carbon development through critical knowledge, experience, and the unique role they play in agriculture, food security, income generation and management of natural resources.</p>
<p>It is not only emissions reductions where women have a vital role to play. They must also be included in the design, planning and implementation of adaptation strategies. Climate change exacerbates existing social inequalities, leaving women disproportionately vulnerable to the impacts. Women’s voices must be heard and their priorities supported as part of the global response to climate change.</p>
<p>There are many strong examples of how women are already leading the way in the fight against climate change. The <a href="https://www.solarsister.org/">Solar Sister</a> project is tackling energy poverty through empowering women with economic opportunity. It is delivering the transformative benefits of clean energy technology to remote communities in rural areas throughout Uganda, Tanzania and Nigeria.</p>
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<p><strong>James Dyke, University of Southampton:</strong> <em>One of the arguments against reducing greenhouse gas emissions and other human-produced drivers of climate change is that to do so would be to apply a powerful brake on economic development. Is that true - should we prioritise poverty alleviation over climate change mitigation?</em></p>
<p>I think this is a false dichotomy. I think if we were to pursue an “either/or” approach to these two great challenges of our time we would achieve neither.
The reality is that development is the priority for poorer countries, and they will pursue the path most likely to lift their citizens out of poverty. If affordable, sustainable development pathways are not made available, developing countries will turn to fossil fuels based development as the only option available to them – who could blame them?</p>
<p>My foundation recently commissioned a piece of research called <a href="http://www.mrfcj.org/media/pdf/2014/ZeroCarbontheClimateJusticeWay.pdf">Zero Carbon, Zero Poverty the Climate Justice Way</a>. This indicates that achieving zero carbon emissions by 2050 is compatible with achieving the right to development, with a shift to sustainable development, poverty eradication and a more equitable and inclusive model of development. However, this requires all countries to participate in the transition on the same timescale. </p>
<p>Of course this transition would require leadership from all countries, but the leadership would differ depending on a country’s circumstance. Developed countries would have to rapidly peak and reduce their emissions, while also delivering their commitments to enable climate action in developing countries. Developing countries would have the greater challenge – they would have to forge new, sustainable development pathways. </p>
<p>This has never been achieved before and would require unprecedented levels of support from the international community. It is only by acting in global solidarity, motivated by enlightened self-interest, that our leaders steer us on a path to a safer world.</p>
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<p><strong>Britta Renkamp, University of Cape Town:</strong> <em>What is an example of partnerships for climate justice really working out and why? How can this knowledge help other cases worldwide?</em></p>
<p>I would offer two examples of partnerships that are both working out and providing a framework for others to follow.</p>
<p>In February, the climate negotiations were <a href="http://unfccc.int/meetings/geneva_feb_2015/meeting/8783.php">hosted in Geneva</a> on account of some construction work at their usual home in Bonn, Germany. This provided a unique opportunity to bring the climate community and the human rights community together to discuss the incorporation of human rights into climate action. My foundation hosted a <a href="http://www.mrfcj.org/resources/climate-justice-dialogue-geneva/">climate justice dialogue</a> with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights which brought climate negotiators together with their Human Rights Council counterparts for the first time. </p>
<p>At the event, Costa Rica announced their intention to develop the <a href="http://www.mrfcj.org/resources/geneva-pledge-human-rights/">Geneva Pledge on Human Rights and Climate Action</a>. The pledge is a voluntary initiative undertaken by countries to facilitate the sharing of knowledge between human rights and climate experts at a national level. Initially, 18 countries signed up and the pledge was announced in the closing plenary of the Geneva negotiation session. Today, the pledge has 29 signatories.</p>
<p>Another example of partnerships in action for climate justice comes from Malawi, where an initiative to deliver access to clean energy to the very poorest households is bringing together government, civil society and donors. In 2012 I visited Malawi and discussed the potential of coupling renewable energy access and social protection with the government officials and bilateral donors. The government of Malawi has since set a target of delivering <a href="http://www.robinwyatt.org/photography/journal/concern-universal-malawi-promoting-national-cookstove-taskforce/">two million energy-efficient cookstoves</a> to households by 2020. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104287/original/image-20151203-32297-17l3o6p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104287/original/image-20151203-32297-17l3o6p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104287/original/image-20151203-32297-17l3o6p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104287/original/image-20151203-32297-17l3o6p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104287/original/image-20151203-32297-17l3o6p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104287/original/image-20151203-32297-17l3o6p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104287/original/image-20151203-32297-17l3o6p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Climate-friendly stoves in Malawi.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/globalideas/5516559447/in/photolist-3Krpy5-DRqAB-9ptNVV-9ptP3e-aM7ZrZ-cdkN13-q2bBNS-87Sk7B-rDj8tS-d9Z2zn-pbFHiZ-e2Wbt5-74oW6B-ptabhm-pbG99b-ptbRbz-pbG9ch">Deutsche Welle</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In conjunction with Irish Aid and Concern Universal, the government is piloting a project to deliver cookstoves to the poorest households, using a social cash transfer delivery mechanism. By the end of 2015 the programme will have reached 8,400 homes. The programme will then be scaled up to 320,000 homes by the end of 2016, and should be on course to reach the two million household target. </p>
<p>Social protection systems can deliver at scale if supported by genuine political will and appropriate financing. Adopting this approach for delivering sustainable energy solutions could drastically reduce energy poverty.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/51508/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Britta Rennkamp is a researcher at the Energy Research Centre and fellow at the African Climate and Development Initiative at the University of Cape Town. The funding for the research on the renewable energy program and community development benefits comes from a research project on Climate Change Mitigation and Poverty Reduction CLIMIP from the program "Europe and Global Challenges" funded through the Volkswagen Foundation, Compagnia di San Paolo and Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. Britta directs the research on climate governance.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gail Whiteman has a side-position as the Professor-in-Residence at the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Catherine Gautier, Cathy Alexander, James Dyke, and Yves Petit do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>UN special envoy and former Irish president Mary Robinson talks to leading experts about the 2015 Paris climate negotiations.Yves Petit, Professeur de droit public, Université de LorraineBritta Rennkamp, Researcher in the Energy, Environment and Climate Change Group , University of Cape TownCatherine Gautier, Professor Emerita of Geography, University of California, Santa BarbaraCathy Alexander, Research Fellow, Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, The University of MelbourneGail Whiteman, Professor, Rubin Chair in Sustainability in Business, Lancaster UniversityJames Dyke, Lecturer in Complex Systems Simulation, University of SouthamptonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/358612015-08-27T11:01:43Z2015-08-27T11:01:43ZVaroufakis in conversation with leading academics as Syriza splinters and election beckons in Greece<p>When Yanis Varoufakis was elected to parliament and then <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/business/economics-blog/2015/jan/26/profile-yannis-varoufakis-greece-finance-minister">named as Greek finance minister in January</a>, he embarked on an extraordinary seven months of negotiations with the country’s creditors and its European partners. </p>
<p>On July 6, Greek voters backed his hardline stance in a referendum, with a resounding <a href="https://theconversation.com/greece-votes-no-now-syriza-must-clarify-what-that-really-means-44289">62% voting No to the European Union’s ultimatum</a>. On that night, he resigned, after prime minister Alexis Tsipras, fearful of an ugly exit from the eurozone, decided to go against the popular verdict. Since then, the governing party, Syriza, has splintered and a <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-alexis-tsipras-has-called-a-snap-election-in-greece-46496">snap election has been called</a>. Varoufakis remains a member of parliament and a prominent voice in Greek and European politics.</p>
<p>When asked about Tsipras’s decision to trigger a snap election, inviting the Greek public to issue their judgement on his time in office, Varoufakis said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If only that were so! Voters are being asked to endorse Alexis Tsipras’ decision, on the night of their majestic referendum verdict, to overturn it; to turn their courageous No into a capitulation, on the grounds that honouring that verdict would trigger a Grexit. This is not the same as calling on the people to pass judgement on a record of steadfast opposition to a failed economic programme doing untold damage to Greece’s social economy. It is rather a plea to voters to endorse him, and his choice to surrender, as a lesser evil.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Conversation asked nine leading academics what their questions were for a man who describes himself as an “accidental economist”. His answers reveal regrets about his own approach during a dramatic 2015, a withering assessment of France’s power in Europe, fears for the future of Syriza, a view that Syriza is now finished, and doubts over how effective Jeremy Corbyn could be as leader of Britain’s Labour party.</p>
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<p><strong>Anton Muscatelli, University of Glasgow</strong> - <em>Why was Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras persuaded to accept the EU’s pre-conditions around the third bailout discussions despite a decisive referendum victory for the No campaign; and is this the end of the road for the anti-austerity wing of Syriza in Greece?</em></p>
<p><strong>Varoufakis:</strong> Tsipras’ answer is that he was taken aback by official Europe’s determination to punish Greek voters by putting into action German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble’s plan to push Greece out of the eurozone, redenominate Greek bank deposits in a currency that was not even ready, and even ban the use of euros in Greece. These threats, independently of whether they were credible or not, did untold damage to the European Union’s image as a community of nations and drove a wedge through the axiom of the eurozone’s indivisibility. </p>
<p>As you probably have heard, on the night of the referendum, I disagreed with Tsipras on his assessment of the credibility of these threats and resigned as finance minister. But even if I was wrong on the issue of the credibility of the troika’s threats, my great fear was, and remains, that our party, Syriza, would be torn apart by the decision to implement another self-defeating austerity program of the type that we were elected to challenge. It is now clear that my fears were justified.</p>
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<p><strong>Roy Bailey, University of Essex</strong> - <em>Was the surprise referendum of July 5 conceived as a threat point for the ongoing bargaining between Greece and its creditors and has the last year caused you to adjust how you think about Game Theory?</em></p>
<p><strong>Varoufakis:</strong> I shall have to disappoint you Roy {<em>Editor’s note: Roy Bailey taught Varoufakis at Essex and advised on his PhD</em>}. As I wrote <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/17/opinion/yanis-varoufakis-no-time-for-games-in-europe.html?_r=2">in a New York Times op-ed</a>, Game Theory was never relevant. It applies to interactions where motives are exogenous and the point is to work out the optimal bluffing strategies and credible threats, given available information. Our task was different: it was to persuade the “other” side to change their motivation vis-à-vis Greece. </p>
<p>I represented a small, suffering nation in its sixth straight year of deep recession. Bluffing with our people’s fate would be irresponsible. So I did not. Instead, we outlined that which we thought was a reasonable position, consistent with our creditors’ own interests. And then we stood our ground. When the troika pushed us into a corner, presenting me with an ultimatum on June 25 just before closing Greece’s banking system down, we looked at it carefully and concluded that we had neither a mandate to accept it (given that it was economically non-viable) nor to decline it (and clash with official Europe). Instead we decided to do something terribly radical: to put it to the Greek people to decide.</p>
<p>Lastly, on a theoretical point, the “threat point” in your question refers to <a href="http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/1994/nash-lecture.pdf">John Nash’s bargaining solution</a> which is based on the axiom of non-conflict between the parties. Tragically, we did not have the luxury to make that assumption.</p>
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<p><strong>Cristina Flesher Fominaya, University of Aberdeen</strong> - <em>The dealings between Greece and the EU seemed more like a contest between democracy and the banks, than a negotiation between the EU and a member state. Given the outcome, are there any lessons that you would take from this for other European parties resisting the imperatives of austerity politics?</em></p>
<p><strong>Varoufakis:</strong> Allow me to phrase this differently. It was a contest between the right of creditors to govern a debtor nation and the democratic right of the said nation’s citizens to be self-governed. You are quite right that there was never a negotiation between the EU and Greece as a member state of the EU. We were negotiating with the troika of lenders, the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and a wholly weakened European Commission in the context of an informal grouping, the Eurogroup, lacking specific rules, without minutes of the proceedings, and completely under the thumb of one finance minister and the troika of lenders. </p>
<p>Moreover, the troika was terribly fragmented, with many contradictory agendas in play, the result being that the “terms of surrender” they imposed upon us were, to say the least, curious: a deal imposed by creditors determined to attach conditions which guarantee that we, the debtor, cannot repay them. So, the main lesson to be learned from the last few months is that European politics is not even about austerity. Or that, as <a href="http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2015/03/15/presenting-an-agenda-for-europe-at-ambrosetti-lake-como-14th-march-2015/">Nicholas Kaldor wrote in The New Statesman</a> in 1971, any attempt to construct a monetary union before a political union ends up with a terrible monetary system that makes political union much, much harder. Austerity and a hideous democratic deficit are mere symptoms.</p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Panicos Demetriades, University of Leicester</strong> - <em>Did you ever think that your message was being diluted or becoming noisy, or even incoherent, by giving so many interviews?</em></p>
<p><strong>Varoufakis:</strong> Yes. I have regretted several interviews, especially when the journalists involved took liberties that I had not anticipated. But let me also add that the “noise” would have prevailed even if I granted far fewer interviews. Indeed the media game was fixed against our government, and me personally, in the most unexpected and repulsive way. Wholly moderate and technically sophisticated proposals were ignored while the media concentrated on trivia and distortions. Giving interviews where I would, to some extent, control the content was my only outlet. Faced with an intentionally “noisy” media agenda that bordered on character assassination, I erred on the side of over-exposure. </p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Simon Wren-Lewis, University of Oxford</strong> - <em>Might it have been possible for a forceful France to have provided an effective counterweight to Germany in the Eurogroup, or did Germany always have a majority on its side?</em></p>
<p><strong>Varoufakis:</strong> The French government feels that it has a weak hand. Its <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/26/us-france-economy-idUSKBN0MM0NN20150326">deficit</a> is persistently within the territory of the so-called <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/government-finance-statistics/excessive-deficit-procedure">excessive deficit procedure</a> of the European Commission, which puts Pierre Moscovici, the European commissioner for economic and financial affairs, and France’s previous finance minister, in the difficult position of having to act tough on Paris under the watchful eye of Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister. </p>
<p>It is also true, as you say, that the Eurogroup is completely “stitched up” by Schäuble. Nevertheless, France had an opportunity to use the Greek crisis in order to change the rules of a game that France will never win. The French government has, thus, missed a major opportunity to render itself sustainable within the single currency. The result, I fear, is that Paris will soon be facing a harsher regime, possibly a situation where the president of the Eurogroup is vested with draconian veto powers over the French government’s national budget. How long, once this happens, can the European Union survive the resurgence of nasty nationalism in places like France?</p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Kamal Munir, University of Cambridge</strong> – <em>You often implied that what went on in your meetings with the troika (the IMF, ECB and European Commission) was economics only on the surface. Deep down, it was a political game being played. Don’t you think we are doing a disservice to our students by teaching them a brand of economics that is so clearly detached from this reality?</em></p>
<p><strong>Varoufakis:</strong> If only some economics were to surface in our meetings with the troika, I would be happy! None did.</p>
<p>Even when economic variables were discussed, there was never any economic analysis. The discussions were exhausted at the level of rules and agreed targets. I found myself talking at cross-purposes with my interlocutors. They would say things like: “The rules on the primary surplus specify that yours should be at least 3.5% of GDP in the medium term.” I would try to have an economic discussion suggesting that this rule ought to be amended because, for example, the 3.5% primary target for 2018 would depress growth today, boost the debt-to-GDP ratio immediately and make it impossible to achieve the said target by 2018. </p>
<p>Such basic economic arguments were treated like insults. Once I was accused of “lecturing” them on macroeconomics. On your pedagogical question: while it is true that we teach students a brand of economics that is designed to be blind to really-existing capitalism, the fact remains that no type of sophisticated economic thinking, not even neoclassical economics, can reach the parts of the Eurogroup which make momentous decisions behind closed doors.</p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Mariana Mazzucato, University of Sussex</strong> – <em>How has the crisis in Greece (its cause and its effects) revealed failings of neoclassical economic theory at both the micro and the macro level?</em></p>
<p><strong>Varoufakis:</strong> The uninitiated may be startled to hear that the macroeconomic models taught at the best universities feature no accumulated debt, no involuntary unemployment and, indeed, no money (with relative prices reflecting a form of barter). Save perhaps for a few random shocks that demand and supply are assumed to quickly iron out, the snazziest models taught to the brightest of students assume that savings automatically turn into productive investment, leaving no room for crises.</p>
<p>It makes it hard when these graduates come face-to-face with reality. They are at a loss, for example, when they see <a href="http://www.cer.org.uk/insights/more-investment-germany%E2%80%99s-sake">German savings that permanently outweigh German investment</a> while <a href="https://theconversation.com/greece-and-germany-have-more-in-common-than-you-might-think-41735">Greek investment outweighs savings</a> during the “good times” (before 2008) but collapses to zero during the crisis. </p>
<p>Moving to the micro level, the observation that, in the case of Greece, real <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/22/us-greece-incomes-idUSBRE99L0I420131022">wages fell by 40%</a> but employment dropped precipitously, while exports remained flat, illustrates in Technicolor how useless a microeconomics approach bereft of macro foundations truly is.</p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Tim Bale, Queen Mary University of London</strong> – <em>Do you see any similarities between yourself and Jeremy Corbyn, who looks like he might win the (UK) Labour leadership, and do you think a left-wing populist party is capable of winning an election under a first-past-the-post system?</em></p>
<p><strong>Varoufakis:</strong> The similarity that I feel at liberty to mention is that Corbyn and I, probably, coincided at many demonstrations against the Tory government while I lived in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s, and share many views regarding the calamity that befell working Britons as power shifted from manufacturing to finance. However, all other comparisons must be kept in check. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92299/original/image-20150818-12421-1mqzdad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92299/original/image-20150818-12421-1mqzdad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92299/original/image-20150818-12421-1mqzdad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92299/original/image-20150818-12421-1mqzdad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92299/original/image-20150818-12421-1mqzdad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92299/original/image-20150818-12421-1mqzdad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92299/original/image-20150818-12421-1mqzdad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92299/original/image-20150818-12421-1mqzdad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Demo partners? Jeremy Corbyn.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/garryknight/15024926027/in/photolist-oTGF3K-oFqoSv-ou7Aqw-8ZatUS-oBHKNz-wNHZ7B-wNATdW-HihJt-rRyD2L-k6WpFb-oFoHoE-wNAXkq-wNzJCJ-w9buVb-vSJAQQ-x6KuKx-x6JW2B-wNHnvX-w9bUyJ-3j3uR1-wx8Sku-vST2QH-9SZa9Q-9SZ8Wh-9SWj8a-9SWiYz-9SZ97G-9SWk3v-9SZ9QU-9SWjgT-9SZ9Z7-9SZ9FW-9SWjQ6-9SWkKp-wP2Qf5-wxgfG8-wMqMf7-wP2cq3-wPKskc-wMqKpd-wxg4ui-wMqJhy-wx8NvL-wMrez1-vSSWYD-vSTSZV-vSJrw9-wPKwJn-wx8RKE-wPL5vi">Garry Knight</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Syriza was a radical party of the Left that scored a little more than <a href="http://www.ibtimes.com/greece-elections-syriza-gears-win-grexit-expectations-are-low-1793502">4% of the vote in 2009</a>. Our incredible rise was due to the collapse of the political “centre” caused by popular discontent at a Great Depression due to a single currency that was never designed to sustain a global crisis, and by the denial of the powers-that-be that this was so. </p>
<p>The much greater flexibility that the Bank of England afforded to Gordon Brown’s and David Cameron’s British governments prevented the type of socio-economic implosion that led Syriza to power and, in this sense, a similarly buoyant radical left party is most unlikely in Britain. Indeed, the Labour Party’s own history, and internal dynamic, will, I am sure, constrain a victorious Jeremy Corbyn in a manner alien to Syriza. </p>
<p>Turning to the first-past-the-post system, had it applied here in Greece, it would have given our party a crushing majority in parliament. It is, therefore, untrue that Labour’s electoral failures are due to this system. </p>
<p>Lastly, allow me to urge caution with the word “populist”. Syriza did not put to Greek voters a populist agenda. “Populists” try to be all things to all people. Our promised benefits extended only to those earning less than £500 per month. If it wants to be popular, Labour cannot afford to be populist either.</p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Mark Taylor, University of Warwick</strong> - <em>Would you agree that Greece does not fulfil the criteria for successful membership of a currency union with the rest of Europe? Wouldn’t it be better if they left now rather than simply papering over the cracks and waiting for another Greek economic crisis to occur in a few years’ time?</em></p>
<p><strong>Varoufakis:</strong> The eurozone’s design was such that even France and Italy could not thrive within it. Under the current institutional design only a currency union east of the Rhine and north of the Alps would be sustainable. Alas, it would constitute a union useless to Germany, as it would fail to protect it from constant revaluation in response to its trade surpluses. </p>
<p>Now, if by “criteria” you meant <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/economic_governance/sgp/index_en.htm">the Maastricht limits</a>, it is of course clear that Greece did not fulfil them. But then again nor did Italy or Belgium. Conversely, Spain and Ireland did meet the criteria and, indeed, by 2007 the Madrid and Dublin governments were registering deficit, debt and inflation numbers that, according to the official criteria, were better than Germany’s. And yet when the crisis hit, Spain and Ireland sunk into the mire. In short, the eurozone was badly designed for everyone. Not just for Greece. </p>
<p>So should we cut our losses and get out? To answer properly we need to grasp the difference between saying that Greece, and other countries, should not have entered the eurozone, and saying now that we should now exit. Put technically, we have a case of hysteresis: once a nation has taken the path into the eurozone, that path disappeared after the euro’s creation and any attempt to reverse along that, now non-existent, path could lead to a great fall off a tall cliff.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/35861/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Yanis Varoufakis served as Greece’s Finance Minister (January to July 2015) and remains a Member of the Hellenic Parliament.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cristina Flesher Fominaya is currently Senior Marie Curie Fellow at the Natonal University Ireland, Maynooth. Her current research project "Contentious Politics in an Age of Austerity" is funded by a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Intra-European Fellowship.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Panicos O. Demetriades has received funding from the ESRC to carry out research projects and offers consultancy services through Gerson Lehrman Group.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anton Muscatelli, Kamal A Munir, Mariana Mazzucato, Mark Taylor, Roy Bailey, Simon Wren-Lewis, and Tim Bale do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Greece’s ‘accidental economist’ speaks to the UK’s leading minds on Syriza, the troika, and whether he’s just a little over-exposed.Yanis Varoufakis, Professor of Economics, University of AthensLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/386602015-03-11T12:18:04Z2015-03-11T12:18:04ZIn Conversation with Scott Morrison: full transcript<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/74438/original/image-20150311-20540-gryd0c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Social Services Minister Scott Morrison says the immigration portfolio is like walking on a razor.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Mick Tsikas</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> It has been widely remarked that you’re changing your image in this new portfolio [Social Services], do you think different jobs require different ministerial personas?</p>
<p><strong>Scott Morrison:</strong> I’m the same person I’ve always been. People are seeing different sides of me in this role that people who know me better would have known for a long period of time - back from my days before politics and certainly when I first entered as a backbencher and was involved in various things.</p>
<p>Different portfolios shine a light on different parts of what you’re about and obviously in immigration it required a very strong approach. In this portfolio it requires dealing with a large number of stakeholders in particular and being across a broad range of policy areas.</p>
<p>Immigration, particularly on the border protection side of things, was a very focussed task which required a pretty strong handed approach.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> So what are these different sides to Scott Morrison?</p>
<p><strong>SM:</strong> I’ll let others work all that out, Michelle. I mean people commentate on that all the time, I’m not one who does.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> Your wife was <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/the-watchman-20121102-28e7t.html">on record years ago</a> saying she hoped you didn’t get immigration – this was in opposition …</p>
<p><strong>SM:</strong> I think most political wives hope that for their partners.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> Were you glad to get out of it?</p>
<p><strong>SM:</strong> I enjoyed my time in the portfolio, from a range of different perspectives. Obviously I was pleased to be able to achieve as much as we did. I lived through the horror of the border protection chaos under the previous government. I was as frustrated as anyone could be in opposition because I believed that we had the answer and we couldn’t convince the government to do it properly, and even when they did they had to be dragged kicking and screaming. And then in fairly short order we were able to demonstrate that we were right.</p>
<p>So I’m pleased that we were able to address just what was a humanitarian tragedy and one that was basically polarising the country, and seriously impacting on the budget as well. I was pleased to be able to achieve what we said we would do.</p>
<p>At the end of the day I did exactly what I said we’d do and we got the results I said we’d get.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> Any regrets for anything you did there?</p>
<p><strong>SM:</strong> You always have some along the way. It’s a very tough portfolio. There are a lot of very human consequences to the portfolio. Every decision you take has a consequence to someone. I used to say all the time that in that portfolio if you don’t understand that every decision you take has human consequences, then I don’t think you can honestly perform in the role, and that’s not just a border protection issue. I would consider hundreds of intervention cases…</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> Any specific regrets?</p>
<p><strong>SM:</strong> No I don’t run a commentary on the background and the past. There are a few things that you would have approached differently, particularly earlier on, but you learn as you go forward. Being in the immigration portfolio is like walking on the edge of a razor blade the entire time, you make one little slip and there’s a fair bit of damage.</p>
<p>It’s a difficult portfolio, but I think at the end of the day we were able to do exactly what we said we’d do and get the results we said we’d get.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> Turning to your new job, you’re talking about new spending on <a href="http://www.skynews.com.au/news/top-stories/2015/03/09/centrelink-system--left-to-wither--for-years.html">social security computers</a>, you’re talking about a <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/national/scott-morrison-proposes-childcare-and-parental-leave-shakeup-20150201-13333v.html">child care overhaul</a>, broad <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/mcclure-welfare-review-offers-second-chance-for-reform/story-e6frg6z6-1227239041450">reform of social security</a> - overall are you going to be a spender or a saver in this portfolio?</p>
<p><strong>SM:</strong> I think we’re going to be a much more efficient spender of the resources that we have. It’s $150 billion a year and it’s growing, the highest rate of growth of any of the areas of government outlays, and we have to get that increase under control.</p>
<p>I’m also very mindful when you look across the portfolio that there are a lot of ways we can spend money a lot better on the targets that we’ve set.</p>
<p>Those three, I’ve been pretty clear, are: young people, under 25, getting them into work; young families, 25-49, particularly females, particularly those on middle to low incomes, getting them to be able to stay in work or get back to work after they’ve had kids; and older Australians, to encourage them to work longer, not out of any sort of national duty, but just because it’s a really good idea for them and for their families.</p>
<p>Older Australians have, I think, increasing burdens placed on them in a family context. They’re helping their kids out, sometimes when there have been family breakdowns they’re looking after kids as well, sometimes they’re often the primary carers.</p>
<p>Grandparents are often being called on in ways that perhaps they haven’t been before and there’s a big financial burden that often goes with that as well. So there are a lot of good reasons to keep working. I think older Australians are taking even more responsibility in the broader family situation they find themselves in. You never stop being a parent.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> Now you are on the expenditure review committee, do you feel rather conflicted by this ‘I want money for this, that and the other’ and ‘we must tighten our belts’, these two approaches?</p>
<p><strong>SM:</strong> I feel a responsibility to ensure that I’m spending in the best and most efficient way that I can. I don’t want to ask for a single extra dollar where I don’t feel we’re not spending every dollar we have currently well. I do sign up to the budget rules around offsets and savings, to make room for new initiatives.</p>
<p>I’ve got to make room for a thumping big initiative which was supported from the last government, which is the NDIS. It is only 40% funded out of the levy and we have to swallow this within the social services budget over the next ten years, and that’s going to be a big task.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> But can you swallow it at the size that it’s projected to be?</p>
<p><strong>SM:</strong> Well if we can be successful in prosecuting the saves through the budget that we have been seeking to - and not getting much support from either the opposition or anyone else on that front. The opposition and the crossbenchers’ view that they can say no and not have an alternative and just do nothing, I don’t think is a viable proposition. I think if there is one thing we’re trying to tease out in the discussion we’re having with the crossbench and the opposition - I don’t rule out the opposition on this, they have to be part of this - is that doing nothing is not an option.</p>
<p>So if you’ve got a better idea about how we make the pension sustainable long term and adequate, fine, let’s hear it. If you’ve got a better idea about how we fund improvements to childcare, happy to hear it. If you’ve got a better idea about how we encourage older Australians to continue to work and to better use the capital that they have available to them, then let’s hear it. But I haven’t heard it.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> The present welfare system is quite targeted - what do you see as being wrong with it?</p>
<p><strong>SM:</strong> I think Pat McClure really set that out <a href="https://www.dss.gov.au/our-responsibilities/review-of-australias-welfare-system">in his [recently released] report</a>. It’s complex, it’s accretive, it in many ways has lost its way over a period of time. I agree that in an international perspective it is one of the better targeted systems around the world. That said, it is still the highest area of growth in public expenditure. So that means we need to get it even more efficient, more targeted.</p>
<p>What Patrick argues, that I agree with, is that if you can do that over time, then you can manage the transition. My biggest fear in the current political climate, as I said at the Press Club, is that if there’s no appetite for any change at all, which seems to be the attitude of the opposition and some of the crossbench, then 10 years from now someone will sit in this chair and have to do something quite drastic. Whether it is on disability support pensions or age pension or carers payments, or any of these sorts of things. Now I would like to avoid that by having a streamlined, efficient and more targeted system, because I think Australians are pretty comfortable with the idea of having a good welfare system.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> On McClure, can you start the implementation of McClure for a more simplified system in this budget, or this year, or will it have to wait a while?</p>
<p><strong>SM:</strong> You can start with some very small steps and I think that is what Patrick is recommending. Certainly in my discussions with him that was my out-take. You start small and you build it up over time. I think while there isn’t a big appetite for big change in the community or in politics, there is, I hope, an attitude for incremental change, which is what I’m arguing for.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> Where would you start?</p>
<p><strong>SM:</strong> Well we’ll set that out.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> Just turning to pensions, the pension rate for people at the moment is benchmarked at 27.7% of male total average weekly earnings. Under last year’s budget plan to change the indexation arrangement that percentage would fall progressively. What do you believe is the appropriate floor to such a fall?</p>
<p><strong>SM:</strong> Well it won’t fall, the pension goes up every March and September.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> But the percentage against average weekly earnings would fall.</p>
<p><strong>SM:</strong> The proposal before the Senate is that it be indexed to CPI [Consumer Price Index] as opposed to MTAWE [male total average weekly earnings]. That is exactly the same thing that the previous government did with the Family Tax Benefit. They decided to index it to the CPI, so I don’t understand the inconsistency in those two positions between the opposition on that issue and now what they’re taking on the pension.</p>
<p>I think one of the key issues that has come up in my discussion with the crossbench is the issue of adequacy and how you manage the question of adequacy. The pension is a cost of living support payment, it’s an income payment, and it is designed to keep pace with the cost of living and obviously the CPI is the principle measure of cost of living. Equally, we need to be mindful of keeping the pension payment adequate for people’s needs.</p>
<p>At the same time we can’t pretend that it is a lavish payment. It’s not. Or that it’s ever going to be a lavish payment.</p>
<p>I think one of the key issues when we’re talking to Australians about how they’re planning for the next 20-30 years [is] the idea of someone who is currently sitting in their mid-40s or early-50s thinking that they might live till they’re 80 or 90 or even longer being on the aged pension from age 65, or 67, all the way over that period of time. They need to think about that and whether that’s something that they believe is an adequate level of support for them, and what other steps and measures they might want to take to career change, to train, to gear up, to phase into a different work pattern, post what they’re currently doing now.</p>
<p>I think we have to be honest about the pension. It’s not a lavish payment, it’s not ever going to be a lavish payment. Therefore, Australians have got to think widely about what their income support options are.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> You mean topping up or alternatives?</p>
<p><strong>SM:</strong> The Commission of Audit had a very good chart which talked about this, and there was a crossover between people on full pensions and those on part pensions and I suspect that will be the future. That there will be more people ultimately on part pension than full pensions. I think one of the things that will drive that is people deciding to work longer, not out of some national call to action, but just because it’s a good idea for them and their family.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> Now some in the backbench are mounting a campaign to get altered this [2014 budget] decision to change indexation arrangements. I noticed [Liberal backbencher] Andrew Laming was looking to you as one who would be able to negotiate something on this. Is his faith justified?</p>
<p><strong>SM:</strong> I’m pragmatic about these things but at the same time I’m not going to concede the debate to doing nothing. Just simply taking something off the table and walking away I don’t think is a responsible thing to do in this debate. There is a measure on the table. Not everyone likes it and I acknowledge that some of our own government members don’t like it.</p>
<p>That said, to simply move away from that position in favour of a do-nothing approach I don’t think is responsible either. What I think we have to focus on is what is the sensible, constructive way forward to have a sustainable pension that addresses adequacy over the next 20 or 30 years. Now in the Intergenerational Report there is modelling there based on a return to indexation to average weekly earnings once the budget gets into a stronger position - now that’s one way of doing it. There are other ways of doing it.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> What other ways are there?</p>
<p><strong>SM:</strong> Well again, we’ll get to that when we get to that. They’re the sort of things that I’d be discussing with crossbenchers.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> And your own backbenchers.</p>
<p><strong>SM:</strong> Of course. We meet every Monday when the House is sitting.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> So you’re up for some sort of compromise?</p>
<p><strong>SM:</strong> Well that is the gig. The same was true when I negotiated the Temporary Protection Visas through the Parliament. There was give and take in all of that. The one thing that was never an option for me was taking something off the table without something else being put on the table.</p>
<p>So it’s not about whether one is advancing or retreating on this - and I think sometimes it is crudely seen in those political terms, is the government going to back down. I don’t think that’s the argument and if it is seen in those terms then I don’t think that is constructive or helpful.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> Now where are you up to on the six months wait for the dole [for young people]?</p>
<p><strong>SM:</strong> In a very similar space. I’m aware of the concerns that crossbenchers and members have, but equally the idea [is unacceptable] of doing nothing about youth unemployment and allowing people to walk straight out of school and onto the dole – or rather at a later age because they have to be a bit older than that to go on the dole.</p>
<p>The measure doesn’t apply to people who have children and they’re on Family Tax Benefit A - there are a whole host of exemptions to this measure that I don’t think have been well appreciated, but it is designed to try and get people who are able and job ready to actually get into a job.</p>
<p>Now if there are better ways of doing that or if that can be part of a package of other measures, then of course I’m open to that. But again, I’m not just going to take something off the table because I’m being told to do so by those who just have an outright opposition to something but are actually not in favour of anything.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> You’ll be soon unveiling a new childcare package, will this be a net cost to the budget and will there be offsetting savings at that time – when you unveil it – or at the budget?</p>
<p><strong>SM:</strong> Well my view is there has to be offsetting savings. My preference is that any change that we make that requires additional funding wouldn’t be done by a levy, but we’re in discussions with the opposition.</p>
<p>Now, we have measures on the table in the Senate, particularly in the area of Family Tax Benefit changes, the previous government introduced around $15 billion worth of saves to Family Tax Benefit. We’ve got around less than $5 billion and they’re opposing those. But they were happy to implement $15 billion worth when they were in government, so I find that position difficult to follow, but if we can come to some accommodation on saves in this area, then that obviously gives me more room to move in terms of the improvements I can make on childcare.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> So there would be more spent on childcare and savings found in other areas?</p>
<p><strong>SM:</strong> We can’t really have saves on the table in the Senate which have been completely rejected. If the opposition is asking for more investment in the area, that’s fine. Anyone can do that, but it can only be done if you can actually fund it.</p>
<p>So with that said, I think Kate [Ellis, opposition spokeswoman] and I have had some constructive meetings. I think they’ve been held in good faith. I think we understand the rules of the discussion and our engagement - whether it will come to something I don’t know. I don’t think the hard part of that discussion is actually working out how you can make the system better. Kate’s been a minister in this area as well, she knows the inadequacies of it hopefully at least as well as I do The problem is how you fund it.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> The Productivity Commission said that under its proposals, workforce participation would increase by some 16,400, this seems a fairly modest gain.</p>
<p><strong>SM:</strong> It is on the Productivity Commission model a modest gain - remember it is a net gain.</p>
<p>For me, the participation goal is quite acute, it’s quite targeted. Of course I want to see people on family incomes of over $160,000 continue to go into the workforce and make the decision to do all that, but mostly I think the area where the most can be achieved with changes is the middle to lower incomes. Now those families don’t have the choice whether to go back to work or not.</p>
<p>Many families – about 10-15% of families – which is the percentage of families on income of over $160,000 off the top of my head, for them the decision to go back to work is a family decision, there are options they have. If they don’t go back to work it is going to be a bit harder, but equally if you’re just going back to work to pay for childcare, then you make decisions about if it is good to be back in the workforce, career progression, all those sorts of things.</p>
<p>But for those under that, if they’re not on two incomes or if they’re a single parent not on one income, well that’s a very bad situation for that family and for those kids as well. My focus is to try and make the equation better for those families, because it’s not only good for those families but it is actually good for the government in that a/ you’ve got people in the workforce, and b/ you’ve got people with a much lower dependance on welfare.</p>
<p>When you’re in a family stage and I think it’s 14% of kids under the age of 12 are growing up in a jobless family, those kids are more likely to end up in a similar situation. By changing the dynamics of a family not being on welfare in that situation I think you get a much bigger dividend longterm from the members of that family.</p>
<p>So my participation goal for childcare is quite focused. It’s not everybody, as much as I’d like to see secondary benefits of the scheme of keeping those people in work and encouraging them to be in work, I think that would be great, but for those on middle to lower incomes this is about whether they have choices in life.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> There’s been a lot of debate in the past few days about the superannuation scheme. Where do you stand on Joe Hockey’s idea of allowing young people to use superannuation for housing?</p>
<p><strong>SM:</strong> I’ll leave all that to Joe. He’s prosecuting the case around super and I’ll let him do that. I think it is important though that when you’re looking at retirement incomes you can’t just talk about the pension.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> Well you raised the question of adequacy.</p>
<p><strong>SM:</strong> You’ve got to be able to look at the mix between the pension and super and how people can use a lot of the capital and assets they have themselves without these massive penalties in doing so. Obviously super is the generational shift from the aged pension to people being self supporting in their retirement. That’s the generational change we’re actually seeing happen right now.</p>
<p>I often use the story when I left school Paul Keating said I had to provide for my own retirement. When my parents left school that’s not the message they got from the government.</p>
<p>As a result, I think there’s a change in the contract between the government and Australians about their retirement incomes and obviously superannuation is plan A and the take up of that being the major sustainer of people in their retirement at the moment is not where you want it to be long term.</p>
<p>You’ve got 80% or thereabouts of people who are over retirement age who are on a part or full pension. Now over time I think you’ll see the number on a part pension increase and a full pension decrease. One of the things that will change that will be people drawing on their own capital.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> If you send that message that people need to invest in their future through superannuation it rather contradicts it to say that young people can pull out some of that super early.</p>
<p><strong>SM:</strong> One of the big issues, you look at the assets test on the pension. If someone is having to pay rent in their retirement, that’s a big hit out of their pension, so having someone in a position where they’re equipped and able to at least have their own accommodation issues sorted out, that is going to minimise one of the most basic costs of living in your retirement.</p>
<p>Equally the idea of the extent to which people can draw down on their capital to transition their skills. If someone is going to work an extra five years or ten years because of some mid to late career training, to help them transition from being a carpenter to being a manager, to driving or whatever else choice they want to make that enables them to shift from a high physically challenging job to something that enables them to work a lot longer, then that is a big positive for the nations finances as well.</p>
<p>So I think you’ve got to look at it in the big picture. What are people going to have to spend on in their retirement and if you’re equipping them either to make themselves better able to support themselves through working or have lower costs because they’ve been able to look after their shelter costs earlier in life, well that potentially has an upside.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> Sounds as though you’re a bit of a supporter of Joe Hockey on this?</p>
<p><strong>SM:</strong> You’ve got to look at it pragmatically and I don’t think you can just put it into black and white situations. It’s going to differ for different people.</p>
<p>That’s a measure that Joe has floated for discussion. The government certainly hasn’t made any decisions on it. What we’re attempting to do is to provoke a discussion in the community about how we’re going to live longer, well and not swallow the budget up in the process. It’s difficult. There are a lot of competing and conflicting cross streams in all of this and that’s true. As a result I think the debate’s going to have a bit of that as well. I think there are a lot of things we’re going to have to try and reconcile and they’re not easily reconciled.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> Is there anything we haven’t covered that you’d like to mention?</p>
<p><strong>SM:</strong> If there’s one theme I’m trying to draw out it’s this binary politics at the moment of “are you for it”/“are you against it”. Even when you questioned me on Joe’s position: are people going to be worse off or better off? This sort of binary assessment of policy at the moment is not conducive to getting a good outcome. The winners and losers argument, I think we’re sort of getting past all that. I’d hope we are.</p>
<p>In the seven years I’ve been in the parliament it has probably been one of the most combative and divisive times – and you’re better placed to judge this than me – that we’ve seen for some time. Having lived through all of that, I think there are a lot of members, I would hope the vast majority, who sort of want to move into a new phase.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> So you’re seen as identified with combative politics, but are you saying your preference is for a different style?</p>
<p><strong>SM:</strong> It is. My preference was for that in the last portfolio. The only reason it got combative in the last portfolio is that we believed what the previous government did was wrong, that they should change it immediately, the evidence of their folly was being played out on the seas on a daily basis in the chaos that was emerging. They remained in denial about it and the suggestion was that we should compromise what we knew to be the solution somehow to have peace and harmony in the political debate.</p>
<p>You can only have peace and harmony in the political debate if you’re actually getting it right. The idea of people agreeing for agreeing’s sake, I think is nonsense. You’ve got to get it right and I was immensely combative in that space because I knew the government was getting it wrong and I was proved right when I had the opportunity for us to put in place our policies.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/74456/original/image-20150311-24194-9wnbt2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/74456/original/image-20150311-24194-9wnbt2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/74456/original/image-20150311-24194-9wnbt2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=343&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74456/original/image-20150311-24194-9wnbt2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=343&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74456/original/image-20150311-24194-9wnbt2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=343&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74456/original/image-20150311-24194-9wnbt2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74456/original/image-20150311-24194-9wnbt2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74456/original/image-20150311-24194-9wnbt2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Morrison on the ABC’s Q&A.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ABC</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>I remember going on Q&A once – I don’t go on that, it’s been years since I’ve been on and I’m not in any hurry to rush back – but someone asked why is this debate so divisive? Why does it have to be like this? I took them back to 2004 and said I don’t remember it being terribly divisive back in 2004 because there wasn’t a problem. You fix the problem, you don’t have to have a debate and I think that’s where we are now. There’s some residual issues that Peter [Dutton, Immigration Minister] is now working through, but they will get resolved.</p>
<p>The number of children in detention is probably one of my most pleasing things. We did what they couldn’t do, we got them out. We got them out principally because we stopped the boats. We got the measures in place to deal with people on shore and off, and now we’re working through that. But you can never fix it if you kept piling in on the other side.</p>
<p>So I would say we were practically combative because we thought they had it wrong. Now in this space I would like – at least at first, if I can – to try to get people on the same page. If I am unsuccessful in that well that’s a shame, but I think the options before us in this space are far, far broader than what we had in the border protection debate. There was a genuine difference of view and when that happens, that’s what happens. Hopefully we won’t have as big a difference of view in this area.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> Just finally, you’re often talked about as a possible future treasurer, a possible future leader, you haven’t denied your longterm ambitions. No pressure here?</p>
<p><strong>SM:</strong> No well it’s all very flattering, but there’s only one thing in politics that I think determines your opportunities and that’s being competent. So that’s what I focus on.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/38660/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Scott Morrison talks about his new portfolio, his time in immigration, his thoughts on policy and the political debate in Australia.Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/386722015-03-11T12:16:53Z2015-03-11T12:16:53ZIn Conversation with Scott Morrison: From confrontation to a search for consensus<p>In racing parlance, Scott Morrison is sitting one out and one back, very well placed politically for both the short and longer terms.</p>
<p>If Tony Abbott survives, Morrison’s social services portfolio gives him plenty of scope to demonstrate policy skills and be in the public eye.</p>
<p>If there’s a leadership change, Morrison could expect to be treasurer under Malcolm Turnbull; with Julie Bishop, his future would be less certain but his ability would ensure he was no worse off than now. A contest late in the piece might possibly even see him in the field.</p>
<p>One senior Liberal says: “He’s a ‘must-have’ in the inner group. He’s emerged as a big beast in the party.”</p>
<p>At 46, Morrison is a political generation younger than Abbott (57), Bishop (58) and Turnbull (60). He has time to wait. His prospect of eventually leading the Liberals must be rated as strong.</p>
<p>Morrison’s early months in the social services portfolio already have his colleagues talking, and not just about the startling change from the border policeman’s aggressive face to the smiling visage so obvious when he appeared at the National Press Club recently.</p>
<p>“I’m the same person I’ve always been,” Morrison says. “People are seeing different sides of me in this role that people who know me better would have known for a long period.</p>
<p>"Different portfolios shine a light on different parts of what you’re about, and obviously in immigration it required a very strong approach.” He’s proud of his record although he admits “being in the immigration portfolio is like walking on the edge of a razor blade the entire time, you make one little slip and there’s a fair bit of damage”.</p>
<p>His new job “requires dealing with a large number of stakeholders in particular and being across a broad range of policy areas”.</p>
<p>Close monitors of these things, his colleagues note the support Morrison is picking up within the party. His appeal to the backbench is as a pragmatist and a negotiator.</p>
<p>When he was immigration minister, the right in particular liked his toughness and his fix-it-at-all-costs approach. The hard line on boats appealed to the base.</p>
<p>In social services, backbenchers are looking to Morrison for something quite different. Desperate to protect their seats, they need the hard edges sanded off some proposed policies, notably the alteration to the indexation of pensions and the crackdown on younger people’s entitlement to the unemployment benefit.</p>
<p>These are barnacles left from the 2014 budget which have not become law but are doing damage electorally while not yielding savings. Morrison is clear that he’s up for refining them if he can achieve deals.</p>
<p>He recalls the “give and take” in his successful negotiation last year with crossbenchers over the restoration of temporary protection visas. But there’s a qualification – he’ll never take a measure “off the table” without something else being put in its place. He’s a trader.</p>
<p>On the change to pension indexation, he says: “I’m pragmatic about these things but at the same time I’m not going to concede the debate to doing nothing”. Queensland Liberal MP Andrew Laming, who regards Morrison as “arguably our best-performing minister in the last year”, is confident he will deliver a workable compromise.</p>
<p>Of the plan for the young to wait six months for the dole, Morrison says: “I’m aware of the concerns that crossbenchers and members have”; he’ll consider any better options.</p>
<p>Given his immediate history, it was tempting to think Morrison would bring a highly punitive approach to social services, a portfolio with huge outlays. But it seems he’s as much about spending as saving.</p>
<p>“I’m not sure where he is on economics,” a Liberal backbencher says. “I’m not sure whether he’s an economic rationalist.”</p>
<p>Morrison says he wants more “efficient” spending of the existing resources. His portfolio area is “$150 billion a year and it’s growing – the highest rate of growth of any of the areas of government outlays – and we have to get that increase under control … I don’t want to ask for a single extra dollar where I don’t feel we’re not spending every dollar we have currently well.”</p>
<p>One challenge is to “make room for a thumping big initiative which was supported from the last government” – the National Disability Insurance Scheme. “It’s only 40% funded out of the levy and we have to swallow this within the social services budget over the next ten years, and that’s going to be a big task.” Can it be swallowed? “Well, if we can be successful in prosecuting the saves through the budget that we have been seeking.”</p>
<p>Morrison is the “spending” minister on cabinet’s expenditure review committee (ERC). One source says he has not yet figured out how to juggle the two roles – being an ERC minister and a spending minister. He’s impatient, according to this source, getting frustrated with “process”. “He’s not very good at delayed gratification – [It’s] ‘I want this now’”.</p>
<p>Such traits have been a recurring theme in his career, most notably leading to a spectacular blow-up when he headed Tourism Australia, which ended badly for him.</p>
<p>Before the December reshuffle, his impatience to be moving onwards and upwards sparked friction with ministerial colleagues, including – but not confined to – Attorney-General George Brandis and Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce – who felt he was after bits of their territory.</p>
<p>There was speculation of a new homeland security portfolio for him; when that was kiboshed, his eyes turned to defence.</p>
<p>Although social services might not have been his preferred choice, it’s a good showcase for Morrison’s talents.</p>
<p>Friends and enemies agree on a couple of points about Morrison – his vaulting ambition and his superior communications skills. He can sell a message, and he is usually pitching directly to the battlers.</p>
<p>This latter comes through clearly in his attitude to child care. Asked about the small projected increase in participation of mothers (some 16,400) envisaged by the Productivity Commission from its child care blueprint, Morrison says the important thing is where the increase comes. “For me, the participation goal is … quite targeted.”</p>
<p>While he wants to see people on family incomes of more than $160,000 make the decision to work, “I think the area where the most can be achieved with changes is the middle to lower incomes.</p>
<p>"Now those families don’t have the choice whether to go back to work or not … My focus is to try and make the equation better for those families.”</p>
<p>The child care area illustrates his attitude to spending, saving and seeking trade-offs.</p>
<p>For extra spending on child care, “my view is there has to be offsetting savings. My preference is that any change that we make that requires additional funding wouldn’t be done by a levy, but we’re in discussions with the opposition.” He refers to various unpassed savings in the Senate, particularly in the Family Tax Benefits. “If we can come to some accommodation on saves in this area, then that obviously gives me more room to move in terms of the improvements I can make on child care.”</p>
<p>He’s had “constructive meetings … held in good faith” with Labor spokeswoman Kate Ellis. “Whether it will come to something I don’t know. I don’t think the hard part of that discussion is actually working out how you can make the system better. Kate’s been a minister in this area as well, she knows the inadequacies of it hopefully at least as well as I do. The problem is how you fund it.”</p>
<p>Morrison’s broad policy priorities are getting young people into work, mothers back to work, and older people remaining at work – the latter “not out of any sort of national duty but just because it’s a really good idea for them and their families”.</p>
<p>He looks to a future, as superannuation kicks in more fully, where an increasing proportion of older people will be on a combination of super and a part pension.</p>
<p>Adequacy is one of the major issues for him in the discussion of retirement income. “When you’re looking at retirement incomes you can’t just talk about the pension.</p>
<p>"We have to be honest about the pension. It is not a lavish payment. Therefore, Australians have got to think widely about what their income support options are,” he says.</p>
<p>“I often use the story [that] when I left school Paul Keating said I had to provide for my own retirement. When my parents left school that’s not the message they got from the government.</p>
<p>"As a result, I think there’s a change in the contract between the government and Australians about their retirement incomes and obviously superannuation is plan A and the take up of that is not where you want it to be long term.</p>
<p>"You’ve got 80% or thereabouts of people who are over retirement age who are on a part or full pension. Now over time I think you’ll see the number on a part pension increase and a full pension decrease. One of the things that will change that will be people drawing on their own capital.”</p>
<p>Asked about Treasurer Joe Hockey’s idea that people should be able to dip into their super for housing or re-training, Morrison says: “You’ve got to look at it in the big picture. What are people going to have to spend on their retirement, and if you’re equipping them either to make themselves better able to support themselves through working or have lower costs because they’ve been able to look after their shelter costs earlier in life – well, that potentially has an upside.”</p>
<p>One of his worries is that people have become reform-shy, daunting when he has Patrick McClure’s just-released report recommending a major (though gradual) overhaul of welfare, to simplify payments and get people into work.</p>
<p>“You can start with some very small steps and I think that is what Patrick is recommending. You start small and you build it up over time. I think while there isn’t a big appetite for big change in the community or in politics, there is, I hope, an attitude for incremental change, which is what I’m arguing for.”</p>
<p>Morrison says the “binary assessment of policy at the moment is not conducive to getting a good outcome”. He wants to move past the stark “are you for it/are you against it”, “winners and losers” type of argument.</p>
<p>He professes a preference for non-combative politics, but notably it is on his terms.</p>
<p>As opposition immigration spokesman: “I was immensely combative in that space because I knew the government was getting it wrong and I was proved right when I had the opportunity for us to put in place our policies,” he says.</p>
<p>“Now in this space I would like – at least at first, if I can – to try to get people on the same page. If I am unsuccessful in that, well, that’s a shame, but I think the options before us in this space are far, far broader than what we had in the border protection debate. There was a genuine difference of view and when that happens, that’s what happens. Hopefully we won’t have as big a difference of view in this area.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/38672/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In racing parlance, Scott Morrison is sitting one out and one back, very well placed politically for both the short and longer terms.Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/381712015-02-27T12:46:53Z2015-02-27T12:46:53ZIn Conversation with Mike Baird: full transcript<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> New South Wales voters go to the polls on March 28. Premier Mike Baird is popular and his government enjoys a huge majority and is travelling fairly comfortably in the polls. But we saw in Queensland that a big buffer is no guarantee of success. And the tricky issue of privatisation is central in New South Wales, as it was in Queensland, where the Newman government fell.</p>
<p>And then there’s the factor of Tony Abbott and the intense federal leadership speculation.</p>
<p>The premier joins us today.</p>
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<p>Mike Baird, we’ve just seen the demise of two conservative governments at state level. Do you think this election will be closer than the present polling, which is quite good for you, suggests?</p>
<p><strong>Mike Baird:</strong> There’s no doubt that it will be a tight election, I’ve said that from day one.</p>
<p>Because what you will see unfold, what I anticipated seeing unfold, is exactly what we’re seeing. And that is that Labor would be very well funded, the unions will put a lot of money into this, they’re running a lot of advertising already. And obviously that’s going to have an impact. Doesn’t mean that their ads are true, in fact it’s quite the opposite.</p>
<p>But what’s very clear is that this campaign is a scare – it’s not about a vision, it’s about a scare – [and] they will be running that very hard.</p>
<p>But I’m very confident that our positive plan will prevail, because I genuinely think the people of New South Wales are looking for that sort of leadership. They don’t want the scare, they actually want the hope and they want truth, and I strongly believe that’s what we’re providing.</p>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> Now you’ve got such a big majority that inevitably there’ll be some swing. What do you think would be a good result for you?</p>
<p><strong>Mike Baird:</strong> A win? (Laughs.) Look, I’m not going to talk about [that], genuinely I’m looking to fight for every seat.</p>
<p>And I think Labor, I mean they were very confident they’re going pick up seat after seat after seat. They think that it’s their natural right to own seats.</p>
<p>And I have made the point, well, they actually don’t deserve, I mean every seat should be in contest, because the plans and policies they have put forward, I don’t think anyone’s seen anything as light as what Labor has offered over the last four years. And I think that is something they’re taking the electorate for granted.</p>
<p>So they might have the scare campaign but they don’t have a vision, they don’t have a plan, they don’t have a track record to run on.</p>
<p>And my hope is that we get more opportunity to convince more people in New South Wales to vote for us, because I think that’s what the state deserves: a plan and vision and hope for the future, as opposed to just the scare they’re running. </p>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> There’s been talk of a swing of about 10%. Do you think that’s a realistic assessment at this stage?</p>
<p><strong>Mike Baird:</strong> I don’t know what swing there’ll be but I’m not going to take anything for granted between now and the election and obviously as the votes are cast. </p>
<p>We will value and absolutely honour every vote we are given, because I think that this election, it’s not about should we be returned or not. It actually is about what is the future of this state? Do we have the comprehensive plan to deal with the congestion that’s gripping the city through the second harbour rail crossing, which gives 60% more capacity to our network? [It’s about] the motorways, the schools, the hospitals.</p>
<p>We have the capacity to fund them and deliver them, versus going back to bad old ways of what we saw in Labor, which is policies announced with no funding. That’s why this state didn’t move anywhere for such a long period.</p>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> Privatisation seems to scare the hell out of people. We saw that in Queensland, you’ve got a bit of struggle with it here in New South Wales. Why do you think people take this attitude?</p>
<p><strong>Mike Baird:</strong> It’s very easy to run a scare campaign against it. And Labor have done it very well. I mean, I pay credit to them that they’re good campaigners and that they can paint a story – doesn’t have to be true – but [they] can paint a story that says privatisation is not in the state’s interests, because they try and pretend on matters such as service reliability and pricing that the private sector means that things are going to get worse.</p>
<p>The facts tell a very different story.</p>
<p>I mean, there’s one story I have, which is the Manly fast ferry. It’s one where the government used to run it, it used to cost A$10 million a year, it used to break down every 16 trips. And people hated it.</p>
<p>The private sector has come in, it now costs government nothing. Fares are lower, service is better, reliability is much better, and that shows that it can work.</p>
<p>And in privatisations in terms of electricity, when they [private power companies] came into South Australia, when they came into Victoria, real costs actually went down.</p>
<p>So the truth is very different. Everyone in Macquarie Street knows that this is the right thing to do, in terms of leasing the poles and wires business, they know it’s the right thing to do. </p>
<p>But because of the scare campaigns that have gone in the past, no-one’s wanted to touch it.</p>
<p>And I think it’s about time that someone did the right thing for this state, was prepared to front up to the scare campaigns that were going to come, confront them with the truth, and confront them with the reality that this is the way we can fund the infrastructure we need. When we stood there waiting for it [before], we now have a plan to deliver it.</p>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> Just one more thing on privatisation. The unions have obviously been able to mobilise a big grassroots campaign. Do you have the resources in the Liberal Party and elsewhere to match that campaign on the ground?</p>
<p><strong>Mike Baird:</strong> We have a lot of local members, a lot of volunteers, a lot of supporters that are desperate for some of the infrastructure we’re going to be able to deliver that otherwise you wouldn’t. And really that’s what it is.</p>
<p>Yes, Labor has a lot of money through the union movement to throw at us. And I expect all types of scare campaigns to come between now and election day.</p>
<p>But my hope is our army of volunteers and members of parliament and candidates go out and tell the community that we are actually in a once in a generation position to deliver all of the infrastructure that we have waited for and waited for. We can deliver it.</p>
<p>And that provides benefits for their day-to-day journey. I mean, do they want to support a plan that keeps them in traffic longer, in more crowded trains, higher taxes? Or do they actually want a plan that enables them to get home quicker, to take away that congestion, greater sporting/cultural facilities that we’ve looked at and hoped for? Well we can deliver it.</p>
<p>And I think New South Wales is due the best, rather than the second best that we’ve seen before.</p>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> Your leadership image is a much softer, more moderate one than the images that either Campbell Newman had or Tony Abbott has now. And your popularity is much higher either than Newman’s was or Abbott’s is. Do you think that voters these days really are over the aggressive political approach?</p>
<p><strong>Mike Baird:</strong> I don’t think there’s any right answer to that. </p>
<p>I think people can get a sense of all types of things. They can get a sense of if a politician is being genuine. They can get a sense of if they understand that that politician actually can sense and understand the issues that are important to me and the challenges I’m facing in my day-to-day life, and they’re being honest with me.</p>
<p>I think all of that is what’s important. I think people’s styles – well, people can be themselves. But I generally think that’s all the electorate’s looking for.</p>
<p>Individuals are just saying they’re sick of politicians, they’re sick of politics, they want someone to stand there, to tell them the truth, to do it honestly, and to look after them.</p>
<p>I think if you get that package right, you’ve got a capacity to connect with the electorate.</p>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> Now obviously Canberra is in turmoil over the leadership of the federal Liberal Party now. How much is this impacting on your campaign?</p>
<p><strong>Mike Baird:</strong> There’s no doubt there’s challenges in Canberra, I’m not going to deny that, but I mean I’m actually running to be –</p>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> Challenges literally and figuratively!</p>
<p><strong>Mike Baird:</strong> Well, I mean, it’s – it is a difficult time. But I’m actually running to be premier of New South Wales. I’m not a member of the federal party, I’m not running for prime minister, I’m running for the incredible privilege and honour of being premier of this state and that’s what I’ll run on –</p>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> But is that all affecting you? Is this turmoil hitting your chances?</p>
<p><strong>Mike Baird:</strong> I think that by the time we get to the election, what will be clear is a choice for the people of New South Wales.</p>
<p>They will look at our track record, the vision of where we want to take our state, versus what Labor is offering, which is a scare.</p>
<p>I think you’ve got a vision versus a scare. Hope versus same old. And I think that’s what the people of this state will focus on.</p>
<p>If you’re in the north-west of Sydney, you have stood there for more than a decade, waiting for a – in fact, 17 years, Bob Carr announced the north-west rail link in 1998. It was not delivered, there was not a dollar towards it when we came in. </p>
<p>We are now close to halfway through it, it’s actually borer machines in the ground, it’s being delivered. And that to me is the difference. We’ve said we would; we are.</p>
<p>And the community has waited a long time for these projects. Under us, we are actually delivering them.</p>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> I am going to round you up back into this particular pen. Those who are agitating for the federal leadership to be resolved next week are using as one of their arguments that it will be damaging for the New South Wales government if this goes on throughout your campaign, better to get it done soon. Would you like to see a resolution next week?</p>
<p><strong>Mike Baird:</strong> I would like Canberra to get on with the job of actually looking after the people it’s supposed to be representing.</p>
<p>I am not going to buy into what might be happening down in Canberra, it’s not my role and responsibility.</p>
<p>What my job is is to continue to look after and focus on the people of New South Wales, whether it be delivering those infrastructure projects, putting more teachers in our schools, getting progress on the National Disability Insurance Scheme – all of those things, we are making huge progress.</p>
<p>And I think that’s what the people of this state want: they want me to focus on them and their issues, and obviously leave other matters to other people.</p>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> Now assuming Tony Abbott is still in place, will he be campaigning with you here in New South Wales, and will he be at your formal launch?</p>
<p><strong>Mike Baird:</strong> Yes, I mean, of course. I mean he is the prime minister, he has invested a record amount of infrastructure into western Sydney, indeed across the state.</p>
<p>He is doing his job as he should and we will be doing things together. So there’s no doubt that he would.</p>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> And he’ll be on the platform with you at the launch?</p>
<p><strong>Mike Baird:</strong> It’s not going to surprise you Michelle, I’m not in charge of the seat design at the convention or the launch, but he would be there, obviously.</p>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> He will be present, he will be speaking at that launch?</p>
<p><strong>Mike Baird:</strong> He would be there obviously, yep.</p>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> Apart from the leadership, are there other federal issues that are impacting on this campaign? I remember, for example, after the budget, you and other premiers were very upset about health and education funding. What about those sorts of issues federally, some of those budget issues: the Medicare co-payment, the university deregulation?</p>
<p><strong>Mike Baird:</strong> The biggest challenge facing this state and the nation is health funding. And what happened last federal budget is not sustainable. That was, the commonwealth and the federal government said ‘we are going to allocate a large part of the future growth in health costs from ourselves to the state governments’.</p>
<p>Now I said at the time, and I say it again, and I’ve said it many days since, both publicly and privately to the prime minister, that is not sustainable. The states do not have the capacity to meet those health costs on their own. The commonwealth has a critical role to play.</p>
<p>Now, this will be front and centre of the white paper discussion on federalism, which is planned for the middle of this year. And that’s where it’ll be resolved.</p>
<p>But I will be strongly making the case between now, the federal budget and that [white paper] discussion, saying there is no doubt that states cannot afford that health position, the requirement that’s been asked by the last federal budget on the states in the long-term.</p>
<p>So it does need to be resolved. And it is <em>the</em> critical issue, because it is the largest cost to the budget and it’s growing at the fastest rate, and that is a very bad combination for a state tax base.</p>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> Can you win that issue though?</p>
<p><strong>Mike Baird:</strong> I’m absolutely sure I can win that issue because it’s right.</p>
<p>And I think that’s where we are much better to have a constructive dialogue with the federal government, rather than to play megaphone diplomacy. </p>
<p>The people of the state want us to get outcomes for them and I can assure you that will be a key focus of mine, both now and every day until it’s resolved. Because it is really something that does need to be resolved for the good of the long-term finances and health system in this country.</p>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> Just finally, you came to this job in sudden and extraordinary circumstances, catapulted on a <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-16/nsw-premier-barry-ofarrell-to-resign-over-icac-grange-wine/5393478">bottle of good red wine</a>, indeed. Do you now feel on top of the job, or you do still feel that you’re on training wheels?</p>
<p><strong>Mike Baird:</strong> I feel very comfortable in the job, but I am absolutely determined to do much more.</p>
<p>I would be incredibly disappointed, I can’t tell you how disappointed I’d be, if I didn’t have the opportunity to continue beyond March. Because I can see where New South Wales is going. </p>
<p>If you walk amongst the streets, if you talk to our businesses, you see the cranes in the skies, you can see the economy is starting to move. And we want to do even more than that.</p>
<p>So we have a capacity to build this infrastructure, a once in a generation opportunity, and if you look at what’s happened in Queensland and in Victoria, the infrastructure focus and the momentum in our economy, it’d be almost unprecedented.</p>
<p>So to have an opportunity to lead that, to deliver things like the NDIS and to make a difference to some of our most vulnerable, together with some of the reforms we’ve done in health and education. I think this is some of the most exciting times in politics, to be honest, in terms of the opportunities to make a difference to people and to set New South Wales up like never before.</p>
<p>So from my point of view I feel very much comfortable in the role. I know I’ve got a fight on my hands. But I’m determined to keep New South Wales working, which is what this whole election’s going to be about.</p>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> Mike Baird, thank you very much. Thanks to my producer Matt Dawson, and also watch out for The Conversation’s coverage of the NSW election over the next few weeks.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can listen to Mike Baird on the Politics with Michelle Grattan podcast <a href="http://michellegrattan.podbean.com/e/mike-baird/?token=b2e1efc5840b78f5750cc55b2aca1a3b">here</a>, and read more coverage of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/nsw-election-2015">2015 NSW election</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/38171/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>‘I would be incredibly disappointed, I can’t tell you how disappointed I’d be, if I didn’t have the opportunity to continue beyond March … [these are] some of the most exciting times in politics’.Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/351592014-12-08T05:49:30Z2014-12-08T05:49:30ZIn Conversation with Nigel Crisp: Ebola response and lessons from African health leaders<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66516/original/image-20141208-20656-85hi28.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">By sharing their insights and knowledge, African leaders can improve health throughout the world.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/aspeninstitute/4786423873/in/photolist-9esPp9-7fwYb8-5xm81e-5xqvjy-8hXF4x-d3sLBw-8hXF9z-d6SiHd-d6RVXh-d6SfS1-8i1QwW">The Aspen Institute/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ebola has focused the world’s attention on the challenges of health care in Africa. The continent has 11% of the world’s population but 25% of the world’s disease burden. It also has just 1.3% of the global health workforce. </p>
<p>Yet African health leaders have shown enormous creativity, innovation and leadership in tackling global health challenges. </p>
<p>University of Melbourne Professor of Public Health Rob Moodie spoke with Lord Nigel Crisp about his new book – <a href="http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780198703327.do">African Health Leaders: Making Change and Claiming the Future</a> – and the lessons Australia and the world can learn from African health leaders. </p>
<p>Nigel Crisp is an independent crossbench member of the House of Lords, where he co-chairs the All Party Parliamentary Group on Global Health. Lord Crisp was chief executive of the National Health Service in England and permanent secretary of the UK Department of Health between 2000 and 2006. </p>
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Speaking with: Nigel Crisp.
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<p><strong>Rob Moodie:</strong> If I could start out by setting the scene from your latest book, <a href="http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780198703327.do">African Health Leaders: Making Change and Reclaiming the Future</a>. In it, your co-editor, Ugandan doctor Francis Omaswa, writes that over the past 30 to 40 years, the relationship between donors and African countries has been pretty mixed. As he says, donors have helped improve things but it’s been done at a price. </p>
<p>He talks about a loss of core values, the loss of self-respect, self-confidence and self-determination. What do you think has gone wrong? </p>
<p><strong>Nigel Crisp:</strong> Well, I think there was a certain inevitability about it. The quotation he uses is:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>we went begging for help and we got it in return for some of our core values. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>I suppose they were in the position of being weak in terms of their negotiating position, they were looking for help, and I suppose we came in from the west (and I associate the UK and the US and Australia and elsewhere) and tried to do our best.</p>
<p>You’ll know that very often you can come into a country and you can think you know the solutions because actually you’ve seen something similar in your own country. What, of course, you often forget and it takes you some time to remember and recognise, is that there are big cultural issues about how you do things and it’s not just as simple as applying our knowledge in another country. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66542/original/image-20141208-20513-104085f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66542/original/image-20141208-20513-104085f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66542/original/image-20141208-20513-104085f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66542/original/image-20141208-20513-104085f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66542/original/image-20141208-20513-104085f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66542/original/image-20141208-20513-104085f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66542/original/image-20141208-20513-104085f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">You can’t just transplant western health policies into African settings.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/hdptcar/2266279213">hdptcar/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>Now, a lot of what was actually done by the west has been terrific, obviously things like the development of antiretovirals and so on. So there’s western science and all sorts of very good things. </p>
<p>But we’ve slightly steamrolled it, and there’s also been political issues. If I take the American example of PEPFAR, they had to report to [the US] Congress very clearly on results and what they were doing, and that political tie pulls them back into Americans doing things, rather than Americans supporting other people to do things. </p>
<p><strong>Rob Moodie:</strong> The other argument that you spell out are the huge challenges for Africa. It has 11% of the world’s population, but 25% of the world’s disease burden, 65% of the HIV burden and a huge cut of the malaria burden, yet such a tiny proportion of the global health workforce. </p>
<p>You note that there have been some real successes out of this sort of adversity – task substitution is one. Your book is telling us what can we learn from African leaders in this regard. </p>
<p><strong>Nigel Crisp:</strong> Yes, well I think there’s a lot of hidden stories, unsung heroes, because inevitably in the UK and America and around the world the stories you hear are the stories about your own people. We hear about the great successes of the Bob Geldolf sort of mission and we don’t hear these stories from people actually within the situation, the leaders who are there all the time. </p>
<p>Within the book you’ll have noticed they’re always very respectful of the help that others give them, they’re welcoming of the help that others give them. But they want more space for themselves. You do have these fantastic leaders.</p>
<p>Let me start with Miriam Were in Kenya, 1976. Top medical student of the year, she did her PhD then on patient participation. And she did it on patient participation in 1976 because she’d recognised that actually the biggest issues about health were about hygiene and how patients behaved and how villages behaved. She was going to have the biggest impact by doing that. </p>
<p>So she set up these programs, which are really the forerunners of many community health worker programs all across Africa. And it’s a really interesting set of issues about not just patient involvement, but community involvement – how you get people involved. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66543/original/image-20141208-20495-7xutso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66543/original/image-20141208-20495-7xutso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66543/original/image-20141208-20495-7xutso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66543/original/image-20141208-20495-7xutso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66543/original/image-20141208-20495-7xutso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66543/original/image-20141208-20495-7xutso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66543/original/image-20141208-20495-7xutso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Community involvement has a big impact on health outcomes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/hdptcar/2529980825">hdptcar/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>Some of that has now been taken and copied and is being used in New York, working with a different sort of community but using the same sort of principles. So here you have a really important point about how you use a community to help itself, or how you help a community to help itself. </p>
<p>Or the other one that was also in 1976 was a young doctor called Pascoal Moccumbi who, like a lot of these leaders, had been in exile fighting a revolution. The Portuguese left after independence in 1974. By 1976 he found himself the Minister of Health, and he found he had no doctors because the Portuguese had left and they were basically the doctors. </p>
<p>His biggest pressing problem was pregnant women and how to care for them. So he set up a program of training, essentially nurses, to be able to do obstetric surgery, including Cesarean sections. They did it so well that it was being done at the same complication rate as it would be with physicians, at about a third of the price. And, of course, the nurses stayed in the country. </p>
<p>Now, 37 or 38 years later, it’s still continuing as successfully as it was then, and it’s peer-reviewed and so on. It has been a really interesting success story and I think that whilst I’m not suggesting that here in Australia that cesareans should be done by nurses – others may wish to suggest that – it’s a point about the principles. </p>
<p>It’s about opening your mind so you don’t have to think in terms of the boundaries of doctors and nurses that have essentially been negotiated through trade agreements and that there are some principles which show how you can actually do that sort of task-shifting successfully. </p>
<p><strong>Rob Moodie:</strong> In fact, in the UK, and certainly in Australia, we could learn from that in terms of practice nurses and nurse practitioners. It seems to be an ongoing demarcation dispute with the doctors, can’t we learn from that?</p>
<p><strong>Nigel Crisp:</strong> Exactly, and I gather you have an issue about nurses and endoscopists at the moment in Sydney or somewhere, I was told. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66546/original/image-20141208-20510-vzxeg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66546/original/image-20141208-20510-vzxeg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66546/original/image-20141208-20510-vzxeg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66546/original/image-20141208-20510-vzxeg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66546/original/image-20141208-20510-vzxeg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66546/original/image-20141208-20510-vzxeg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66546/original/image-20141208-20510-vzxeg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Task substitution must be seen as part of a bigger plan of teamwork.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/woodycollins/4104140748">Woody Collins/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Well we’ve gone past that in the UK; we’ve actually got nurses and endoscopists and they’re just normal; and we’ve got nurses prescribing and so on. But it’s the same set of principles. </p>
<p>There are basically five principles we pull out in the book, which are: </p>
<ul>
<li>Make sure you’ve got a plan. </li>
<li>Make sure you’re recruiting the right people because it’s not just any nurse. </li>
<li>Make sure they’re properly trained. </li>
<li>Make sure they’ve got access to supervision and the ability to refer. Because quite a lot of these schemes – and there have been lots of them around the world as you’ll know – have failed because when people got out of their depth there wasn’t someone to refer on to. </li>
<li>Then, finally, make sure that this is seen as part of a bigger plan of teamwork and teams.</li>
</ul>
<p>By and large, when you see those five things applied, you see these things working successfully – whether they’re in the UK or Australia or indeed in Malawi or Mozambique. </p>
<p><strong>Rob Moodie:</strong> If I could also ask you about the question or the issue of the day, which is obviously Ebola. It has focused so much international attention on health systems in West Africa. </p>
<p>But also, it really does bring this up as a global issue: what’s our international response? What’s the capacity of the local workforce? And what might we have done better, both there and internationally, to have responded to the challenge of Ebola? </p>
<p><strong>Nigel Crisp:</strong> Well, what I think is interesting about Ebola – and you’ll know this better than I – is that it’s not that easy to transmit. You’ve actually got to have contact with body fluids, unlike something like SARS, which is therefore much more frightening.</p>
<p>In the 38 years since Ebola was identified, we’ve had 25 outbreaks and they’ve all been contained fairly quickly. So what’s different this time? </p>
<p>What’s different is it’s in some of the poorest countries whose infrastructure has been almost destroyed, and the international response was too slow. Again, you’ll be aware that in Nigeria, for example, and in Congo even, DRC even more interestingly, they had outbreaks as part of this which they controlled. So the Congolese doctors dealt with it by themselves without any international help. </p>
<p>But in these three areas [Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia], I think the international help was late. Amongst other things, one of the reasons was when H1N1 was thought to be a pandemic, about two years ago, the WHO was considered to have overreacted: stockpiled drugs that weren’t necessarily the right ones and generally overreacted. </p>
<p>I think on this occasion they’ve under-reacted, or slowly reacted, in part because they overreacted last time. They got heavily criticised. So there’s sort of no win here. So, anyway, they got it wrong, so people have gone in later. </p>
<p>What is needed now is a massive input because the thing has got big and it’s massively important that it’s got on top of, partly – again, you’d know better than me – because there is the possibility of it mutating the longer it carries on and therefore it could become more dangerous. </p>
<p>And, secondly, the impact, which is not just the impact of the deaths of Ebola. It’s the impact of the deaths on society, from everyone avoiding hospitals and dying of other things. It’s the impact of the farmers not planting their crops. It’s the impact on the economy and so on. So there’s a real need. </p>
<p>I think two of the lessons that come out of this are, firstly, this is very connected with communities. It’s very connected with communal practices and cultural practices of washing bodies after death and these sort of things. This takes us back to the point that actually in a health system it needs to be built bottom-up. It needs to be built from community workers upwards. It needs to be about the paitent-empowerment type stuff Miriam Were was doing in 1976. </p>
<p>And our support in the future for countries like Sierra Leone needs to recognise that health systems need to be strengthened in that way. And that means building local leadership and supporting local leadership. </p>
<p>When it comes to the international response – and there needs to be international response – I think clearly there needs to be a rethink about what happened on that and particularly on a public health issue. I think we’re better at natural disasters – though this is a national disaster, I suppose – I think we’re better at earthquakes and things. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66580/original/image-20141208-16338-1l6lc5m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66580/original/image-20141208-16338-1l6lc5m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66580/original/image-20141208-16338-1l6lc5m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66580/original/image-20141208-16338-1l6lc5m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66580/original/image-20141208-16338-1l6lc5m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66580/original/image-20141208-16338-1l6lc5m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66580/original/image-20141208-16338-1l6lc5m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Africa has 25% of the world’s disease burden.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/un_photo/6830646333">United Nations Photo/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We need to have better ways of responding to public health crises. But I suspect there’s also need for an African response so that it is people with at least some potential local knowledge and so on who can work with local communities. </p>
<p><strong>Rob Moodie:</strong> I think you’ve raised a terrific point there. Colleagues have mentioned to me about the sort of response to date which has been a very medical, very military response to Ebola and has not really yet involved the community as we did with HIV. And I think we learnt a lot about the involvement of communities in HIV. </p>
<p>Do you think that’s what we should be doing here? That sense of making sure the community is actually involved in the fight against Ebola? </p>
<p><strong>Nigel Crisp:</strong> I think so. I’m going to quote again a wonderful expression in the book from Miriam Were:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If it doesn’t happen in the community, it doesn’t happen in the nation.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That’s where you’ve got to start. There’s another great African quotation:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Health is made at home, hospitals are for repairs. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>So both of them make the point that you’ve got to start where the people are. Start with their culture. Start with their understanding and work up from there. I think we need to do that. </p>
<p>Now where Ebola is, you’ve got to involve the military, you’ve got to involve the clinical interventions, because it has gotten big and it’s out of control. Well, not necessarily out of control, it’s sort of coming into control and it will take some time to do that sort of response. </p>
<p>The tragedy would be if we came away from this thinking that’s the sort of response we have to build up for the future. What you’ve got to build for the future is the resilience of the communities and an ability to respond as close to them as possible. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66581/original/image-20141208-16332-1ttof3e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66581/original/image-20141208-16332-1ttof3e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66581/original/image-20141208-16332-1ttof3e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66581/original/image-20141208-16332-1ttof3e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66581/original/image-20141208-16332-1ttof3e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66581/original/image-20141208-16332-1ttof3e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66581/original/image-20141208-16332-1ttof3e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Health systems need to be built from the bottom up.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/hdptcar/2266884024">hdptcar/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>Rob Moodie:</strong> Nigel, if I could get you to look at the future and the big challenges of health and health care in Africa. In your view, how are African nations going to balance this need to boost local health-care systems, their prevention systems, fight infectious disease and now pick up the battle against non-communicable diseases, like cancer and cardiovascular diseases and diabetes. How do they manage these challenges? </p>
<p><strong>Nigel Crisp:</strong> Well, what we say in the book, and I defer here to the Africans and particularly my co-editor, Francis Omaswa, is the first thing the Africans need to get their act together, they need to be more confident. He’s got a wonderful quotation in the beginning of the book which is something like:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>when we Africans feel the sense of shame of our position, we will act.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I think there is a big thing about Africans being self-confident enough to make things happen and not to be too dependent on the international community. So he sees that as a real starting point, and he can say that as an African and I can’t say it as a European. </p>
<p>The second thing is that there will still need to be very substantial support from the west and the east, the richer countries of the world, and that needs to be done on the basis of what we call co-development: a recognition that it’s in my interests too to help you develop your health system and that I will learn stuff from you and you will learn stuff from me. </p>
<p>Another great quotation is:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>everyone’s got something to teach and everyone’s got something to learn.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I think there are all kinds of opportunities for us to be much more creative in the way in which we work in these countries. </p>
<p>Just to take one is around staffing. You know the brain-drain issue of people having some level of health training and then leaving Africa and coming and living elsewhere (and this applies in other countries around the world). This is an important issue, but the even more important issue is that simply not enough people are being trained. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66583/original/image-20141208-16308-12i1lid.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66583/original/image-20141208-16308-12i1lid.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66583/original/image-20141208-16308-12i1lid.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66583/original/image-20141208-16308-12i1lid.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66583/original/image-20141208-16308-12i1lid.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66583/original/image-20141208-16308-12i1lid.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66583/original/image-20141208-16308-12i1lid.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Health is made at home and in the community.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/dfid/12344912503">DFID - UK Department for International Development/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If every African who had ever left, having had some health training, went back, it would deal with about 10% of the problem. The numbers are roughly about 150,000 have left and you need about 1.5 million. Roughly speaking, that’s the shape of the figures. </p>
<p>So that tells me two things. One is that we need to do much more to train more people, so I think part of our support can be that. But I would also put forward the proposition that maybe we should be training some of our people there. What would it be like if we actually had a year out of our training and had training in Africa? </p>
<p>It would be a damn sight cheaper for us and what would be interesting is we would pay the university, you know you’d twin the university between Melbourne and Blantyre and you from Melbourne would get the cheaper deal for that second year and you’d be paying Blantyre. </p>
<p><strong>Rob Moodie:</strong> You might study in Malawi, that’s a great idea. </p>
<p><strong>Nigel Crisp:</strong> So there’s that sort of stuff that can change the nature of the relationship and then the third thing is actually what’s the vision here, because we’ve got the wrong vision in our country. </p>
<p>From what I’ve read I think you and I probably have a similar vision. The future is about mobilising society to improve health. The great stuff in the UK of creating the NHS in 1948 was bringing together all the health systems – the private, public and everything – into a goal to improve health. What we’ve got to do now is to bring together all sectors of society that have an impact on health in order to improve health. </p>
<p>I think the Africans can be a bit ahead of us and that’s why, again in that book, we talk about health being made at home and in the community. I think I read that you’ve written something similar to that, about having to counteract the forces in society that currently make people unhealthy. </p>
<p><strong>Rob Moodie:</strong> Yes, you’ve particularly got to watch what the tobacco companies, alcohol companies and junk food companies are doing in Africa as well, because they will somehow be driving these non-communicable diseases. </p>
<p><strong>Nigel Crisp:</strong> Well, they will do indeed. I think Africans can be ahead if they’re confident enough about not trying to copy us. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66584/original/image-20141208-16311-lkci8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66584/original/image-20141208-16311-lkci8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66584/original/image-20141208-16311-lkci8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66584/original/image-20141208-16311-lkci8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66584/original/image-20141208-16311-lkci8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66584/original/image-20141208-16311-lkci8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66584/original/image-20141208-16311-lkci8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Africa is a diverse region with different problems requiring different solutions.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/69583224@N05/9351052884">European Commission DG ECHO/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>Rob Moodie:</strong> Finally, if I can just mention we’ve been teaching and training hundreds of young African doctors here in our school of public health. A couple of young Ugandan doctors, who topped the subject I teach, have gone back to Kampala and there are 20 of them back there, a young generation. I have enormous confidence, I must admit, in the new generation of doctors and health leaders there. Is that what you sense as well?</p>
<p><strong>Nigel Crisp:</strong> I think so. Our book is about three generations. It’s the 80-year-olds who were there at the beginning of independence. It’s the three current ministers, well actually two - one’s lost her job - current leaders writing about stuff. And then we took the views of six younger future leaders. I think they’re all terrific, but this last group is the sort of people you’re talking about; they’re world citizens. </p>
<p>But it’s patchy, Africa is 53 countries. I don’t know Malawi particularly well, but there’s not a huge strength in depth, I suspect, and I think one of the things we should be doing with our training is starting to build sufficient capacity. So if you’ve got 20 young doctors in Uganda who want to change the world, well they can do it. If you’ve only got two it’s a lot harder. </p>
<p>So I think there is something about a minimum number, a critical mass is what I’m thinking of, and some countries are there or nearer there, I think. Uganda is interesting; they’ve got a doctor now who is prime minister and he’s very interested in all this, which I think is very encouraging. I’m moderately hopeful. </p>
<p><em><a href="http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780198703327.do">African Health Leaders: Making Change and Claiming the Future</a> is published by Oxford University Press.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/35159/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rob Moodie has received funding from Department of Health and Ageing. He is Deputy Chair of the Advisory Council of the Australian National Preventive Health Agency. He is on the GAVI Alliance Evaluation Advisory Committee and his University receives sitting fees. In a voluntary capacity he is a member of the SEATCA Southeast Asia Initiative on Tobacco Tax (a project funded by the Gates Foundation) Steering Committee.</span></em></p>Ebola has focused the world’s attention on the challenges of health care in Africa. The continent has 11% of the world’s population but 25% of the world’s disease burden. It also has just 1.3% of the global…Rob Moodie, Professor of Public Health, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/321572014-09-25T20:08:00Z2014-09-25T20:08:00ZGrattan on Friday: In Conversation with Bill Shorten<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/59994/original/6ngfhr6g-1411619872.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Opposition leader Bill Shorten has found himself in a better than expected electoral position a year into his leadership. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Bill Shorten will have been a year in his job next month. After its trouncing at the election, Labor is in a much better position than many would have expected, leading on a two party basis in the polls. It has been helped by the government’s mistakes, but the national security issue is likely to play to the Coalition’s political advantage.</p>
<p>In an interview with The Conversation, Shorten talked about his style, those he turns to for advice - who include “mentor” Bill Kelty and former PM Paul Keating - and Labor’s history wars, raging with the release of Julia Gillard’s book.</p>
<p>As Gillard and Rudd continue the blame game, Shorten, a key player in both the 2010 and 2013 leadership changes, admits the 2010 one was “far too quick in hindsight”, but “my focus is on the future – it is not my aim to be the museum curator”.</p>
<p>Asked where a centre left party positions itself these days, Shorten says it is as “pro-growth with a strong safety net”. “It is reaching for higher ground. It is utilising all the talents. It is uniting the country, not dividing it.”</p>
<p>He says he makes a point of speaking to business leaders “every week” and describes his relations with business as “very good”. On the other side of the industrial fence, unions are “an important part of who the Labor party are” but the party must speak for people from all walks of life.</p>
<p>Shorten really fires up on climate change, declaring it a “massive issue”. With the ALP committed to the challenge of campaigning on an emissions trading scheme in 2016, he says “this government is so right wing on climate change it just defies belief”.</p>
<p>On the dispatch of forces to the Middle East, the opposition leader makes no apology for sticking close to Tony Abbott. “I take the government at their word. They’re conscious of not engaging in mission creep. We’ve set out our principles. The government hasn’t misled me thus far and I’ve got no reason to think they will.”</p>
<p>His approach for the 2016 election will be that “we won’t over-promise and break promises like Tony Abbott. Nor will we under-promise and be a totally small target”.</p>
<p>He says he’d bring to the nation’s top job the aim of getting “the smartest people into the room. I think I’m good at harvesting what people think and distilling it”. Describing himself as “a very compassionate person” he would like to be “prime minister for the powerless”.</p>
<p>The interview was on Wednesday evening, in Shorten’s Parliament House office, with the news dominated by the introduction of tough anti-terrorism legislation and Tuesday’s horrific incident in Melbourne that left a young terror suspect dead and two policemen injured.</p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan: How difficult has it been to transition from senior minister to this job?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Bill Shorten:</strong> It’s a big privilege doing the job. It’s a different job to being a senior minister. My challenge in the first twelve months has been to unify the party, to help start the process of building policies for the next election and to hold to the government to account. It’s distinctly different, there’s not people waiting for you to make the decision which will allocate resources, it’s not the same work as a minister, it is quite different.</p>
<p><strong>MG: Harder?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> Yeah, it’s harder than being a minister, leading the opposition.</p>
<p><strong>MG: Because?</strong></p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60033/original/xjng6krt-1411641980.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60033/original/xjng6krt-1411641980.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60033/original/xjng6krt-1411641980.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60033/original/xjng6krt-1411641980.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60033/original/xjng6krt-1411641980.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60033/original/xjng6krt-1411641980.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60033/original/xjng6krt-1411641980.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60033/original/xjng6krt-1411641980.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Shorten with deputy Tanya Plibersek.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> Different tasks are involved. Labor lost the last election quite decisively, so the rebuilding work is a different challenge. Unifying the party, attracting more people to the Labor party, holding the government to account, starting to build our policies for the next election, making sure we have good candidates, making sure that we have a positive narrative as well as holding them to account.</p>
<p>The other thing is, their budget was so ridiculously unfair and so divisive that frankly I was taken by surprise by their willingness to break promises. There seems to be only a few promises they’re interested in keeping and everything else is an optional extra.</p>
<p><strong>MG: Just standing back, what’s been the toughest aspect of year one for you?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> I’ll leave that for other people to decide.</p>
<p>For me it’s been trying to hold this government not to commit the mistakes it’s making with the Australian people. The toughest thing is how unfair their vision of Australia is.</p>
<p><strong>MG: I would have thought that was, in a way, the easiest aspect [for you]?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> The toughest aspect of it is they can’t win. We can’t let them win on wrecking Medicare. We can’t let them win on treating the unemployed the way they are or trashing higher education. So that is the biggest, toughest challenge we’ve got because they have the numbers in the House of Representatives.</p>
<p><strong>MG: But those were ammunition for you.</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> I’d rather the government wasn’t doing it. I don’t want people being used in this way, it is dreadful.</p>
<p><strong>MG: In terms of how you do the job, how do you manage the enormous demands that the job places on you. Tony Abbott for example is very fit and this sort of job is quite physically exhausting isn’t it?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> It is. My family are supportive, that’s crucial. I’ve got to reserve some space for being present for my family when I’m home, they keep it real. I’ve got excellent staff. My colleagues have been very supportive and very encouraging. So that’s how you manage and I do like to exercise most days when I get the opportunity.</p>
<p><strong>MG: What do you do?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> I run – slowly.</p>
<p><strong>MG: What distance?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> Seven or eight kilometres.</p>
<p><strong>MG: A day?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> Yeah, four or five days a week. Not very fast though.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/59991/original/dr7cn4nt-1411619125.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/59991/original/dr7cn4nt-1411619125.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/59991/original/dr7cn4nt-1411619125.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/59991/original/dr7cn4nt-1411619125.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/59991/original/dr7cn4nt-1411619125.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/59991/original/dr7cn4nt-1411619125.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/59991/original/dr7cn4nt-1411619125.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/59991/original/dr7cn4nt-1411619125.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Shorten family’s bulldogs, Matilda and Theodore.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The other thing I should tell you just on that is that I’ve got not one but two British Bulldogs now, so I walk them for an hour – well, they don’t walk for an hour actually.</p>
<p><strong>MG: How much time would you spend on the road?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> Travel has been extensive and is very demanding. Over a year it’d be 120 nights away.</p>
<p>And then there’s plenty of day trips as well, where you leave early and come home late. So, I’d be on the road three days a week.</p>
<p><strong>MG: Do you think the travel, the constant campaigning is excessive these days?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> I’ve never been the leader of the opposition before, I have nothing to compare it to. I like people, so I like campaigning. I like travelling the length and breadth of Australia.</p>
<p>Also, there’s a lot of people who want a strong Labor Party and that’s quite galvanising and energising. I’m also impressed our MPs are working pretty hard, so you get to see what people do.</p>
<p><strong>MG: Can you outline where you get your advice? How much do you rely on your personal office, do you have a circle outside to whom you go and how difficult is it to get fresh ideas?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> I get advice from my office, I get advice from my shadow ministry, I think I have a consultative style. Any of the major speeches I’ve given, from higher education, to indigenous affairs, to climate change, to national security, my colleagues are smart so I get advice from them.</p>
<p>I’ve always believed in trying to find three or four experts in any given area who are the smartest in the country and talk to them as well. So I try and reach beyond the parliament for advice and counsel. I’ve got advisors from the business world. I talk a lot to [former ACTU secretary] Bill Kelty, who is a mentor of mine. Again, my wife gives me good advice.</p>
<p>So I’ve always reached out to people across the political spectrum and across the spectrum of the community. I’m always interested in who does it best in the world on an idea and what people have got a view on what the future looks like. I’m also interested in how you get consensus.</p>
<p><strong>MG: Bob Hawke used to laud John Curtin and now politicians on both sides have accolades for Hawke. Who’s the leader you most admire and is there anyone that you use as a role model for this job?</strong></p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60031/original/5qr92hn7-1411641969.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60031/original/5qr92hn7-1411641969.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60031/original/5qr92hn7-1411641969.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=629&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60031/original/5qr92hn7-1411641969.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=629&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60031/original/5qr92hn7-1411641969.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=629&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60031/original/5qr92hn7-1411641969.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=790&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60031/original/5qr92hn7-1411641969.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=790&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60031/original/5qr92hn7-1411641969.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=790&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Former prime minister Paul Keating offers advice to Shorten.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Daniel Munoz</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> It’s a combination of people. I listen a lot to, as I said, Bill Kelty. Paul Keating’s been very helpful and very generous with his advice. I’ve had the chance to talk to Kim Beazley when I’ve been in Washington - he’s always very professional but he has good insights.</p>
<p>Reaching back, everyone from Whitlam to Curtin to Chifley have got lessons for us. I’m heavily influenced also by Martin Luther King. When in doubt, most of the questions we deal with have been thought of in some context before, so reading widely is a prerequisite.</p>
<p><strong>MG: And you get a bit of time to do that?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> You have to make time for that – it’s not an optional extra.</p>
<p><strong>MG: If you became prime minister how would you approach the job? Tony Abbott, for example, said he wanted to be the prime minister for infrastructure - what would you want to be the prime minister for?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> I’m a very compassionate person, I would like to be the prime minister for the powerless. People who don’t have a voice in society. I’d like to be a prime minister who tackled tough issues. I’m interested in being a prime minister who looks at the future as well. Being prime minister for science would be good.</p>
<p>I think one attribute which I would definitely bring to that leadership position is: you don’t have to be the smartest person in the room - what you have to do is get the smartest people into the room. I think I’m good at harvesting what people think and distilling it.</p>
<p>There’s a lot of smart people in Australia who want to make a contribution, the trick is to harness it, to not take forever listening. So I think that would be part of the attribute - I would bring people into government with diverse views.</p>
<p><strong>MG: What about in style? Over the years we’ve seen prime ministers who’ve got their hands in everything, we’ve seen prime ministers who stand back and let their ministers do their work.</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> I prefer to have a champion team than be the first among equals. I’m interested in getting the best out of my whole team. In my experience, it doesn’t matter if it is workplace relations or disability reform or superannuation, you get the best people and you get the best out of them by giving them some degree of autonomy, voice and control.</p>
<p><strong>MG: We’re talking about ministers here?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> Yes. I don’t want to micromanage people. We set our priorities, we set our directions, then you trust people to implement the steps towards those directions. My role is to help navigate, but there is a lot of people who can help row.</p>
<p><strong>MG: Are there any other aspects of style that you would highlight, that you want to bring to that job?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> I don’t divide society into goodies and baddies or lifters and leaners. My style is I’ve always believed in reaching for higher ground. The story of Australia is one of creating wealth, of growth, with great strong safety nets. So I wouldn’t want to waste anyone’s potential. I think everyone’s got something to offer.</p>
<p>Someone once said that everybody is somebody, and what I want to do is make sure that everybody can be the somebody that they were destined to be.</p>
<p><strong>MG: Your initial year has been much helped by the government’s problems - are you at all concerned that Labor’s lead in the polls, which has been consistent for quite a while now, is not a real lead in the sense that it could evaporate when people were actually making a choice?</strong></p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60032/original/h9r859pp-1411641970.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60032/original/h9r859pp-1411641970.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60032/original/h9r859pp-1411641970.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=875&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60032/original/h9r859pp-1411641970.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=875&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60032/original/h9r859pp-1411641970.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=875&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60032/original/h9r859pp-1411641970.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1099&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60032/original/h9r859pp-1411641970.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1099&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60032/original/h9r859pp-1411641970.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1099&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Shorten with his wife, Chloe.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Julian Smith</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> Well there’s no election on Saturday, so the numbers are not what fundamentally drive me. We have had a good start. I think that’s fair to say. It’s not just because of the government’s unfair budget. I think it’s also because this is a government who staked their reputation on telling the truth and they haven’t.</p>
<p>Also, my team have been united. They’ve been pretty disciplined and they’re starting to work on the strands of our narrative for the next election, so that’s helped too.</p>
<p>I think the most recent bout of history wars or legacy wars going on in the books just remind people that that was then and Labor has moved on from then.</p>
<p><strong>MG: Where does a centre left party position itself these days?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> On the centre left.</p>
<p><strong>MG: What does this mean in practice?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> It means we’re pro-growth, we’re pro an international economy, we want to be pro small businesses, we’re pro competition and pro productivity, we’re pro the creation of national income. But we are also for the efficient distribution of the national income. We’re also for a strong safety net of social justice. We’re not for leaving the poor behind. We believe it should be merit that guides people’s access to universities. It should be a strong superannuation safety net so that people just don’t have to rely in the future on the aged pension or the part pension.</p>
<p>So it is growth. It is reaching for higher ground. It is utilising all the talents. It is uniting the country, not dividing it. It’s based upon a strong safety net – pro growth with a strong safety net.</p>
<p><strong>MG: You have been criticised for replicating Tony Abbott’s negative tactics in many areas - do you think that’s just the way politics is played these days?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> I’ve been criticised for replicating Tony Abbott’s negativity and I’ve also been criticised for being too agreeable with him at times. It’s not bad going to be both at the same time, is it? Too agreeable and too oppositional.</p>
<p>Our opposition or our support will be based on the issues. There is no doubt that Tony Abbott helped create one of the most negative political environments that Australia has ever seen in peacetime, but when it comes to the budget and the unfairness of it, we didn’t ask him to divide the country or to make fairness a motif for what goes on.</p>
<p>They’re not a brave government. It doesn’t take courage to attack the most vulnerable, to make the sick pay more tax, to make the pensioners have a slower rate of indexation, to make it harder for working class kids to go to university. It’s not brave to massively slash funding to the states because you’re too scared to have an argument about tax reform.</p>
<p><strong>MG: By the time you get to the third year of the cycle do you think you’ll have to take on a quite positive…</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> I think I’m quite positive now. When it has come to national security, when it has come to talking about how we engage in recognition of Australia’s Aborigines.</p>
<p><strong>MG: Before we get onto that, I guess I meant in terms…</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> I’m not accepting the assumption of raw negativity.</p>
<p><strong>MG: I mean in terms of presenting positive policies.</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> We will.</p>
<p><strong>MG: And that will be the third year that you start to roll that out?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> It won’t be three minutes to midnight like Tony Abbott did. We won’t over promise and then break promises like Tony Abbott. Nor will we under promise and be a totally small target. Our process now that we are engaged in is listening to people. National policy forums, the work of my shadow ministers, reaching out to business on a constant basis, listening to the not-for-profit sector, talking to all the actors in our community.</p>
<p><strong>MG: So you’d start to roll out things when?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> Before the next election. Well before the next election.</p>
<p><strong>MG: You said yourself there are areas of agreement, which is very true on national security and the government’s military commitment to Iraq. Do you think that this will last in the medium term or do you expect mission creep of one sort or another will in fact fracture the consensus?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> I take the government at their word. They’re conscious of not engaging in mission creep. We’ve set out our principles. What we’ve endeavoured to do – and I’ve been greatly assisted in this by our national security team, including Stephen Conroy, Tanya Plibersek, Mark Dreyfus and others – is set out our principles.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60034/original/x4fxtr92-1411642150.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60034/original/x4fxtr92-1411642150.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60034/original/x4fxtr92-1411642150.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60034/original/x4fxtr92-1411642150.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60034/original/x4fxtr92-1411642150.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60034/original/x4fxtr92-1411642150.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60034/original/x4fxtr92-1411642150.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60034/original/x4fxtr92-1411642150.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Former Labor minister Gareth Evans speaking to Shorten.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Gareth Evans has been a useful source of advice in all this. We’ve set our principles which will guide us as circumstances change. So the government hasn’t mislead me thus far and I’ve got no reason to think they will. They understand that an extended on-the-ground, ground combat, unit role isn’t going to drain the swamp of terrorism and you can’t solve all these matters through military intervention alone.</p>
<p>Our guiding principle has been how do we assist innocent populations with humanitarian relief, from what is a dreadful, dreadful situation and that’s what guides us. The Iraqi government has requested this support. It is quite different perhaps to the second Gulf War. There is much stronger international coalition on this matter.</p>
<p><strong>MG: So you trust Tony Abbott on this, you don’t think he is backing you into some corner?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> I think national security is the most important issue. The politics of the day are a second order matter for the way we evaluate these. We’re interested in what’s right and wrong, not what is right and left.</p>
<p><strong>MG: You have assured the prime minister in a letter today that you’ll expedite that passage of the foreign fighters legislation through parliament after an inquiry into its detail. On first blush do you think Labor will want many changes to that legislation?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> I’m not going to usurp the work of the parliamentary committee. They did make a range of changes which the government has thanked us for on the first bill. So on the second bill it is almost 200 pages long, it needs to be investigated and debated. We need to hear from the security agencies, we need to hear from stakeholders. Our message is that we approach this with goodwill. We don’t approach this with partisanship.</p>
<p>Of course the detail is important and that is why we made clear we want the committee to do its work, as parliament should do and as this committee has done in the past.</p>
<p><strong>MG: Do you think Labor’s bipartisanship will disillusion some of your base supporters?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> Is that because we’re being too positive not too negative?</p>
<p><strong>MG: Yes, too positive on this.</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> It’s difficult, isn’t it, in this job. If you’re too negative, too oppositional, well that’s too much, and if you show any bipartisanship well that’s too soft. There seems to be a very fine line here which is not always easy to detect to the human eye.</p>
<p><strong>MG: Well there are also different constituencies of course.</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> There are.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60038/original/58gp4rjk-1411642727.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60038/original/58gp4rjk-1411642727.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60038/original/58gp4rjk-1411642727.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60038/original/58gp4rjk-1411642727.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60038/original/58gp4rjk-1411642727.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60038/original/58gp4rjk-1411642727.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60038/original/58gp4rjk-1411642727.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60038/original/58gp4rjk-1411642727.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Shorten during question time.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>No because we’re taking a principles based approach. I can make no apology for prioritising our national security. I do not think that there are very many people involved at all in planning dreadful evil acts against Australians. But the truth of the matter is there are some. It’s a very small number. So you’re silly to ignore the intelligence briefings that you get and the facts at your disposal.</p>
<p>By the same token, as I said in parliament today, we’ve been through difficult times in the past as a nation, we will live through challenging times in the future. What we require is to exercise wisdom and knowledge and that is what people expect of us. So I take this on the merits of the issue and the priority of security, balanced against the liberties of ordinary Australians.</p>
<p><strong>MG: Do you think the national security issues inevitably benefit the government, in the short term at least?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> Well there’s a political set of opinions that say the government of the day benefits. I can’t afford to let that be the issue. What benefits the nation is consistent long term principled decisions. What’d benefit Labor is if we adopt consistent principle positions about the national interest.</p>
<p>Politics is a second order issue when we deal with matters like this - it just has to be second order. The first order issue is our communities, our nation, our families and that’s the way I approach it.</p>
<p><strong>MG: This week the United States Secretary of State John Kerry said that one can make a powerful argument that climate change might be “the most serious challenge we face on the planet because it’s about the planet itself”. Do you agree with him?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> I think it’s a massive issue. They’re his words, but climate change is one of those tests of the parliament, because it is not just about the here and now, it is about the future. This government has been appalling on climate change.</p>
<p>When you see Joe Hockey complaining about wind towers making him sick. When you see the government retreating the whole renewable energy model, a multi-billion, multi-thousand employing sector, treating it as some sort of basket weaving enterprise, this government is so right wing on climate change it just defies belief.</p>
<p><strong>MG: You’re committed to campaigning on an emissions trading scheme in 2016, this does look a hard sell against a scare campaign from Tony Abbott.</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> Well we are not going to have a carbon tax at all. We believe in the power of the market, Tony Abbott doesn’t. It’s funny isn’t it - he doesn’t want to send a price signal to the market when it comes to sustainability and climate change, but he’s happy to put a price signal for poor people going to the doctor with sick children.</p>
<p><strong>MG: So you think you can sell it?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> I don’t think there is any choice about the campaign. If Tony Abbott keeps trying to scare Australians about climate change, he is betraying the future.</p>
<p><strong>MG: Next year will be Labor’s national conference - what’s the minimum you will expect that to deliver in party reform?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> We need to be a membership-based party, not a faction-based party. We need to have the mechanisms whereby we can get the best candidates possible. We need to be a party that is genuinely open and accessible to people from all walks of life, not just some of our traditional bases.</p>
<p><strong>MG: The material coming from the union royal commission is potentially a serious problem for Labor. What are your plans for managing the party’s relationship with these powerful union affiliates without making it appear compromised or beholden to them?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> Well just to go to the assumption in your question: this is Tony Abbott’s royal commission into trade unions. It is a forum for people to settle old scores. I’m not going to provide a running commentary or preempt what the royal commission does or doesn’t do.</p>
<p>In terms of our relationship with unions more generally, unions are an important part of who the Labor Party are and they’ve got an ongoing contribution to make. But I do not see the Labor Party as purely being the political arm of trade unions. We’re not the political arm of anyone except the Australian people.</p>
<p>Some trade unionists won’t like what I say, but I don’t think they can fault my record in terms of being committed to the rights of working people. The Labor Party needs to not just be perceived as acting for certain of the institutions of Australian society. People from all walks of life need to feel that the Labor Party speaks for them. There is no going back.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/59992/original/q5rpztrg-1411619164.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/59992/original/q5rpztrg-1411619164.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/59992/original/q5rpztrg-1411619164.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/59992/original/q5rpztrg-1411619164.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/59992/original/q5rpztrg-1411619164.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/59992/original/q5rpztrg-1411619164.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/59992/original/q5rpztrg-1411619164.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/59992/original/q5rpztrg-1411619164.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Shorten considers himself pro-business.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>MG: How important and how possible is it for you to improve the Labor-business relationship, which has been strained in the last few years. Surely business is going to pull out all stops to prevent the re-election of Labor at the next election?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> I don’t have an us-and-them view about business. It is one of the great myths about workplace relations in Australia. Most of my time was spent resolving issues for business and their employees. You can’t have someone have a job unless business is making a profit. It goes back to that basic proposition that I believe in reaching for higher ground, I believe in growth and the creation of wealth and that’s done with a strong safety net. So my relations with business are very good.</p>
<p><strong>MG: You’re working on this actively?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> I make a point of speaking to business leaders every week, every week. And some of my closest confidants are people in business who give me good advice.</p>
<p><strong>MG: Is that different business leaders every week?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> Yes, although I have some who are generous enough to give me advice on a regular basis.</p>
<p><strong>MG: You referred earlier to the history wars. We’ve seen a spate of books and interviews about the Rudd-Gillard years. You were a key player in both coups…</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> I just don’t buy your language on coups, Michelle.</p>
<p><strong>MG: Well you were a key player in changes of leadership, if we put it in more polite terms. Do you regret how you acted in either of those?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> First of all just on the first part: people have the right to tell their story. I think Wayne Swan has the right to write his book and Bob Carr does and Julia Gillard does.</p>
<p>My focus is on the future. It is not my aim to be the museum curator. In the past I have made it clear that I think that the change in 2010 happened almost too quickly and in 2013 again I’ve stated, as I’ve said in the past plenty of times, that was incredibly difficult. I felt I had to put [first] the interests of Labor doing as well as it could electorally. So those difficult decisions were made.</p>
<p><strong>MG: So is the summary there, that you’ve got some regrets about 2010 but not 2013?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> I have regrets that Labor was so disunified. I have regrets about the circumstances.</p>
<p><strong>MG: But about yourself?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> As I said, I regret that in 2010 there wasn’t more explanation of what had happened and why, and in 2013, I regret that the relations had got to a point which made making choices inevitable.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60037/original/r4tc52dn-1411642308.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60037/original/r4tc52dn-1411642308.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60037/original/r4tc52dn-1411642308.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60037/original/r4tc52dn-1411642308.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60037/original/r4tc52dn-1411642308.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60037/original/r4tc52dn-1411642308.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60037/original/r4tc52dn-1411642308.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60037/original/r4tc52dn-1411642308.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Shorten with then-prime minister Julia Gillard.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Rob Blakers</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>MG: But in 2010 do you think the party should have delayed?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> I think it was far too quick in hindsight.</p>
<p><strong>MG: Should the change have been made at all?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> We made the changes and I still have the view that Julia Gillard was an excellent leader. None of what I have said is motivated by any negativity about Julia or Kevin.</p>
<p><strong>MG: But it would have been better to leave it till after the election?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> I think it was done too quickly. But again, I’ve been in books, there’s nothing new that I’m going to say that I haven’t already said. My focus is completely the future.</p>
<p><strong>MG: Looking to the fairly immediate future, if Tony Abbott reshuffles his ministry later this year are you likely to make adjustments in your own team?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> Well let’s see what he does administratively in terms of responsibilities. If he changes or if he shrinks George Brandis’ portfolio, or if he further emasculates Ian Macfarlane’s portfolio, or if they decide to do away with calling someone a minister for the environment all together.</p>
<p>I don’t have any desire to reshuffle, I’m satisfied with the team I have.</p>
<p><strong>MG: But you don’t rule it out?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> No, it’d have to be a pretty extraordinary set of circumstances. I’m happy with the team I’ve got and I think consistency and continuity is an important part of what we do.</p>
<p><strong>MG: Labor cuddled up to the Greens and then distanced themselves from them. In New Zealand the same distancing has been seen as a mistake in the last week or so in the wake of the election. How do you now see the Greens? Are they the party closest to Labor on the political spectrum or is that the Liberal Party?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> I don’t see Labor in the context of close or not to Greens or to Liberals. My plan is to rebuild confidence in the Labor brand and what we stand for. What the Greens do is up to them. What the government does is up to it. I can’t control those things and I don’t seek to. What I do seek is that the Labor Party at the next election, people can articulate what we stand for and they do it on the basis of three years having been quite consistent in opposition.</p>
<p>So for me the work is building what we stand for, communicating quite clearly to the electorate and engendering confidence in the electorate. It’s not whatever Greens, Palmer United, Liberals, Nats or anyone else do.</p>
<p><strong>MG: Do you believe this could be a one term government and if that’s not a fulfillable aspiration, would you want to stay on as leader for a second election?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> My aim is to do as well as we can in this election and that’s what my sights are set on.</p>
<p><strong>MG: Which is not necessarily victory?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> No, I’m in this to win it, but I accept that it has been accomplished very rarely in Australian political history to win in the first term. On the other hand, I don’t think we’ve ever seen a government have so long to bring down its first budget and to do such a spectacularly bad job of it.</p>
<p><strong>MG: But do you think you would have the support and the personal political stamina for a six year run to power?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BS:</strong> I’ve got excellent stamina. I think what my team and Labor voters and indeed Liberals expect me to do, is to try our very best to win the next election and that is our focus. And to do so on the basis of having held this government to account and to do so on the basis that we’re united, to do so on the basis that we’ve got great candidates and a dynamic party growing and to do so most importantly on a positive set of ideas about what Australia looks like, not just at the next election, but in the next ten years and twenty years. It’s all about the future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/32157/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Bill Shorten will have been a year in his job next month. After its trouncing at the election, Labor is in a much better position than many would have expected, leading on a two party basis in the polls…Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/309032014-08-29T03:57:53Z2014-08-29T03:57:53ZIn Conversation with environment journalist Elizabeth Kolbert<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/57450/original/yj6qgmkn-1409104105.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A dead coral reef in the Caribbean. Coral reefs are extremely vulnerable to climate change and ocean acidification. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/najila/2734813646">superqq/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55999/original/mvjmhchb-1407454356.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55999/original/mvjmhchb-1407454356.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55999/original/mvjmhchb-1407454356.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=879&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55999/original/mvjmhchb-1407454356.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=879&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55999/original/mvjmhchb-1407454356.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=879&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55999/original/mvjmhchb-1407454356.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1104&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55999/original/mvjmhchb-1407454356.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1104&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55999/original/mvjmhchb-1407454356.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1104&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Elizabeth Kolbert</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">MWF</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Scientists are coming to the conclusion that we are on the brink of a mass extinction — the sixth known in the history of the Earth, and the latest since an asteroid killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. This time we are the culprits. </p>
<p>Wherever humans go, extinction seems to follow, but worse is yet to come, with climate change and ocean acidification compounding pressures humans already place on ecosystems. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.bloomsbury.com/au/the-sixth-extinction-9781408851210/">The Sixth Extinction</a> is the topic of the latest book by journalist Elizabeth Kolbert. An environmental commentator for <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/contributors/elizabeth-kolbert">The New Yorker</a>, Kolbert previously wrote about climate change in <a href="http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/field-notes-from-a-catastrophe-9781596911253/">Field Notes from a Catastrophe</a>. </p>
<p>Here environmental scientist Bill Laurance talks with Kolbert about extinction, climate change, and explaining bad news. </p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Bill Laurance</strong>: What do you see as the biggest changes that are causing species to go extinct now, and how do you think that might change in the future?</p>
<p><strong>Elizabeth Kolbert</strong>: A lot of extinctions have been caused by <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/invasive-species">alien species</a>. This is especially true on islands, but also in Australia which has lost many <a href="https://theconversation.com/to-save-australias-mammals-we-need-a-change-of-heart-27423">native species</a> to native invaders. That’s a big driver — we’re moving species around the world constantly, and that can sometimes have very devastating impacts. </p>
<p>In the case of large mammals we’re seeing hunting and poaching. Many species are highly endangered right now. Elephants are really in crisis right now owing to poaching. Rhinos are really in crisis right now thanks to poaching, and habitat fragmentation. </p>
<p>There’s a lot of very bad synergies going on right now. If you look forward to really big drivers which I talk about in my book, which are overlain on these others, there’s climate change and ocean acidification. By pouring billions of tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere we’re driving climate change at a speed that probably hasn’t been seen for many millions of years. </p>
<p>And we are acidifying the oceans in a way that almost certainly that has not been seen for many many millions of years. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/57454/original/p59w9gbp-1409104414.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/57454/original/p59w9gbp-1409104414.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/57454/original/p59w9gbp-1409104414.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/57454/original/p59w9gbp-1409104414.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/57454/original/p59w9gbp-1409104414.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/57454/original/p59w9gbp-1409104414.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/57454/original/p59w9gbp-1409104414.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/57454/original/p59w9gbp-1409104414.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Poaching is driving the decline of big mammals such as elephants.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/enoughproject/8963557373">ENOUGH Project/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>Bill Laurance</strong>: When communicating environmental issues, do we need to polarise debates and identify “bad guys”, or search for broad-based consensus, or something else altogether?</p>
<p><strong>Elizabeth Kolbert</strong>: My approach has been to — as journalists do — to tell stories. I’ve tried to avoid particular story lines with villains and heroes, because unfortunately we are all participants to one degree or another to what is going on on our planet. </p>
<p>That responsibility varies depending on whether you live in developed country like Australia or the US, or whether you live in less-developed countries which use fewer resources. But we all to one degree or another have responsibility. </p>
<p>I’ve tried to tell stories that don’t admit as much contradiction. They are just things that are happening on the ground; you can go and watch them happen. Well, <em>you</em> might not be able to watch them happen, but through a journalist going there you can. So that’s the approach I take.</p>
<p>There are many different approaches that other people have taken, and I think that they’re all worth a try. How exactly you get to and reach people is something nobody seems to have figured out.</p>
<p><strong>Bill Laurance</strong>: Who do you admire most as environmental communicators and leaders?</p>
<p><strong>Elizabeth Kolbert</strong>: There are a lot of people out there who have told stories of different kinds. They’re all American — because I’m American! I think <a href="http://www.billmckibben.com/books.html">Bill McKibben</a> is a very effective communicator. <a href="http://www.nationalgeographic.com/explorers/bios/thomas-lovejoy/">Thomas Lovejoy</a> has been done a great job communicating. There’s been a bunch of recent books in this space — <a href="http://www.fas.harvard.edu/%7Ehsdept/bios/oreskes.html">Naomi Oreskes</a> has done a great job. </p>
<p>People have tried all sorts of different texts. I don’t know anyone who says “I’ve truly succeeded and broken through” — but there are a lot of people trying. </p>
<p><strong>Bill Laurance</strong>: Communicating uncertainty in science is vital, yet it’s also a fine line to walk. How do you convey uncertainty and yet not leave your audience feeling as though we know too little to act? Or allow the Bjorn Lomborg’s and other naysayers of the world to exploit such uncertainty in order to advocate for complacency or inaction?</p>
<p><strong>Elizabeth Kolbert</strong>: A lot of story-telling involves things that have already happened. When I wrote a book about climate change, I went out with people who have logged data already, and seen changes already happening that we could be quite confident could be attributed at least in part to man-made climate change. </p>
<p>If we were doing a statistical analysis of this we could say exactly what proportion of the attribution we could give to climate change and to natural variability. If I were doing a scientific paper I would have to grapple with that, but because I’m telling a story, the issue of uncertainty is less an issue when you’re talking about things that are happening as we speak or have happened. For the book I went to Greenland and talked to native Greenlanders about what changes they were seeing happening. </p>
<p>Ditto with writing about extinction. In many cases we’re talking about species that are already extinct, so there’s no uncertainty there.</p>
<p>Unfortunately what we know is alarming enough, and what we don’t know is maybe even more alarming. What we can actually see happening before our eyes — that’s what I tend to write about. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/57460/original/vfdt47qd-1409104962.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/57460/original/vfdt47qd-1409104962.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/57460/original/vfdt47qd-1409104962.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/57460/original/vfdt47qd-1409104962.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/57460/original/vfdt47qd-1409104962.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/57460/original/vfdt47qd-1409104962.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/57460/original/vfdt47qd-1409104962.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/57460/original/vfdt47qd-1409104962.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This glacier in Argentina has retreated by over 3 kilometres each year since 2002.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasa2explore/10679814485">NASA/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>Bill Laurance</strong>: Where does the issue of human population growth sit among your constellation of environmental concerns? </p>
<p><strong>Elizabeth Kolbert</strong>: Every way you look at how humans impact on the planet there are a couple of figures: one is how many individuals there other, the second is how many resources are they consuming. </p>
<p>Obviously, both of those matter. You can have long arguments about which matters more. But in some sense that matters where you are on the planet; some of us are very, very big consumers and some of us are not. Those of us who are big consumers tend to be having fewer children, so in some ways they’re counteracting trends. </p>
<p>But population is a very big part of what’s happening. If the population were 500 million on the planet, things would be very different, but there are 7.2 billion of us, and we are nearing 8, and heading for 9, and after that is something of an open question.</p>
<p><strong>Bill Laurance</strong>: Humans have a long and rather spectacular history of killing off other species. But many of our behaviours and instincts are deeply embedded and, in fact, probably adaptive in an evolutionary sense. Can we overcome our past to achieve a more equitable future, or are we essentially victims of our own biological legacy?</p>
<p><strong>Elizabeth Kolbert</strong>: Unfortunately when you look at the fossil or subfossil record — and Australia is the primary example — as soon as people arrive you see a wave of extinctions that were almost certainly caused by people. There weren’t very many of them, and technologically they weren’t consuming a lot. Nevertheless the disparity between people who can change very quickly, who can make a new tool, puts us out of step with evolution. <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/tim-flannery-11549">Tim Flannery</a> has written very eloquently on this.</p>
<p>That has been true for a very long time - for 50,000 years. Now that there are many more of us, and we’re much more technologically sophisticated, and we’re consuming a lot more resources, it’s a very hard to say that we’re going to stop doing that. </p>
<p>But it’s what we all have to be thinking about — how can we try to minimise our impacts. There is a very profound issue here that transcends modernity, about how humans relate to the rest of the world. </p>
<p><em>Kolbert is appearing at the 2014 Melbourne Writers’ Festival on Friday August 29 for <a href="http://www.mwf.com.au/session/talking-points-the-sixth-extinction/">Talking Points: The Sixth Extinction</a>, and then at the Sydney Opera House Festival of Dangerous Ideas for <a href="http://fodi.sydneyoperahouse.com/events/asteroid">We Are the Asteroid</a> on Saturday August 30.</em></p>
<p><em>Read more coverage of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/mwf-2014">Melbourne Writers’ Festival</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/30903/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bill Laurance receives funding from the Australian Research Council and other scientific and philanthrophic organisations. In addition to his appointment as Distinguished Research Professor and Australian Laureate at James Cook University, he holds the Prince Bernhard Chair in International Nature Conservation at Utrecht University, Netherlands. This chair is co-sponsored by Utrecht University and WWF-Netherlands.
</span></em></p>Scientists are coming to the conclusion that we are on the brink of a mass extinction — the sixth known in the history of the Earth, and the latest since an asteroid killed off the dinosaurs 65 million…Bill Laurance, Distinguished Research Professor and Australian Laureate, James Cook UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/306212014-08-20T20:16:38Z2014-08-20T20:16:38Z‘I consider science a luxury’: In Conversation with Ada Yonath<p>Israeli crystallographer Ada Yonath shared the <a href="http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2009/">2009 Nobel prize in Chemistry</a> for her work the ribosome – a protein-building structure central to life found in all living cells.</p>
<p>Professor Yonath determined the ribosome’s molecular structure using a technique called <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-x-ray-crystallography-22143">X-ray crystallography</a> and her work has led to understanding of how antibiotics work as well as new drug targets. She currently <a href="http://www.weizmann.ac.il/sb/faculty_pages/Yonath/home.html">heads a research group</a> at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.</p>
<p>Curator of the University of Melbourne Chemistry Cultural Collection and researcher Dr Renee Beale spoke to Professor Yonath after a <a href="http://events.unimelb.edu.au/presenters/2360-professor-ada-yonath-nobel-laureate">public lecture</a> in Melbourne about her upbringing in Israel and how it set her up for a life in science.</p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Renee Beale</strong>: How did your early experiences lead to ongoing curiosity in science?</p>
<p><strong>Ada Yonath</strong>: I’m not really sure. My family was very poor and we lived in a rented apartment above a kindergarten, which I attended. My father trained as a rabbi but did not take advantage of his education and my mother’s parents lived on the next block and they were still very religious, so [my parents] were not very scientific. But my mother said I was always asking “Why is that red?” and “Why do we have winter?” and “Why is this liquid more viscous?”</p>
<p>The schools around where we lived – boys schools and girls schools – were good, but did not teach much. They were good for education in relation to life, but not in relation to knowledge.</p>
<p>The kindergarten teacher was also the owner of the house and I was one of 20 children. She actually was great. She told my parents that the education I could get in the neighbourhood was below me; that I was above it.</p>
<p>Her husband was a high school teacher and they both said I shouldn’t spend my studying time in the neighbourhood. She suggested I go to a more modern school but that involved catching the bus, as the school was about five or six kilometres away. At the time, around 1946, there was tension between the Arabs and the Jews. People would throw stones at buses, so they decided I was too young to go on such a bus.</p>
<p>The kindergarten teacher identified nine other kids and she would teach us first grade in the kindergarten, so we would play all morning then when the other kids went home at 12 we’d study writing, reading – not much, but sufficient. At the end of the year she went with me to one of the best schools at the time and the headmaster examined me, and put me directly into second grade.</p>
<p>I still remember her. She was a positive and warm person.</p>
<p>After my father died when I was 11, my mother asked me to fill out some forms to help her. I was shocked – a high school kid had to help her mum to calculate 10% or 8% of something. This really stuck with me, I think. Knowledge and understanding and skills of this nature became important for me.</p>
<p><strong>Renee Beale</strong>: Creativity is not usually associated with science by those outside of the discipline, but your research is a beautiful example of this. Can you tell us about your creative approach to crystallise and characterise the structure of the ribosome?</p>
<p><strong>Ada Yonath</strong>: Ribosomes translate genetic code in each cell – elephants, bacteria, cockroaches, everything – and they’re the factories that get instructions from the DNA and make proteins. They do this in a fantastic way – it’s immediate and almost mistake-free. So how does it happen? [Before I started my research] everyone knew what ribosomes do, but not how, and that was what I wanted to understand.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Jml8CFBWcDs?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Twenty years of research condensed into two minutes of footage.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Very good scientists including Nobel prizewinners – such as Watson who, together with Crick, determined the DNA structure – tried for years to crystallise [ribosomes], and failed. There were papers saying it wasn’t possible and their explanation was because they [the ribosomes] are large and dynamic and have to move – all things that disturb crystallisation, ordered periodic packing.</p>
<p>Here I come, a young scientist with very very little experience, and I say: “I want to crystallise it [ribosomes] and I have an idea.” This was because I had an opportunity to read when I was recovering from an accident – all types of things, including about a delegation that went to the North Pole to see what happens to the [polar] bears when they’re winter-sleeping.</p>
<p>Their side-finding was that ribosomes are very well-packed, like oranges in a box, in the inner side of cells membranes in monolayers. They showed a picture of it and for them, it was just a finding. But I was excited – first and foremost, it was possible! Prominent scientists couldn’t do it, many [others] couldn’t do it, but bears could do it!</p>
<p>I thought: “Why is this so?” Ribosomes deteriorate within a few days, like everything in our life – all the proteins and so on. I thought that one of the main reasons others couldn’t [have success in getting ribosomes to] crystallise was ribosomes deterioration, which may cause structure alterations, they can’t crystallise because of their shape variability – you can only make crystals if the objects are the same.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56698/original/krrpwsdm-1408346534.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56698/original/krrpwsdm-1408346534.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56698/original/krrpwsdm-1408346534.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56698/original/krrpwsdm-1408346534.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56698/original/krrpwsdm-1408346534.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1135&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56698/original/krrpwsdm-1408346534.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1135&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56698/original/krrpwsdm-1408346534.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1135&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/tambako/4926188419">Tambeko The Jaguar/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Then I thought bears have this mechanism that nature gave them to maintain a large pool of active ribosomes under stressful conditions [throughout winter sleep] so I looked for ribosomes that were more robust, that came from conditions that are very extreme, like hot springs and the Dead Sea, and looked for procedures that extend their life even only by one day. Instead of four days, they exist five days.</p>
<p>[More recently] we identified in all ribosomes an internal region that seems to be pre-biotic [before life] machinery that still functions in our body. Many scientists doubted it but slowly we observed more positive reactions so now when I talk about it they say: “Oh, you want a second Nobel prize?”</p>
<p>Really, it’s not for a second Nobel prize. I didn’t even want to the first one – well, that’s not to say I didn’t want one, but it just wasn’t a factor.</p>
<p><strong>Renee Beale</strong>: A career in scientific research can be quite challenging and competitive. What are your tips for early career scientists?</p>
<p><strong>Ada Yonath</strong>: I have four tips:</p>
<ol>
<li>Curiosity. Go after your curiosity.</li>
<li>More curiosity.</li>
<li>Even more curiosity.</li>
<li>Passion. It’s not enough to be curious – one has to really love what one does. For men and women, science is demanding and there are many, many dark periods, low periods.</li>
</ol>
<p>If we talk about family, one also must love the family. Family is not punishment! When I sit with young people and they say, “You’re a mother and you took care of the kids”, I say: “It’s a privilege.”</p>
<p>Usually on [discussion] panels it’s five men and me and I say, “Family is not punishment. You don’t have this privilege – this great excitement of being pregnant and having a child and taking care of the child.” I look at it as a blessing rather than a problem.</p>
<p><strong>Renee Beale</strong>: There are many women who choose not have families to pursue a career. I had my daughter when I was writing up my PhD.</p>
<p><strong>Ada Yonath</strong>: You were lucky – I had my daughter in the middle of my PhD! If you want to have them [children] and you want to do science one has to find a way to do it.</p>
<p>If you don’t want family, don’t have a family, and if you don’t want to be a scientist, don’t be a scientist! You have to find a way [to do both if you want to]. Many young scientists ask me “How did you balance?” I never thought about the balance – I took it day by day.</p>
<p>[After my daughter was born] I worked after midnight. If there was a kindergarten for my daughter, I put her in the kindergarten. If she liked it, she could stay there. If my child was very ill, though, it would be very different.</p>
<p>But I cannot sit here and give advice for all problems in the world – that’s my attitude. Maybe because I was so poor when I was a child, I consider science a luxury, and whatever happened was good!</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/30621/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Renee Beale has received funding from the Australian government through the Inspiring Australia initiative.</span></em></p>Israeli crystallographer Ada Yonath shared the 2009 Nobel prize in Chemistry for her work the ribosome – a protein-building structure central to life found in all living cells. Professor Yonath determined…Renee Beale, Curator, Chemistry Cultural Collection, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/305362014-08-14T20:41:11Z2014-08-14T20:41:11ZGrattan on Friday: In Conversation with ASIO chief David Irvine<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56515/original/3997nj2j-1408012523.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">David Irvine has admitted ASIO needs to recruit more Muslim officers.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>David Irvine retires next month after five years as Director-General of Security, heading ASIO; before that he was head of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, which spies abroad. He’s spent more than a decade in what he describes as the gamekeeper and poacher business.</p>
<p>Last week the government had him do a rare press conference to explain and defend its controversial plan to have <a href="https://theconversation.com/infographic-metadata-and-data-retention-explained-30313">telcos retain metadata</a>; this week he delivered a <a href="http://www.asio.gov.au/Publications/Speeches-and-Statements/Speeches-and-Statements/DGs-Speech-12-August-2014.html">major address</a> on the threat from Islamist extremists as radicalised Australians fight in Syria and Iraq.</p>
<p>In an interview with The Conversation at ASIO’s Canberra headquarters on Thursday, Irvine said he would ideally like to see ASIO operating under a broad law rather than having to ask for changes whenever threats and technology altered – although he doubts politicians would invest the political effort that would be required – and he rejected charges that it excessively encroaches on civil liberties.</p>
<p>He admitted ASIO lacks enough Muslim officers, with one of the problems in recruitment being the suspicions held by people from Muslim countries of intelligence organisations.</p>
<p>Irvine rejected as “un-Australian” a proposition floated from the right that immigration from Middle Eastern countries should be limited, and praised the efforts of leaders in the Muslim community in helping counter terrorism.</p>
<p>In commenting on Australia spying abroad he was cautious but strongly defended ASIS’s activities as ethical in what he described as “an age-old business”.</p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> Can we start on the proposed new anti terrorism measures which inevitably infringe on civil liberties? The most controversial is the storing of metadata. <a href="http://www.newamerica.net/publications/policy/do_nsas_bulk_surveillance_programs_stop_terrorists">US reviews of intelligence</a> uses of metadata have discounted the value of this in stopping terrorist acts – what is your response to those findings?</p>
<p><strong>David Irvine:</strong> I don’t know what the basis of that so-called US report is. I know it was a government report but did it say “metadata did not by itself solve a crime or stop a terrorist act”? The answer is probably yes. But could a terrorist act have been stopped without the data? The answer in Australia’s case is almost certainly no. </p>
<p>Metadata and the ability to look at the data surrounding people’s communications is a fundamental building block in both the law enforcement and the security intelligence business. In counter espionage, counter sabotage, countering covert influencing of governments, as well as countering terrorism. </p>
<p>What people don’t understand is that it is also the fundamental building block of most criminal investigations in Australia. So do we need it? Yes. Can we do without it? Not these days, without very great difficulty. Is it an infringement upon people’s liberties? That is debatable. You having to obey a speed limit is an infringement on your liberties in one sense. Everything we do in society is balanced between what we need to do for the good of society and our own liberties to act in any way we like and to have privacy. My sense is that over a long period of time we have struck an appropriate balance between these two things. </p>
<p>When people talk about new powers for ASIO, actually most of the legislation currently going through doesn’t actually involve any significant new powers for us at all. There are some things that do. Interestingly, the metadata issue is not actually so much new powers for ASIO – it is getting the telephone companies and internet service providers to keep storing – so we can actually access it on a highly targeted basis - information about telephone usage and telecommunications usage. </p>
<p>All we’re actually asking for is: in the past they’ve kept it voluntarily, we want to make it an obligation for them to keep it for two years. That’s actually all this is about. </p>
<p>Now people say “it’s an infringement on your civil liberties, big brother, mass surveillance” and all the rest of it. Actually the information situation is not really going to change if this law goes through, except that the information would now be kept as a matter of legal obligation.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> This week an <a href="essentialvision.com.au/category/essentialreport">Essential poll</a> found that many people think “governments are increasingly using the argument about terrorism to collect and store personal data and information, and this is a dangerous direction for society”. Do you think that people’s general distrust of government is leading to a distrust of more security measures?</p>
<p><strong>DI:</strong> I think that’s one of the great shibboleths of our time at the moment. I go back and quote to you a <a href="http://www.lowyinstitute.org/publications/lowy-institute-poll-2013">survey conducted by the Lowy Institute</a> about 18 months ago. They prefaced their question in the survey by saying – from memory – since 2001 Australian governments have introduced quite strong counter terrorism legislation and have very strong intrusive powers. Answer the following questions: </p>
<ol>
<li><p>Do you think that the Australian government has overemphasised - over-egged if you like - the terrorism pudding and ignored and trampled upon civil liberties? </p></li>
<li><p>Do you think they’ve got the answer about right?</p></li>
<li><p>Have they gone the other way and they are not doing enough about protecting us as a community and worrying too much about civil liberties?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>The answers were really quite fascinating. They are there on the Lowy website for people to see. 19% said “no we’re really worried about our civil liberties and we’re prepared to take risks with terrorism”. 68% said “nope, I think they’ve got it about right”. 11% went the other way. If you think about those figures, that’s 80% of Australians who are prepared to accept at least current levels of infringement on their privacy and their civil liberties in order to gain the benefits of community protection.</p>
<p>As you and I know, it is that 19% who make all the noise. So I take heart from those figures, because I do worry about the balance issue. What people don’t understand, also when they’re talking about balance, is that these aren’t unfettered powers. For example, one of the powers that people are most complaining about is the power of questioning and detention.</p>
<p>Yet the critics rarely mention that the exercise of these powers must be approved by judicial authority: the Inspector General of Intelligence and Security, or a judicial officer, as well as the subject’s lawyer. The information gained can’t be used against that person in a court.</p>
<p>Nobody talks about those things. They simply talk about the right to question and detain someone. In terms of the intrusive powers, for example to listen to telephone conversations, nobody says “how often do they actually do it?” and nobody says “what are the rules under which they can do it?”</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> Do we have figures on how often they do it?</p>
<p><strong>DI:</strong> Not for ASIO, but you do for law enforcement. </p>
<p>Of course these are exactly the same powers that run across law enforcement and ASIO. So this is not just a security intelligence business. This is also a law and order and national security matter. In fact the number of times ASIO mounts intrusive tapping or content seeking operations under warrant is actually relatively small. </p>
<p>Just to give you an idea, if I’ve got 600-1000 investigations going, that’s not a lot of telephones I’m going to end up tapping – and not all investigations require warranted interception. Similarly, if I’ve got 600-1000 investigations right across the board – terrorism, espionage, etc – that is not going to produce a huge number of requests for access to call data. Certainly nothing that amounts to mass surveillance of the population. </p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> Are we talking specific figures here?</p>
<p><strong>DI:</strong> We are talking approximate figures. I’m hesitant to give the actual figures because it does give really vital information to the people we’re looking at. </p>
<p>The people who talk about these powers don’t really have an appreciation for how rarely they’re used. Secondly they don’t have an appreciation that their use is governed by a whole series of guidelines whereby either under warrant or internally we have to justify the use of these powers in accordance with our act. </p>
<p>So I can’t go and tap your telephone because you’re writing nasty articles about me, when what you’re doing has nothing to do with national security or does not make you a threat to national security. People don’t understand this.</p>
<p>Then the third thing that they don’t understand is that the extent to which there is actually, at least for ASIO, far greater accountability for what we do, even though that accountability is not all public.</p>
<p>We have a parliamentary committee that looks at us in Canberra but reports to the federal parliament. I make an unclassified report to federal parliament every year and a classified report to the government, which the parliamentary committee sees. ASIO is subject to the Australian National Audit Office.</p>
<p>The Director-General of ASIO – for his sins I have to say – appears before Senate estimates frequently and I am constantly grilled. It pleases me that I give such pleasure to other people seeing me squirm!</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56536/original/fqyvcwdd-1408024807.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56536/original/fqyvcwdd-1408024807.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56536/original/fqyvcwdd-1408024807.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56536/original/fqyvcwdd-1408024807.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56536/original/fqyvcwdd-1408024807.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56536/original/fqyvcwdd-1408024807.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=975&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56536/original/fqyvcwdd-1408024807.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=975&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56536/original/fqyvcwdd-1408024807.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=975&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Justice Robert Hope.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Then finally, but most importantly – this goes right back to Justice Robert Hope in the mid-70s when he framed the whole structure of the Australian intelligence community not just from an organisational point of view but from the point of view of getting that balance right – [there] is the Inspector General of Intelligence and Security.</p>
<p>The Inspector General of Intelligence and Security has the right to look at everything we do, and does. It is currently Dr Vivienne Thom. Whenever she picks up something – and because she doesn’t actually pick up a lot of major things, what she normally picks up these days are quite small, trivial issues – she brings them to our attention, she brings them to the government’s attention and where necessary remedial action is taken. And you’ve seen just in this last year quite a substantial report by the Inspector General of Intelligence and Security highly critical of ASIO in respect of the way we handled one of the refugee assessment processes.</p>
<p>So when people talk about an infringement on civil liberties, yes there is an impinging on civil liberties, as there is in so many other aspects of our life. But you [should] take into account that it is done lawfully and the law prescribes what you can and can’t do. There is accountability and there is appropriate oversight, both public and secret. I think reasonable people will accept that the security service and indeed the police are organs that are responsible and can be trusted with that particular responsibility. </p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> In the post-9/11 era security agencies have requested and received greater powers…</p>
<p><strong>DI:</strong> You know it’s funny, I wouldn’t use the word power, I’d use the word scope. </p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> Do you think now, assuming that you get the legislation proposed, that you have all the scope, power that you need, or do you think in later years there will be more requests?</p>
<p><strong>DI:</strong> What you’ve got to understand is that the law that governs us in both the interception area and the exercise of ASIO powers more generally has always been – and parliament will always insist that it will be - written into very specific laws. </p>
<p>Rather, what I would like to see, would be a more broad set of principles. When you have very specific sets of laws, as the threat changes and as the technology alters, the law doesn’t always cover the new situation.</p>
<p>So in all the changes we have been suggesting we’re not actually changing anything in terms of general principles. What we are doing is saying “look, we actually need to use computers in a different way”. And when the law was written there weren’t computers. So if you look at the current set of legislative changes that are before the House, and there are several more changes to come, you’ll find that a lot of these proposals are more in the way of modernisations than fundamental change.</p>
<p>For example, in relation to use of computers, we now need a warrant to get onto third party computers, a methodology we didn’t need before. Not to interfere with that third party or to inquire into what that third party is doing, but to find out whether some foreign state perhaps has been using that computer to attack the government. That need didn’t exist before. </p>
<p>Other changes are what I’ll call efficiency-making changes. At present, if I were to have to conduct a very intensive investigation, with perhaps the immediacy of a terrorist act occurring, and I needed to put full surveillance on, I would have to get a whole series of warrants from the Attorney-General to intercept the communications – different warrants for different sorts of intrusive activity. </p>
<p>I have to get another warrant to put a listening device near that person. I have to get a further warrant to put a tracking device on that person’s car, for example. I have to get another series of warrants to do a search and enter operation.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56538/original/ds87vjhp-1408025020.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56538/original/ds87vjhp-1408025020.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56538/original/ds87vjhp-1408025020.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56538/original/ds87vjhp-1408025020.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56538/original/ds87vjhp-1408025020.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56538/original/ds87vjhp-1408025020.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56538/original/ds87vjhp-1408025020.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56538/original/ds87vjhp-1408025020.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">David Irvine with Attorney General George Brandis in a rare press conference.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Now each of those warrants – and this is what people don’t understand about the warrant process – the warrant has to set out a strong justification for taking this act which is an intrusion in someone’s privacy. They run to pages and if it isn’t properly justified and documented, the Inspector General of Intelligence and Security is down on us like a ton of bricks. </p>
<p>What we’ve been trying to do is say “actually it is the same warrant, the same words for four or five different warrants. Why not get one omnibus warrant?” Now that’s an example of an efficiency process.</p>
<p>The metadata is in many ways a classic example of the need, as a result of new technology, to alter the law. With regard to metadata, the telecommunications interception act allows ASIO and law enforcement and some other people – and you can argue about the other people but certainly law enforcement and ASIO – to go to the telephone company and say “here is a case that says we have deep suspicions about Michelle Grattan as a terrorist or a spy and we would like you to be able to tell us does she own this computer number at that particular time” or whatever. </p>
<p>Now that was fine so long as the telephone companies were keeping the data. Increasingly they’re not, because they don’t have a business need to. But for national security and for law enforcement purposes there is a need. So that’s an example of where we need the law to keep up with the changes in technology.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> Now you mentioned you’d like the legislation overhauled in more generalist terms.</p>
<p><strong>DI:</strong> That’s quite difficult to do of course, because that 19% I’ve talked about will have a whole series of rabbit burrows that they will want to take the legislators down. It’s actually very hard to keep it general. I accept that.</p>
<p>So a broad law that would enable you without having to go back to legislation every time to keep up with modern technology would be terrific. How far we can get that I don’t know.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> Do you think there is any sympathy in the government for that?</p>
<p><strong>DI:</strong> I think there is understanding. It is a political decision of the government as to whether they want to expend that amount of energy, and there would be a lot of energy required, you’ve seen how the very simple things…</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> You mean political capital…</p>
<p><strong>DI:</strong> Possibly as well. But you’ve seen how the really actually very simple and frankly not very obtrusive things that we want to do now have just set all sorts of hares running. </p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> You’ve talked a lot recently about the current threat of Islamist extremists. How much has ASIO had to transform its operations from the days when it was at the centre of the cold war issues to today? One would think you’d need different sort of personnel, that they’d have to have different skills, including language skills. Is it a completely different operation – I guess one was more espionage and one is more terrorism?</p>
<p><strong>DI:</strong> Well I think the basic operational principles, where you have a secret enemy who has to be fought by secret means, still stand. </p>
<p>You’re absolutely right. In October the first volume of the official history of ASIO written by Dr David Horner will be published and that will take you through the espionage years. The second volume will deal with the period when we were still doing mainly espionage. In the late 1990s, terrorism was the biggest potential threat for the Sydney Olympics and since then has dominated the work of the organisation.</p>
<p>Now how’s it changed us?</p>
<p>We had to get Arabic and other Middle Eastern and Asian language speakers. We had to learn to deal with newly-arrived communities. The Islamic community in Australia in its current form is largely a product of the mid-1990s. </p>
<p>We’ve had to get used to working in a community with different social customs, methods of communication, social interaction and so on.</p>
<p>We’ve had to develop new skills in terms of understanding the phenomenon of terrorism.</p>
<p>As a result, we are now able to make a contribution to countering at an early stage the development of violent extremism.</p>
<p>So that’s a whole set of new skills.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> Do you have any facts and figures in terms of the language skills and such?</p>
<p><strong>DI:</strong> The answer is not enough. I think we still lack two things.</p>
<p>The first is, I personally believe that we do not have enough Muslim ASIO officers. People who have been brought up within the community, as opposed to being exposed to it and having to learn about it.</p>
<p>There’s an interesting reason for that if you think about it - so many of our Muslim Australians have actually come from societies and countries where the very notion of a secret service is an anathema. It’s really quite interesting that part of my outreach to the communities is saying “hey, actually this is how we operate under the law and by the way it’s actually our job to protect you too”. So we’ve had to change our community outreach quite considerably. </p>
<p>We’ve had to change also in terms of our constant investment in technology. The business of counter espionage and counter terrorism is very dependent on technology. If we were unable to keep up with technology, we would have to employ a great many more staff.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> In your speech this week you stressed that care should be taken not to shift blame for Islamist extremism onto the Muslim community generally, but aren’t we seeing signs of this? For example with <a href="http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/refusing-to-see-evil-puts-us-all-in-danger/story-fni0ffxg-1227023397860">one prominent commentator</a> suggesting we should reduce immigration from the Middle East until we better assimilate those already here.</p>
<p><strong>DI:</strong> I don’t like to become involved in those sort of controversies. I nevertheless feel that if we got to the point where we said those sort of people can’t come in because we don’t think we can absorb them and that they might become a threat to us internally as a racial or ethnic or religious group – I’m not talking about individuals who may be a threat – then aren’t we pulling the rug out from under what we think Australia’s all about?</p>
<p>While we do need to look very closely at some individuals, because it is possible to import threats into the country through individuals, I don’t think you can apply blanket rules discriminating against religious or ethnic groups. It would be – can I say un-Australian?</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> There has been this call for the leaders of the Muslim community to do more. You made the point this week that often in their quiet way they were doing a lot. Do you think these calls to do more are either unreasonable or overhyped?</p>
<p><strong>DI:</strong> Well I think they’re based on ignorance, in the sense that I know just how much the leaders of the community are doing. The religious imams, the civilian leaders and so on. What people don’t know is how successful they’ve actually been. </p>
<p>My sense is, without them we would have a very, very much greater problem. I understand why people make these claims, but for those of us who spend a lot of time working with the community I have to say that our experience is that the community leadership - and I have to stress this - in its own way, has done much.</p>
<p>We sometimes think of the Grand Mufti as like the Pope, with a huge authority down the line. The Grand Mufti is a spiritual leader and a scholar. The ways he deals with problems and exercises leadership are suitable for his community.</p>
<p>I think the role the Muslim leadership is playing in Australia is very positive. They may not to speak out as loudly as some people would expect or want them to do, though I notice in the last few days a lot of them have made their views clear. </p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> Do agencies like yours and the police have any special responsibility to try and ensure that a vigorous security regime doesn’t in fact stir up this anti-Muslim feeling?</p>
<p><strong>DI:</strong> I think from the police point of view it is less of a written responsibility and more as part of the social responsibility that they carry as they go about their work. For ASIO it is also a written responsibility. In the sense that under the ASIO act we are responsible for detecting and assessing and reporting to the government on issues relating to inter-community harmony.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> And you fulfil that responsibility by yourself speaking and how else?</p>
<p><strong>DI:</strong> Much, much more by the efforts of my officers who work very closely with state and federal police in their outreach into the communities.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> In general terms, how secure is Australia today compared with the start of the century? You mentioned the 2000 Olympics - compared to then?</p>
<p><strong>DI:</strong> My own sense is – and I said this in the speech the other night – I don’t think we should exaggerate the terrorist threat as an absolutely existential threat to the Australian way of life. It’s not – not at the moment. Nor is the incidence of terrorist thinking widespread within the community. It’s clearly not. Nor is it widespread within the Australian Islamic community. It’s clearly not.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, a small number of people who have very distorted views that propel them towards violence leading to mass casualties is a real concern. There is an expectation from the public that governments will prevent that happening. </p>
<p>Is it greater than it was when I came in five years ago?</p>
<p>The answer is that the threat level is the same, but the number of threats that ASIO is looking at, in terms of the numbers of people, has grown substantially - the explosion has really come with the Syrian conflict. </p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> You would expect it to continue to grow?</p>
<p><strong>DI:</strong> Well I’m hoping it won’t, but the conflict in the Middle East will for some time to come attract those sorts of people and will continue to do so. </p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> The figure of 150 individuals that has been mentioned - that is the number of people of interest to ASIO who are either fighting abroad, have fought abroad…</p>
<p><strong>DI:</strong> Can I say “significant interest” to ASIO, because there are others as well. There is no firm line. We have to draw a line between people we look at very closely and people we barely look at all simply by virtue of our resource base and our ability to do so. </p>
<p>When we talk about 150 people, we are talking about 150 people who are of concern in respect of Syria and Iraq and need to be considered in our activities on a regular and consistent basis. People move in and out of that 150 to an extent and beyond that 150 is 3-4-500.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56539/original/3ds8xt74-1408025604.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56539/original/3ds8xt74-1408025604.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56539/original/3ds8xt74-1408025604.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56539/original/3ds8xt74-1408025604.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56539/original/3ds8xt74-1408025604.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56539/original/3ds8xt74-1408025604.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56539/original/3ds8xt74-1408025604.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56539/original/3ds8xt74-1408025604.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Australian born Khaled Sharrouf is currently fighting in Iraq.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The 150: that’s those who are in Iraq, Syria or on the border, or in Iran, so directly engaged in extremist groups; those who have returned; those who wanted to go but their passports have been cancelled; and those who are active fundraisers or facilitators. </p>
<p>That 150 only refers to the Syria/Iraq issue. We also have other people of concern, for example “lone wolves” who may not be associated with the particular phenomenon in Syria and Iraq. </p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> Do you think that some of the people who become extremists do so because the community has failed to integrate them, or do you think it is a bit like an extremist in other areas, who will just become attached to a cause – a violent cause in this case? What’s the line here between nature and nurture?</p>
<p><strong>DI:</strong> I think the short answer is there has been a huge amount of work done on this in Australia and around the world and nobody has actually come up with a common denominator per se, beyond the notion of religious conviction.</p>
<p>It was fashionable early on to say these poor benighted people have come from deprived socio-economic backgrounds. Well, the Australian experience of the people in jail here is that many haven’t. They have not been fabulously wealthy, but they’ve not been deprived economically.</p>
<p>The alienation aspect deserves much closer consideration. Particularly when you look at the Australian phenomenon where mum and dad have come out, brought a young child or the child was born here and mum and dad have got on with building a new life. This was the great opportunity. There is a sense of alienation among some of the younger people. </p>
<p>So that’s what we mean when we talk about home-grown – potential terrorists who have been raised in Australia. It is a very difficult phenomenon to pick. I sometimes think someone who goes to work in Australia and comes back home to his Middle Eastern village in downtown Melbourne or wherever may be subject to much greater alienation than otherwise.</p>
<p>I don’t think that it is a product of racialism in Australia or social tension per se, although there are elements of those sorts of things involved. I ultimately come down to the notion that someone - for whatever reason - is convinced that this is the true way, the true power of religious belief if you like, and it just happens to have been a distorted version of Islam, replete with the advocacy or perceived obligation of violence.</p>
<p>Now there are many, many reasons why proselytisation is so much easier and people are much more exposed now, particularly through the internet, to these, I keep saying, distorted beliefs. </p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> You’ve had a unique combination of heading Australia’s overseas spy service, ASIS, and ASIO. Do you ever reflect on the paradox of being a spy catcher on the one hand, after overseeing the spying on the other?</p>
<p><strong>DI:</strong> I like to say that I’ve gone from poacher to game keeper. </p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> I wasn’t going to put it so crudely.</p>
<p><strong>DI:</strong> They’re actually quite different in many ways. Clearly there are connections between the two, but the two organisations are quite different in the sense that one organisation operates in the overseas area in the collection of information and is essentially collecting information about foreigners. </p>
<p>ASIO on the other hand is mainly collecting information about Australians in the current environment. Therefore the two have to operate under a totally different legal and oversight regime, because governments have put such a great emphasis on issues like the privacy and the liberty of Australians. </p>
<p>ASIO is a very complex organisation because of all of those legal, probity and ethical issues, which an ASIO officer has to take into account in everything he or she does.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> Do you think there is an ethical difference between the sort of work ASIO does and the sort of work ASIS does?</p>
<p><strong>DI:</strong> No, I don’t actually. Both organisations need to have officers who have very high ethical and moral pillars.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> But you did mention the “poacher” yourself.</p>
<p><strong>DI:</strong> Yeah and it is an age-old business. </p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> We have seen the “age-old business” be destructive to international affairs. The revelation of Australia’s role in spying on top Indonesian figures did do a lot of damage - hopefully temporary - to the relationship between the two countries. Do you think that business can be more costly than it is worth?</p>
<p><strong>DI:</strong> If that were the case, we wouldn’t have it.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> Well these things are always reviewed from time to time and there are degrees of course.</p>
<p><strong>DI:</strong> My answer is no. I think if intelligence did not deliver - particularly in this day and age when we are all in budget terms quite hard up - what governments need it to deliver, they wouldn’t be paying for it.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> President Obama apologised to the German Chancellor when spying on her phone calls was revealed. Is it appropriate for a country to apologise in these circumstances?</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56540/original/7rj5wxps-1408025866.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56540/original/7rj5wxps-1408025866.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56540/original/7rj5wxps-1408025866.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56540/original/7rj5wxps-1408025866.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56540/original/7rj5wxps-1408025866.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56540/original/7rj5wxps-1408025866.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56540/original/7rj5wxps-1408025866.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56540/original/7rj5wxps-1408025866.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel earlier this year.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Oliver Berg</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>DI:</strong> I’m not sure that Barack Obama actually did apologise to Angela Merkel, I’ll have to read those words again. Every government will treat these – and I’m going diplomatic here - matters in accordance with its own needs. Put it that way.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> Did you ever feel during your time heading ASIS uncomfortable with what you knew was happening? </p>
<p><strong>DI:</strong> No. Absolutely not. Never. </p>
<p>Because all intelligence activities by any organisation in Australia are carried out according to the law.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> So you never thought “maybe we shouldn’t be going this far”?</p>
<p><strong>DI:</strong> No. The equation is risk, risk of personnel, and those sorts of things. </p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> Not ethical boundaries?</p>
<p><strong>DI:</strong> Well I wouldn’t be encouraging or allowing, as the law does not allow, intelligence organisations to employ kinetic force and those sorts of things, no – apart from self-protection in special circumstances. </p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> If a similar situation to that preceding the Iraq invasion were to arise, would Australian intelligence agencies be more sceptical and independent of other countries in advising the Australian government?</p>
<p><strong>DI:</strong> I was only just entering the business – with ASIS – when the Iraq intelligence issues were [current].</p>
<p>I must say over the past ten years or so I’ve been impressed with the intellectual rigour that our assessors and particularly our Office of National Assessments and our Defence Intelligence Organisation and my own people apply to intelligence assessments. </p>
<p>You’re never going to get it 100% right. What is intelligence? Intelligence is all about predicting the future and as you know the future doesn’t always work out the way you think it will. We are making those sorts of judgments all the time.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> Yes but in that case there was a huge misjudgment by the Americans over weapons of mass destruction and Australia went along with that. </p>
<p><strong>DI:</strong> There was certainly some misjudgement and that is continuing to be debated to this day.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> Do you think in our assessment these days Australia would be mindful of what happened then and more sceptical of information? </p>
<p><strong>DI:</strong> I think our intelligence organisations – I thought they were pretty rigorous then – I think they are rigorous, in so far as you can ever have full confidence in a prediction I think certainly in my experience they’ve been accurate.</p>
<p>What’s interesting you know, in relation to ASIO, is that we make intelligence assessments in relation to people who have the right to appeal to courts and certainly the decisions of the administrative appeals tribunal or the court don’t indicate any gross misuse of or errors in assessments.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> Of these two jobs which have you found the more challenging and which have you got most satisfaction from?</p>
<p><strong>DI:</strong> That’s a hard one because I’ve really derived immense satisfaction from both jobs. I think the complexity of the security intelligence job, with all those overlays of legality, of procedures, of accountability and so on, makes it more complicated and more complex. I hadn’t realised when I came from ASIS - where I described myself as being the absolute bottom of the laundry basket in Canberra, never seen never heard - to ASIO that the Director-General of Security actually had from time to time to make public statements and to explain things to people and to the press. That actually was and is still quite a challenge. </p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> And quite liberating I presume.</p>
<p><strong>DI:</strong> Well it will be in a month’s time.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> Before we finish is there anything that you would like to add?</p>
<p><strong>DI:</strong> I would like to emphasise again in relation to terrorism … I think there does need to be a balancing of the discussion. I think that’s really important.</p>
<p>There is also the “diversion” part of what we do.</p>
<p>Our philosophy always is to try and nip things in the bud as early as we can. Where we see a person or a group of people moving towards an expression of violence and there are various stages along that way, once it has moved into the criminal realm, we will try to move to court action and prosecution as quickly and as early as we can. The longer we let things run, the evidentiary base might be stronger, but the risk to the community is greater.</p>
<p>But before a criminal act is committed you can see young people moving in all sorts of directions and at a certain point you can see that someone’s reached a tipping stage. We will see if it is possible between us, the police, social workers, community leaders, whoever, to take preventive action.</p>
<p>You can’t win in this business. Late last year we were being criticised for withdrawing the passports of people who intelligence told us were going to join the terrorists in Iraq. And we were going to be taken to the High Court and so on, we still may well be. Then about six weeks ago, we were criticised, by the same lawyer, for not stopping someone going overseas. </p>
<p>Ideally we would like to be able to operate in such a way that these people can be convinced not to go overseas.</p>
<p>I guess the final thing that I’d say is, spare a thought for the 1700 and hopefully more people who must remain anonymous and get no credit for detecting and preventing threats to security – and who sometimes do some quite brave things.</p>
<p>These are the ASIO people and the people in the community who work with them.</p>
<p>They don’t expect special rewards. They come into this job with open eyes. They’re immune to the cartoons and the comments usually associated with intelligence services.</p>
<p>I think we owe them a great deal of gratitude but we’ll never be able to express it directly.</p>
<p><strong>MG:</strong> They are getting a new building.</p>
<p><strong>DI:</strong> They are and I have to tell you it is terrific. I am so angry that I’m not moving into it. </p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/30536/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>David Irvine retires next month after five years as Director-General of Security, heading ASIO; before that he was head of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, which spies abroad. He’s spent more…Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/297632014-08-13T05:45:49Z2014-08-13T05:45:49ZTranscending testimony: an interview with filmmaker Deepa Dhanraj<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56370/original/x3wn258g-1407907678.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A screening of Invoking Justice at Mahim Beach, Mumbai, India, 2013.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">BMW Guggenheim Lab/Flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56367/original/pzw32qpt-1407907592.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56367/original/pzw32qpt-1407907592.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56367/original/pzw32qpt-1407907592.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56367/original/pzw32qpt-1407907592.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56367/original/pzw32qpt-1407907592.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56367/original/pzw32qpt-1407907592.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56367/original/pzw32qpt-1407907592.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Deepa Dhanraj.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">MIFF</span></span>
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<blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.wmm.com/filmcatalog/makers/fm134.shtml">Deepa Dhanraj</a> is a filmmaker and feminist whose extensive filmography spans issues of gender, labour, education and women’s position in Indian society. In 1980, she founded the Bangalore-based filmmaking collective <a href="http://www.yugantar.org.in/">Yugantar</a>, an organisation that produced films about women’s labour and domestic conditions in Southern India. With searing imagery, Dhanraj’s highly influential 1991 film, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4vaELkhjhs">Something Like a War</a>, presented the gender and class violence of the population-control policy of the Indian government.<br></p>
<p>Dhanraj is a guest at the Melbourne International Film Festival this year. She presented her recent film <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7YnTgjfB_8">Invoking Justice</a> (ITVS, 2011) as part of the <a href="http://miff.com.au/program/streams/india-in-flux-living-resistance">India in Flux: Living Resistance</a> strand of contemporary documentary cinema and was a panellist on the Talking Pictures panel, <a href="http://miff.com.au/program/film/talking-pictures-currents-of-dissent-documentary-resistance-in-india">Currents of Dissent: Documentary Resistance in India</a>, with <a href="http://patwardhan.com/">Anand Patwardhan</a> and <a href="http://miff.com.au/criticscampus/meenakshishedde">Meenakshi Shedde</a> in conversation with me. <br></p>
<p>In this interview, I talk with Dhanraj about the historic relationship between activism and documentary film and the ways in which she addresses contemporary industrial as well as aesthetic shifts in this cinema.<br></p>
</blockquote>
<p><strong>Deepa, you were closely associated with the Indian women’s movement during the 1970s and the 1980s. How did your involvement with this movement lead you towards documentary cinema?</strong> <br>
I became a documentary filmmaker because of my association with the women’s movement. </p>
<p>When we started our collective Yugantar in 1980, the intention was to make films on various struggles, agitations and issues that were being raised by the women’s movement at that time, particularly the shifts in consciousness, politics and the kind of contributions that both the activists and the academy were making in public discourse. </p>
<p>A lot of theory was being generated and one of the things we asked as a collective was: how do you communicate this back to the audiences and particularly women audiences so that there is a continuous loop? How do you tell these stories and talk about this politics at all levels from the grassroots to the academy? </p>
<p>Personally, the intention of the collective was to document the struggles and then return these stories to the constituency, which could be women’s groups of all classes and as many institutions as we could tap into – trade unions, universities, high schools and film clubs.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56111/original/m4cc4hdg-1407720590.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56111/original/m4cc4hdg-1407720590.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56111/original/m4cc4hdg-1407720590.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56111/original/m4cc4hdg-1407720590.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56111/original/m4cc4hdg-1407720590.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56111/original/m4cc4hdg-1407720590.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56111/original/m4cc4hdg-1407720590.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56111/original/m4cc4hdg-1407720590.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Screening of Invoking Justice, January 2013, Mahim Beach, Mumbai, India.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/bmwguggenheimlab/8423394503/in/photolist-dQrGDh-dQm62e-dQrFdS-dQm5HF-dQrFGd-dQrHpN-dQm6HH-dQrGYf"> BMW Guggenheim Lab/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p><strong>Coming to the documentary medium from activism, how did you conceptualise the documentary form? What could the documentary film accomplish in the social collective?</strong> <br>
We did not come to a ready-made understanding of documentary practice; we were creating a process as we worked. When we started this collective, our intention was to be collaborative and to stand with the women, not only to transmit their story. </p>
<p>With <a href="http://www.wmm.com/filmcatalog/pages/c68.shtml">Something Like a War</a>, we spoke about issues that were important to many women’s groups. I am often surprised at how much of my work is used for teaching in universities – but, at that time, it wasn’t our intention. With Something Like a War, we wanted to stop the government of India’s coercive targeting of poor women to achieve state sterilisation targets. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for Something Like a War.</span></figcaption>
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<p>But we also wanted to address the structural consensual belief that the poor were responsible for their poverty because of excessive breeding. So in the film we also talked about why poor women made the reproductive choices that they did – they were not foolish, but various social factors influenced their decisions. </p>
<p>So we not only had to address the state agenda but also this political consensus that made it acceptable to have a eugenics notion about the poor. The films produced with this political understanding acted as a medium between the activists and the academy and brought these issues into a space for discussion. So I see documentary films as building a bridge between these two worlds.</p>
<p><strong>Documentary cinema appears to have moved into many directions and filmmakers approach the form from several positions; as artists, storytellers or poets. How does activism or political interrogation reconcile with these shifts?</strong> <br>
During the 1980s and 1990s there was a stated political objective with which people approached documentary, which has now gradually shifted into the domain of the individual. </p>
<p>Of course, being India, a lot of social context inherently emerges in any story, but the question is: what do you do with this context? How are you recasting it in a way that there are insights not just at the level of testimony but how do we create a framework to understand social formations? </p>
<p>I think if you are making a film about the social collective you are also making a public intervention, politically you are making an intervention and you choose cinema to do it. When you are doing that, why is there a diffidence or hesitation to articulate a political position? To me it raises questions about aesthetics and politics; does the style of filmmaking determine your politics? Or does the way of looking determine your politics and style, which, of course, could be poetic.</p>
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<span class="caption">Screening of Invoking Justice, January 2013, Mahim Beach, Mumbai, India.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/bmwguggenheimlab/8424488646/in/photolist-dQrGDh-dQm62e-dQrFdS-dQm5HF-dQrFGd-dQrHpN-dQm6HH-dQrGYf/"> BMW Guggenheim Lab/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p><strong>Some of the issues that face documentary filmmakers in India have historically related to distribution and audiences, but contemporary India is an image-and-media-saturated environment. Is this also a challenge?</strong><br>
The issue of resources always remains. It is very impressive that so many people are still working given the desperate lack of resources. But the good news is that there are more exhibition forums and mini-festivals where people watch films. </p>
<p>The challenge for a filmmaker like myself is how to deal with a very complex reality. It is not only at the stage of formal or creative planning but requires creating processes where people are comfortable with being filmed and feel that it is worth their participation. Cable television and 24-hour news and current affairs have created a situation where people are very media aware and understand how they might be represented or misrepresented. </p>
<p>They are also filming themselves – so the relationship to image has changed and the potential film participants have a different level of visual literacy and consciousness of representation. In this setting, the challenge is to create a process that takes this into account and remains accountable to the people one is filming.</p>
<p><br>
<strong>The <a href="http://miff.com.au/">Melbourne International Film Festival 2014</a> runs until Sunday August 17. See all MIFF 2014 coverage on The Conversation <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/miff-2014">here</a>.</strong></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/29763/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shweta Kishore does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Deepa Dhanraj is a filmmaker and feminist whose extensive filmography spans issues of gender, labour, education and women’s position in Indian society. In 1980, she founded the Bangalore-based filmmaking…Shweta Kishore, PhD Cndidate, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/294512014-07-20T20:28:13Z2014-07-20T20:28:13ZIn Conversation with Professor Françoise Barré-Sinoussi<p><em>Watch the video of Professor Rob Moodie talking to Professor Françoise Barré-Sinoussi below.</em> </p>
<p>Françoise Barré-Sinoussi is the director of the Regulation of Retroviral Infections Unit, at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, and was <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/220/4599/868.abstract">the first author of the 1983 paper</a> that reported the discovery of a retrovirus later named HIV (human immunodeficiency virus). </p>
<p>She <a href="http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2008/">shared the 2008 Nobel Prize</a> for Physiology or Medicine for that work and is the current president of the International AIDS Society. She is also the international chair of AIDS2014, the 20th International AIDS Conference being held in Melbourne July 20-25.</p>
<p>Professor of public health at the University of Melbourne, Rob Moodie, spoke to Professor Barré-Sinoussi about her work as a researcher and an advocate on the conference’s opening day.</p>
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<p><em>Special thanks to RMIT University for its assistance in the production of this video.</em></p>
<p><strong>Transcript</strong></p>
<p><strong>Rob Moodie:</strong> Welcome to The Conversation. Today we have the honour of speaking with Professor Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, Nobel Laureate, who’s here at the AIDS 2014 Conference. Welcome; terrific to have you in Melbourne.</p>
<p>Just with respect to the tragedy of MH17, what impact do you think that will have on the conference?</p>
<p><strong>Françoise Barré-Sinoussi:</strong> First of all, everybody is in shock. We are all think about our colleagues, our friends; we’re thinking about all the other passengers. It’s a real tragedy.</p>
<p>It was very important for us, thinking about our colleagues, to move on and to show people that we will continue the fight and this is the best tribute I think we can make.</p>
<p><strong>Rob Moodie:</strong> To honour that, yes. </p>
<p>Perhaps you could tell us a little about your work (and as a Nobel Laureate): how did that start, what were some of the key moments in your discovery of the virus and, in some ways, how has that impacted on your life?</p>
<p><strong>Françoise Barré-Sinoussi:</strong> Of course, the first thing was the contact with the clinician in my country, France, William Bourn. [He] was among the first clinicians [to recognise] patients with this new emerging disease. </p>
<p>It came at Pasteur Institute and [Stewart] Cole, a virologist at Pasteur and especially virologists working with this family of viruses, the retrovirus. It’s how we really started to work together with other clinicians as well and virologists at the hospital, developing strategies to try and isolate the virus, if it really was a virus.</p>
<p>And it’s how we decided to ask patients… if they will accept lymph node biopsy. </p>
<p>Lymph node biopsies arrived at Pasteur at the beginning of January 1983, and two weeks later we had the first sign in the culture of a virus from that family. We had a surprise, a bad surprise, to see that the cells were dying. </p>
<p>At that time there was a blood bank at Pasteur across the street, first [we took blood from] a donor, and again the virus started to replicate again. We were able to detect, and then it was starting to correct the retrovirus, showing this virus was not similar to the only human retrovirus that was known at the time – and is still known today – HTLV [Human T-lymphotropic virus] family.</p>
<p>Then, to make the link between the virus and the disease itself: by serological/immunological studies, by also trying to isolate the virus from other patients, starting to make diagnostic tests – both for the serological and immunological studies, but also for diagnostics – and starting to study the biology of the virus. What was the target cells? [And] starting to characterise the genome of the virus.</p>
<p>So everything really started. </p>
<p><strong>Rob Moodie:</strong> So it was a very exciting, I mean also an intellectually very…</p>
<p><strong>Françoise Barré-Sinoussi:</strong> Very busy, very challenging, but also an exciting time because each time you know that we were – as we always do in science, you make a hypothesis, you ask a question, then you test the question, you define an approach to answer the question, and the answer is the one you were expecting.</p>
<p>This is not so for all science, I must say, but that period was wonderful for that!</p>
<p><strong>Rod Moodie:</strong> Yes, I mean it must have been awfully, in some ways, energising and draining by virtue of the hours you were working.</p>
<p><strong>Françoise Barré-Sinoussi:</strong> But it was also a difficult period because, of course, it was, scientifically speaking, very exciting, but as a human being it was a lot of pressure, because for me, I’m not a doctor, I’m a scientist. That was the first time in my life really to be in direct contact with people affected by this disease. Because they were coming – Pasteur wanted to know [more] about the virus and so on – and that was really dramatic.</p>
<p><strong>Rob Moodie:</strong> Yes, that hadn’t been in your training. Can you tell us about the time I think in the US when a very sick patient actually asked to see you.</p>
<p><strong>Françoise Barré-Sinoussi:</strong> That was in San Francisco. You know, San Francisco was strongly affected, particularly the homosexual population. I was invited to give a talk on the virus, and at the end the clinician Paul Volberding asked me whether I would visit a patient in the emergency room, and I said yes.</p>
<p>And of course it was dramatic because the guy was really dying, he was almost not able to speak. And he took my hands – I still feel that moment he took my hands – and said something I had some difficulty to understand, but reading his lips I found “thank you”.</p>
<p>So he said “thank you”, and I looked at Paul and I asked “why?”, and I asked the guy and he said – I could recognise – “not for me, for the others”. And I think that’s the moment in my life that I will remember forever.</p>
<p><strong>Rob Moodie:</strong> And is that in some ways, still related to your work from then on. </p>
<p><strong>Françoise Barré-Sinoussi:</strong> Oh yes, yes, it gives you some strength to say “OK, we have to move on [this] as fast as possible”. </p>
<p>And I think the HIV/AIDS community really did quite well, really with mobilisation, solidarity in the 80s which is unprecedented.</p>
<p><strong>Rob Moodie:</strong> And people say that in the first decade we learnt more about HIV than we’d learn about other diseases maybe in a century, and even in the last we’ve learnt more about it maybe than we had before that. Why do you think there is this such dramatic increase and rapidity of scientific knowledge?</p>
<p><strong>Françoise Barré-Sinoussi:</strong> It’s possible because of this solidarity between the scientists, the clinicians, the health professionals altogether, working together with representatives of the patients. </p>
<p>I think it’s this network and partnership between… I mean we call us the HIV/AIDS “community”, and I don’t think in any other kind of disease you have the same kind of thing.</p>
<p>You have the scientific community [for other diseases], but for us we don’t say the scientific community, we say the HIV/AIDS community. So it’s just everybody together fighting with the same objective, with the same goal, to try and do the best for the affected population.</p>
<p><strong>Rob Moodie:</strong> Now the other thing that seems apparent to me and it seems interesting that [clinician] Willy Rozenbaum would come to you, and clinicians coming to you. You certainly don’t seem to be living in an ivory tower; that you’re prepared obviously to communicate with clinicians, work with clinicians and with the community at large.</p>
<p>Has that sort of characterised your career? That you like to work with other parts of the system?</p>
<p><strong>Françoise Barré-Sinoussi:</strong> Probably, first of all, I made all my career, really at the Pasteur Institute, and this is as far I was educated. For me, this is a mission of the Pasteur Institute, with Pasteur, the spirit of Louis Pasteur, the vision of Louis Pasteur was really to develop science … and to bring benefit to mankind, everywhere in the world.</p>
<p>That’s how Louis Pasteur started to make Louis Pasteur institutes in different parts of the world. I was myself educated according to the Pasteur spirit, but I did not, I must confess, I did not realise totally what that means until HIV/AIDS came along.</p>
<p><strong>Rob Moodie:</strong> And in the spirit of that, you famously wrote an open letter to Pope Benedict in 2009. Why did you do that and do you think it is part of the scientists’ job to be advocating in that way?</p>
<p><strong>Françoise Barré-Sinoussi:</strong> Sure, I mean, scientists certainly trying to do their best to make progress in science for the benefit of humanity, but when you see… </p>
<p>When there is scientific evidence, like there was and still is for the condom, and you have a person like the Pope, who could be anybody else, I mean, president of a country or whatsoever…</p>
<p><strong>Rob Moodie:</strong> Because we’ve heard presidents of other countries say the same thing! </p>
<p><strong>Françoise Barré-Sinoussi:</strong> Saying just before arriving in the country where it’s very sensitive, and the voice of someone like the Pope is very important, saying that the condom is not efficient… you have to do something, because this is not true.</p>
<p>We as scientists, we know condoms are efficient, so it’s the reason why I decided with two other colleagues to write a letter to the Pope, saying that “we are sorry, but, maybe you are not aware, but we can provide you all the data and it’s very solid – proving that the condom is very efficient.”</p>
<p>“So please, it’s a mistake we feel when you’re arriving in a country like Cameroon to make such statement. So please could you say that statement was not totally right, because it’s important for the life of individuals.”</p>
<p>Unfortunately he never answered.</p>
<p><strong>Rob Moodie:</strong> It did have an important impact, I think, globally.</p>
<p><strong>Françoise Barré-Sinoussi:</strong> It had an impact; not so far after his visit, I was myself in Cameroon, and it turned out that some colleagues and people involved in HIV already in Cameroon said “Oh Françoise, you should not have written to the pope, because probably you did not entirely make the right interpretation of what you wanted to say. He did not really say that the condom was not efficient but that we have to consider fidelity,” and so on.</p>
<p>No, I understood very well what the Pope said, and you have yourself a responsibility as a professional in your country to explain to the population that the condom is efficient.</p>
<p>Unfortunately in Cameroon and in other countries, I have seen myself, and we all know there are religious people that are [doing] a wonderful job – for reasons that make me furious also, by the way. Because I know some religious people that are distributing condoms, [educating] the population to try and prevent HIV infection. It was very hard; they [did] a wonderful job.</p>
<p>Then they have their boss arriving in the country and destroying, in a few minutes, everything. This is not acceptable.</p>
<p><strong>Rob Moodie:</strong> And you’ve been a very strong proponent of prevention. Despite, or as well as, the major progress in terms of treatment, you remain a strong advocate for prevention.</p>
<p><strong>Françoise Barré-Sinoussi:</strong> For prevention, for everything which is for the benefit of the population: prevention, treatment, care. I think, really, it’s just a question of respect of life only; life is the most beautiful thing in the world, and should be the thing that we should respect the most.</p>
<p><strong>Rob Moodie:</strong> Today you’ve been at a major symposium towards a cure for HIV. What’s been the major news to come out of the symposium?</p>
<p><strong>Françoise Barré-Sinoussi:</strong> To tell you the truth, I cannot answer because I’m so busy that I’ve not been able myself to attend the symposium. I will know during the next few days because my colleagues will tell me, but unfortunately as I said in closing, it’s frustrating to be part of the organisation and not be able to really hear what is going on during the symposium.</p>
<p>I know, however, [there have] been some presentations regarding new drugs that are trying to reactivate cells that carry the virus in patients who are on treatment – the reason why we cannot stop the treatment. Of course, it’s promising but still preliminary.</p>
<p><strong>Rob Moodie:</strong> As we’ve done for a number of AIDS Conferences.</p>
<p><strong>Françoise Barré-Sinoussi:</strong> That’s right, but that’s science, it’s how we progress. It’s important we present the data anyway, because also we have to think about combining this approach to others. </p>
<p>I know that [there has been some data presented] regarding vaccine candidates: using cytomegalovirus as a vector of HIV antigens, showing that this vaccine candidate is very efficient in reducing the size of the reservoir in the monkey model. [This is] associated now to antiretroviral treatment, showing that if we treat very early on and associate with vaccines, we can reduce more and more the size of the reservoir.</p>
<p>So I mean, this kind of information, critical for the progress of pure research. The data also on the broadly neutralising antibody, very promising and that might be an approach for the future to associate towards a cure strategy. So it’s progress.</p>
<p><strong>Rob Moodie:</strong> Well, on behalf of all of us at The Conversation, can I thank you very much for the time you’ve spent for us, and just to wish you well in your important role in this AIDS 2014 conference. Thank you very much indeed.</p>
<p><strong>Françoise Barré-Sinoussi:</strong> Thank you very much indeed, thank you.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/29451/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rob Moodie has received funding from Department of Health and Ageing. He is Deputy Chair of the Advisory Council of the Australian National Preventive Health Agency. He is on the GAVI Alliance Evaluation Advisory Committee and his University receives sitting fees. In a voluntary capacity he is a member of the SEATCA Southeast Asia Initiative on Tobacco Tax (a project funded by the Gates Foundation) Steering Committee.</span></em></p>Watch the video of Professor Rob Moodie talking to Professor Françoise Barré-Sinoussi below. Françoise Barré-Sinoussi is the director of the Regulation of Retroviral Infections Unit, at the Institut Pasteur…Rob Moodie, Professor of Public Health, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/286072014-07-03T03:56:29Z2014-07-03T03:56:29ZIn Conversation: what does the future hold for Antarctica?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52586/original/znxcxdtc-1404101890.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Antarctica is still a frontier - but it is rapidly changing. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/e_kaspersky/6515720263">Eugene Kaspersky/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Antarctica is a continent less suited to human habitation than any other. Temperatures rise above freezing only briefly on the northern Antarctic peninsula. At the coast mean temperatures range between -10°C and -30°C. In the high inland they are as low as - 60°C. </p>
<p>But it’s not just the hostile climate that makes the Antarctic stand out. It is a place undergoing <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/may/19/doubling-of-antarctic-ice-loss-revealed-by-european-satellite">rapid environmental change</a>. The <a href="http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2014-148">measured effects</a> of global warming are incontestable, it is only the speed of these changes which is unclear. And, with the <a href="http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415531399/">geopolitical interest</a> in Antarctica intensifying, the question of sovereignty, and who might control the continent, becomes more important.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52573/original/7qz332gs-1404097165.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52573/original/7qz332gs-1404097165.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52573/original/7qz332gs-1404097165.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52573/original/7qz332gs-1404097165.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52573/original/7qz332gs-1404097165.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52573/original/7qz332gs-1404097165.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52573/original/7qz332gs-1404097165.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52573/original/7qz332gs-1404097165.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/11822809516">NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52582/original/k28hnzyh-1404101584.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52582/original/k28hnzyh-1404101584.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52582/original/k28hnzyh-1404101584.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=740&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52582/original/k28hnzyh-1404101584.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=740&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52582/original/k28hnzyh-1404101584.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=740&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52582/original/k28hnzyh-1404101584.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=930&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52582/original/k28hnzyh-1404101584.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=930&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52582/original/k28hnzyh-1404101584.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=930&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Seven countries have made territorial claims on Antarctica.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Antarctic_Region.png">CIA Factbook/Wikimedia</a></span>
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<p>Under the <a href="http://www.ats.aq/documents/ats/treaty_original.pdf">Antarctic Treaty</a> of 1959 Antarctica is the first continent to move beyond the modern doctrine of sovereign territorial states: “No acts or activities taking place while the present Treaty is in force”, states Article IV, “shall constitute a basis for asserting, supporting or denying a claim to territorial sovereignty in Antarctica or create any rights of sovereignty in Antarctica.” </p>
<p>Thus far the Antarctic Treaty system has produced a peaceful regime for scientific and multi-State cooperation. But how robust are these arrangements? If the rules cannot hold, what alternative forms of political rule might emerge? </p>
<p>The <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/research/research-projects/item/311-antarctica-futures">Antarctica Futures</a> project at the University of Sydney is seeking to address these issues. Recently we brought together a group of academics and practitioners to discuss questions regarding sovereignty and Antarctica: how it manifests itself now, and how it might into the future. The following is a excerpt of a round table discussion of these issues. You can read the full discussion <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-conversation-on-antarctic-sovereignty-full-discussion-28600">here</a>, together with an essay written prior to the meeting by Professor John Keane of the <a href="http://sydney.edu.au/arts/sdn/">Sydney Democracy Network</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/antarctica-notes-on-the-fate-of-sovereignty-28292">here</a>. </p>
<hr>
<h2>Has the Antarctic Treaty worked?</h2>
<p><strong>John Keane</strong>: Sovereignty: it’s a profoundly political concept, to be handled with care, especially because the principle has theological origins. It later referred to the power of state rulers, especially in crises and wars, to decide and enforce what is to be done, if necessary by robbing opponents of their liberties, properties, livelihoods and lives. </p>
<p>Looking back, the 1959 Antarctic Treaty made possible the construction of a complex new architecture, a post-sovereign polity unknown to the political science textbooks. But without permanent residents or citizens, or standing armies and police forces, what kind of polity is Antarctica? Most observers pass over the question in silence.</p>
<p>A child of the Treaty, the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) is a messy, clumsy overlapping kaleidoscope of institutions, a compound polity that has no fixed address (even its annual parliament moves locations) and lacks all the paraphernalia of territorial states. Not to be underestimated is the way the Antarctica polity has found new ways of politically including and representing the biosphere within human affairs. Sovereignty was always associated with the human domination of nature; in Antarctica, by contrast, people and politics have deferred to the interests of science operating in an environment perceived to be highly fragile.</p>
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<span class="caption">A glimpse of Antarctica.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/betta_design/5035857910">Francisco Martins/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
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<p><strong>Tim Stephens</strong>: For me, there are three forces working to revive the doctrine of sovereignty. The continent is experiencing profound biophysical challenges largely driven by climate change. These are more than the effects of ice melt: they include the acidification effects on the oceans and in them krill and fish stocks. </p>
<p>The signs are not good: climate change attracts astonishingly little attention in the ATS, certainly by comparison to the Arctic. Yet climate change and ocean acidification could undermine key elements of the Antarctic ecosystem that have been the focus of cooperation, most obviously krill that are threatened by ocean acidification. Our understanding of some of these dynamics is at an early stage. But it is clear that they stand to have an effect well beyond the southern oceans (with sea level rise affecting global population centres and melting and ocean acidification affecting the food chain). </p>
<p>Secondly, a Treaty designed to provide an agreement for the future care and use of the continent and avoid territorial and other disputes at a time of the Cold War is – understandably – a very different thing to an agreement that will be fit for purpose for the coming environmental and geopolitical challenges of this century.</p>
<p>And, finally, what of Australia’s role? The Australian Antarctic Territory is more than two-thirds the size of the Australian mainland. Australia will need to do more than simply continue to assert sovereignty claims, or to be a passive, cooperative player. This is especially the case in respect of Antarctic climate change impacts. </p>
<p>Yet the Abbott government outwardly denies climate science, dismantles climate expertise, and is eroding our national scientific capability and credibility. Piecemeal Antarctic funding will do nothing to make up for the wholesale diminution of Australia’s scientific capacities in the CSIRO and beyond. </p>
<p>And Australia appears to have no coherent sense of how to respond to the changing geopolitical interest in Antarctica from powers such as China, Russia, India and South Korea.</p>
<p><strong>Julia Jabour</strong>: Even if Antarctic governance has challenged some key metaphors, why does this matter? And what good and harm has it done? The important question is whether the Treaty and the system that it has given rise to over the past 50 years or so has been effective. By and large, it has. </p>
<p>The Treaty has done two key things extraordinarily well: it has protected the continent from commercial exploitation, and it has set aside sovereign claims that were a real source of international tension post 1945.</p>
<p>It is incumbent on anyone who criticises the working of the current system to set out what sort of system might prove a more effective way for states and peoples to take decisions about the continent. What would any system or approach include that isn’t already achieved through the current Treaty system?</p>
<p><strong>Tony Press</strong>: Yes, the Antarctic Treaty System has been effective. Led by the governments of Mitterrand and Hawke, and talk of Antarctica as a “world park”, it was for instance instrumental in agreeing the 1991 <a href="http://www.antarctica.gov.au/law-and-treaty/the-madrid-protocol">Madrid Protocol</a>: perhaps the most far-reaching and effective environmental provision in any Treaty, it states that Antarctica is a “natural reserve, devoted to peace and science”. Since the late 1970s, some NGO players have envisioned world heritage status for Antarctica, but that’s already in effect been achieved. Needless to say, the strength of the Treaty System depends heavily on the domestic politics of the parties to the Treaty.</p>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The aurora australis over Antarctica.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/chantal_steyn/3242369502">Chantal Steyn/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
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<h2>An Antarctic mining boom?</h2>
<p><strong>Alan Hemmings</strong>: Behind the veil of the ATS there are a number of countries, and China, whilst being the one that <a href="https://www.chinadialogue.net/blog/6517-China-eyes-Antarctica-s-resource-bounty/en">attracts most attention</a>, is just one, who are asserting “soft” power by investing significant resources in new infrastructure that they control. </p>
<p>The Antarctic Treaty System is a product of the Cold War. But we now live in a very different world. And although a number of States believe that that Treaty system remains the most effective way of conducting the affairs of the continent, pretentions to sovereignty are still alive. And just because the system has been operating for more than 50 years that does not mean it is not vulnerable to States asserting their interests, whatever these are.</p>
<p>Territoriality needs to be understood as not just the sense of entitlement of those countries overtly stating a territorial claim, but others who are beneficiaries of the particular historic configuration and architecture of power built around the ATS. </p>
<p><strong>Tony Press</strong>: The threat to the Antarctic by new powers is, in my view, overstated. Recent public commentary has raised the issue of “mining post-2048”. Much of this commentary is ill-founded.</p>
<p>The Antarctic mining ban does not expire. In my view there is little chance of the prohibition on Antarctic mining being challenged from within or outside the Antarctic Treaty.</p>
<p>None-the-less, many commentators see the increased interest by some countries in Antarctica as their assertion of a basis for claim, yet the provisions of Article IV will apply for as long as the Antarctic Treaty exists. And it won’t be easy to amend the Treaty: that requires unanimity of all signatories. </p>
<p>So, as we say, “if it ain’t broke, why fix it?”. Within the workings of the ATS there is very little appetite from any country to fundamentally change the system. One should not be too complacent, but it is likely that this situation will continue.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52587/original/8mvb6xrc-1404101934.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52587/original/8mvb6xrc-1404101934.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52587/original/8mvb6xrc-1404101934.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52587/original/8mvb6xrc-1404101934.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52587/original/8mvb6xrc-1404101934.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52587/original/8mvb6xrc-1404101934.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52587/original/8mvb6xrc-1404101934.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52587/original/8mvb6xrc-1404101934.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Emperor penguins depend on the ice to breed.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/marthaenpiet/2100825929">Martha de Jong-Lantink/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
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<h2>Changing environment</h2>
<p><strong>Chris Turney</strong>: The environmental dynamics in the Antarctic appear to be occurring at a pace beyond anything that was thought possible only a few years ago. </p>
<p>These dynamics have the capacity not only to completely shift deliberations under the ATS they stand to affect people living thousands of kilometers away from the Continent. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52591/original/pn6t5nnf-1404102023.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52591/original/pn6t5nnf-1404102023.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52591/original/pn6t5nnf-1404102023.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52591/original/pn6t5nnf-1404102023.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52591/original/pn6t5nnf-1404102023.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52591/original/pn6t5nnf-1404102023.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52591/original/pn6t5nnf-1404102023.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52591/original/pn6t5nnf-1404102023.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Krill are threatened by ocean acidification.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/norkrill/7302489100">Norkrill/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
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<p>Perhaps just as climate change is a problem which respects no boundaries (created by greenhouse emissions from anywhere and affecting the environment everywhere), so responding to the political and perhaps constitutional implications of these changes is beyond the handling capacity of the ATS.
The recent <a href="http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2014-148">reports from NASA</a> that the Thwaites Glacier on the Antarctic Peninsula is undergoing rapid melting which is most likely unstoppable, further melting and the possible collapse of Antarctic ice sheets will surely have enormous issues for the Treaty.</p>
<p>And with Southern Ocean warming being shown to play a significant role in destabilizing the Antarctic ice sheets, monitoring of the Southern Ocean beyond the Antarctic landmass must surely play a major role in future Treaty activities.</p>
<p>The impact of Antarctic ice melt is global. Given this surely more effort needs to be made to secure the involvement signatories of countries with no immediate research activity on the continent.</p>
<p><em>Keep reading:</em></p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://theconversation.com/in-conversation-on-antarctic-sovereignty-full-discussion-28600">In Conversation on Antarctic sovereignty: full discussion</a></li>
<li><a href="https://theconversation.com/antarctica-notes-on-the-fate-of-sovereignty-28292">Antarctica: Notes on the Fate of Sovereignty</a></li>
</ul><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/28607/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nick Rowley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Antarctica is a continent less suited to human habitation than any other. Temperatures rise above freezing only briefly on the northern Antarctic peninsula. At the coast mean temperatures range between…Nick Rowley, Professor, Sydney Democracy Network, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/286002014-07-03T03:55:42Z2014-07-03T03:55:42ZIn Conversation on Antarctic sovereignty: full discussion<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52750/original/5pwr5rht-1404200359.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tony Press, John Keane, and Chris Turney</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Giovanni Navarria</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Antarctica is a continent less suited to human habitation than any other. Temperatures rise above freezing only briefly on the northern Antarctic peninsula. At the coast mean temperatures range between -10°C and -30°C. In the high inland they are as low as - 60°C. </p>
<p>But it’s not just the hostile climate that makes the Antarctic stand out. It is a place undergoing <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/may/19/doubling-of-antarctic-ice-loss-revealed-by-european-satellite">rapid environmental change</a>. The <a href="http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2014-148">measured effects</a> of global warming are incontestable, it is only the speed of these changes which is unclear. And, with the <a href="http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415531399/">geopolitical interest</a> in Antarctica intensifying, the question of sovereignty, and who might control the continent, becomes more important.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52742/original/s4qjb73n-1404199735.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52742/original/s4qjb73n-1404199735.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52742/original/s4qjb73n-1404199735.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52742/original/s4qjb73n-1404199735.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52742/original/s4qjb73n-1404199735.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52742/original/s4qjb73n-1404199735.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52742/original/s4qjb73n-1404199735.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52742/original/s4qjb73n-1404199735.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nick Rowley.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Giovanni Navarria</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Under the <a href="http://www.ats.aq/documents/ats/treaty_original.pdf">Antarctic Treaty</a> of 1959 Antarctica is the first continent to move beyond the modern doctrine of sovereign territorial states: “No acts or activities taking place while the present Treaty is in force”, states Article IV, “shall constitute a basis for asserting, supporting or denying a claim to territorial sovereignty in Antarctica or create any rights of sovereignty in Antarctica.” </p>
<p>Thus far the Antarctic Treaty system has produced a peaceful regime for scientific and multi-State cooperation. But how robust are these arrangements? If the rules cannot hold, what alternative forms of political rule might emerge? </p>
<p>The <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/research/research-projects/item/311-antarctica-futures">Antarctica Futures</a> project at the University of Sydney is seeking to address these issues. Recently we brought together a group of academics and practitioners to discuss questions regarding sovereignty and Antarctica: how it manifests itself now, and how it might into the future.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52747/original/kq336p5r-1404199826.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52747/original/kq336p5r-1404199826.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52747/original/kq336p5r-1404199826.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52747/original/kq336p5r-1404199826.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52747/original/kq336p5r-1404199826.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52747/original/kq336p5r-1404199826.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52747/original/kq336p5r-1404199826.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52747/original/kq336p5r-1404199826.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">John Keane.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nick Rowley</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>John Keane</strong>: The 14th Venice Biennale of Architecture contains a surprise: the first-ever post-national Antarctopia pavilion. It aims to stimulate awareness of the continent’s global significance, to raise questions about the limits of sovereignty, even to get people thinking about Antarctica as an imagined utopia, a pointer to how people might think and live differently in the future, beyond sovereignty. </p>
<p>Sovereignty: it’s a profoundly political concept, to be handled with care, especially because the principle has theological origins. It later referred to the power of state rulers, especially in crises and wars, to decide and enforce what is to be done, if necessary by robbing opponents of their liberties, properties, livelihoods and lives. </p>
<p>Looking back, the 1959 Antarctic Treaty made possible the construction of a complex new architecture, a post-sovereign polity unknown to the political science textbooks. But without permanent residents or citizens, or standing armies and police forces, what kind of polity is Antarctica? Most observers pass over the question in silence.</p>
<p>A child of the Treaty, the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) is a messy, clumsy overlapping kaleidoscope of institutions, a compound polity that has no fixed address (even its annual parliament moves locations) and lacks all the paraphernalia of territorial states. Not to be underestimated is the way the Antarctica polity has found new ways of politically including and representing the biosphere within human affairs. Sovereignty was always associated with the human domination of nature; in Antarctica, by contrast, people and politics have deferred to the interests of science operating in an environment perceived to be highly fragile.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52744/original/qp8fyktv-1404199789.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52744/original/qp8fyktv-1404199789.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52744/original/qp8fyktv-1404199789.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52744/original/qp8fyktv-1404199789.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52744/original/qp8fyktv-1404199789.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52744/original/qp8fyktv-1404199789.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52744/original/qp8fyktv-1404199789.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52744/original/qp8fyktv-1404199789.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tim Stephens.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nick Rowley</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>Tim Stephens</strong>: For me, there are three forces working to revive the doctrine of sovereignty. The continent is experiencing profound biophysical challenges largely driven by climate change. These are more than the effects of ice melt: they include the acidification effects on the oceans and in them krill and fish stocks. </p>
<p>The signs are not good: climate change attracts astonishingly little attention in the ATS, certainly by comparison to the Arctic. Yet climate change and ocean acidification could undermine key elements of the Antarctic ecosystem that have been the focus of cooperation, most obviously krill that are threatened by ocean acidification. Our understanding of some of these dynamics is at an early stage. But it is clear that they stand to have an effect well beyond the southern oceans (with sea level rise affecting global population centres and melting and ocean acidification affecting the food chain). </p>
<p>Secondly, a Treaty designed to provide an agreement for the future care and use of the continent and avoid territorial and other disputes at a time of the Cold War is – understandably – a very different thing to an agreement that will be fit for purpose for the coming environmental and geopolitical challenges of this century.</p>
<p>And, finally, what of Australia’s role? The Australian Antarctic Territory is more than two-thirds the size of the Australian mainland. Australia will need to do more than simply continue to assert sovereignty claims, or to be a passive, cooperative player. This is especially the case in respect of Antarctic climate change impacts. Yet the Abbott government outwardly denies climate science, dismantles climate expertise, and is eroding our national scientific capability and credibility. Piecemeal Antarctic funding will do nothing to make up for the wholesale diminution of Australia’s scientific capacities in the CSIRO and beyond. And Australia appears to have no coherent sense of how to respond to the changing geopolitical interest in Antarctica from powers such as China, Russia, India and South Korea.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52749/original/2mmqvmqm-1404199981.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52749/original/2mmqvmqm-1404199981.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52749/original/2mmqvmqm-1404199981.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52749/original/2mmqvmqm-1404199981.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52749/original/2mmqvmqm-1404199981.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52749/original/2mmqvmqm-1404199981.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52749/original/2mmqvmqm-1404199981.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52749/original/2mmqvmqm-1404199981.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Julia Jabour.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nick Rowley</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>Julia Jabour</strong>: Even if Antarctic governance has challenged some key metaphors, why does this matter? And what good and harm has it done? The important question is whether the Treaty and the system that it has given rise to over the past 50 years or so has been effective. By and large, it has. </p>
<p>The Treaty has done two key things extraordinarily well: it has protected the continent from commercial exploitation, and it has set aside sovereign claims that were a real source of international tension post 1945.</p>
<p>It is incumbent on anyone who criticises the working of the current system to set out what sort of system might prove a more effective way for states and peoples to take decisions about the continent. What would any system or approach include that isn’t already achieved through the current Treaty system?</p>
<p><strong>Tony Press</strong>: Yes, the Antarctic Treaty System has been effective. Led by the governments of Mitterrand and Hawke, and talk of Antarctica as a “world park”, it was for instance instrumental in agreeing the 1991 <a href="http://www.antarctica.gov.au/law-and-treaty/the-madrid-protocol">Madrid Protocol</a>: perhaps the most far-reaching and effective environmental provision in any Treaty, it states that Antarctica is a “natural reserve, devoted to peace and science”. Since the late 1970s, some NGO players have envisioned world heritage status for Antarctica, but that’s already in effect been achieved. Needless to say, the strength of the Treaty System depends heavily on the domestic politics of the parties to the Treaty.</p>
<p><strong>Alan Hemmings</strong>: Behind the veil of the ATS there are a number of countries, and China, whilst being the one that <a href="https://www.chinadialogue.net/blog/6517-China-eyes-Antarctica-s-resource-bounty/en">attracts most attention</a>, is just one, who are asserting “soft” power by investing significant resources in new infrastructure that they control. </p>
<p>The Antarctic Treaty System is a product of the Cold War. But we now live in a very different world. And although a number of States believe that that Treaty system remains the most effective way of conducting the affairs of the continent, pretentions to sovereignty are still alive. And just because the system has been operating for more than 50 years that does not mean it is not vulnerable to States asserting their interests, whatever these are.</p>
<p>Territoriality needs to be understood as not just the sense of entitlement of those countries overtly stating a territorial claim, but others who are beneficiaries of the particular historic configuration and architecture of power built around the ATS. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52748/original/sk2g75zj-1404199959.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52748/original/sk2g75zj-1404199959.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52748/original/sk2g75zj-1404199959.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1041&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52748/original/sk2g75zj-1404199959.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1041&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52748/original/sk2g75zj-1404199959.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1041&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52748/original/sk2g75zj-1404199959.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1308&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52748/original/sk2g75zj-1404199959.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1308&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52748/original/sk2g75zj-1404199959.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1308&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tony Press.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nick Rowley</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>Tony Press</strong>: The threat to the Antarctic by new powers is, in my view, overstated. Recent public commentary has raised the issue of “mining post-2048”. Much of this commentary is ill-founded. The Antarctic mining ban does not expire. In my view there is little chance of the prohibition on Antarctic mining being challenged from within or outside the Antarctic Treaty. None-the-less, many commentators see the increased interest by some countries in Antarctica as their assertion of a basis for claim, yet the provisions of Article IV will apply for as long as the Antarctic Treaty exists. And it won’t be easy to amend the Treaty: that requires unanimity of all signatories. So, as we say, “if it ain’t broke, why fix it?”. Within the workings of the ATS there is very little appetite from any country to fundamentally change the system. One should not be too complacent, but it is likely that this situation will continue.</p>
<p><strong>John Keane</strong>: We seem to be less than convinced about the extent and the ways in which Antarctica is a continent beyond the grip of the old doctrine of sovereignty. Julia asked the fundamental question: why does any of this matter? It matters because the polity of Antarctica has set aside the territorial disputes, violence and war among empires and states vying for control of people and resources in the age of sovereignty. It has created rights of representation of the biosphere and its ‘clumsy’ governing arrangements have advantages: the exercise of power is subject to legal accountability and the principle of power sharing and, arguably, it’s a polity that confirms the point that polycentric governing arrangements are often more effective and efficient in handling collective challenges. But for me a key question is whether, or to what extent, the “spirit” of people working within its structures is still tinged with the old sentiments of sovereignty?</p>
<p><strong>Tony Press</strong>: From experience, I can say that the governing arrangements are beyond sovereignty in that sense. Those diplomats and others involved in the various meetings under the ATS are all there because of their nationality and the nations they represent. Yet people all work together pragmatically seeking to serve the collective interest of the continent. </p>
<p>Having said that, the question of sovereignty is no less important today than it was when the Antarctic Treaty was negotiated. Article IV is the keystone of the Treaty itself and the application of the Article is not diminished by time. All Parties to the Antarctic Treaty, including new Parties, are bound by all the provisions of the Treaty and there have been and are no “opt out clauses” or reservation provisions in the Treaty. If you are “in it” you must abide by the Treaty and no country has decided to leave the Treaty thus far.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52743/original/df8rdqgv-1404199744.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52743/original/df8rdqgv-1404199744.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52743/original/df8rdqgv-1404199744.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=808&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52743/original/df8rdqgv-1404199744.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=808&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52743/original/df8rdqgv-1404199744.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=808&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52743/original/df8rdqgv-1404199744.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1016&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52743/original/df8rdqgv-1404199744.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1016&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52743/original/df8rdqgv-1404199744.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1016&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chris Turney.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Giovanni Navarria</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>Chris Turney</strong>: The environmental dynamics in the Antarctic appear to be occurring at a pace beyond anything that was thought possible only a few years ago. </p>
<p>These dynamics have the capacity not only to completely shift deliberations under the ATS they stand to affect people living thousands of kilometers away from the Continent. </p>
<p>Perhaps just as climate change is a problem which respects no boundaries (created by greenhouse emissions from anywhere and affecting the environment everywhere), so responding to the political and perhaps constitutional implications of these changes is beyond the handling capacity of the ATS.
The recent <a href="http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2014-148">reports from NASA</a> that the Thwaites Glacier on the Antarctic Peninsula is undergoing rapid melting which is most likely unstoppable, further melting and the possible collapse of Antarctic ice sheets will surely have enormous issues for the Treaty.</p>
<p>And with Southern Ocean warming being shown to play a significant role in destabilizing the Antarctic ice sheets, monitoring of the Southern Ocean beyond the Antarctic landmass must surely play a major role in future Treaty activities.</p>
<p>The impact of Antarctic ice melt is global. Given this surely more effort needs to be made to secure the involvement signatories of countries with no immediate research activity on the continent.</p>
<p><strong>Tim Stephens</strong>: There is a false division between those optimistic about the capacity of the ATS to develop and change in the light of new environmental and political circumstances and those who believe it will all fall in a heap. It is unhelpful to look at these matters in binary terms. Neither scenario is likely to play out in isolation. </p>
<p>The Antarctic Treaty arose at a very distinctive historical juncture, at the height of a Cold War between two superpowers. Since that time we’ve moved to a multi-polar era, and now a new hegemony in the East is awakening. China (and over time India) may seek to challenge the comfortable Antarctic consensus. This can only result in the ATS being either fundamentally changed or demolished. And in either scenario it is incumbent on Australia to ensure our national and global interests are protected and the core benefits of the ATS maintained.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52745/original/3znwgh8z-1404199797.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52745/original/3znwgh8z-1404199797.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52745/original/3znwgh8z-1404199797.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52745/original/3znwgh8z-1404199797.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52745/original/3znwgh8z-1404199797.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52745/original/3znwgh8z-1404199797.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52745/original/3znwgh8z-1404199797.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52745/original/3znwgh8z-1404199797.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Alan Hemmings, Tim Stephens, and Julia Jabour.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nick Rowley</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>John Keane</strong>: All the parties to the decisions affecting the Antarctic have placed their claims to sovereignty in abeyance. Under the ATS, we have a plethora of institutions, meetings and processes that are beyond sovereignty in the classical sense. This is not a new form of sovereignty; it’s a failure of political imagination to think so. Antarctica is a new polity with a difference; it has set aside sovereignty. Striking as well is the way it’s neither a “bottom up” nor “top down” way of handling power. It’s an illustration of what Elinor Ostrom, the first woman to receive the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, calls a polycentric approach to managing and protecting a complex ecosystem, along the lines of a global commons. </p>
<p><strong>Julia Jabour</strong>: Perhaps, but what are the problems in Antarctica that you envisage a polycentric institution solving? Yes, the system might be polycentric in nature but that is only because of the nature of the decisions that are made within it. There are no problems born directly of human decisions (such as the combustion of fossil fuels to generate energy) that require the kinds of approaches that Ostrom described.</p>
<p><strong>Alan Hemmings</strong>: Yes. While much has changed outside, the working of the ATS is still locked in a standard, somewhat complacent mode of international posturing and diplomacy. </p>
<p>Antarctica has not moved beyond the global territorial states system or doctrine. The historically necessary first step for such a move (Article IV of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty) has not been followed by further steps.
Indeed the system that developed from that treaty has – rather than moving “beyond sovereignty” in any meaningful way - sheltered and maintained territorial pretensions and Antarctic nationalisms, bridging into a present when the capacity to access Antarctic resources reinvigorates both. </p>
<p>My intention is not be alarmist, but there is no a priori impediment to Antarctica becoming a place where we kill each other over resources and national “prestige”. Neither its geographic location, nor the limited governance structures provided by the present ATS are sufficient safeguards. </p>
<p>The Antarctic project for the first half of the 21st Century is building broader and deeper international Antarctic governance and significantly constraining Antarctic “exploitation” in its widest sense. On this we can surely all agree.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/28600/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nick Rowley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Antarctica is a continent less suited to human habitation than any other. Temperatures rise above freezing only briefly on the northern Antarctic peninsula. At the coast mean temperatures range between…Nick Rowley, Professor, Sydney Democracy Network, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/271542014-05-26T04:22:32Z2014-05-26T04:22:32ZIn Conversation with Robert Litterman: divestment is a blunt weapon in the climate fight<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/49396/original/sbys8m3h-1401064816.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Universities have led the charge on fossil fuel divestment - but is divestment the best way to manage climate risks?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/40969298@N05/13635340783/in/photolist-mLUFLt-7N625k-mM6nTT-mM6hcT-mM8aKw-mM6KuF-mM6N3K-mM6jsV-mM6RUe-mM6PRB-mM6Mux-mM6J9H-mM8kr5-mM6Efk-mM6wgg-mM6u9v-mM8cFq-mM6u2K-mM6kTn-mM6E52-aL3vnz-aL1J1B-aL5cja-aL5civ-aL1j6R-aL1fet-7NbQz9-dSKrWA-dygM7J-kBt2sg-g7kjxa-3RWAJ2-kBskXX-g7kWDZ-3BoyUW-3BzVLo-3AbdTh-7N7dRT-Jr7q9-7N1suX-3A4mgx-3AaM5L-3BiS9Z-h5vaY1-h5wbqR-h5vayd-mWQtNR-3BnTBu-2b9Vnh-2b9Vcb">Light Brigading/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Divestment from fossil fuels, advocated by climate action campaigners such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/do-the-maths-bill-mckibben-argues-for-divestment-14894">Bill McKibben</a>, is a blunt instrument for reducing carbon emissions, according to climate risk analyst Robert Litterman in an interview for The Conversation. Responding to climate risk, he argues, will depend on global action to reduce emissions. </p>
<p>Climate change poses both short- and long-term risks, particularly to infrastructure, real estate and fossil fuel reserves, both through extreme weather events and climate policies that punish greenhouse gas emissions. </p>
<p>Litterman worked for 23 years at Goldman Sachs, and retired in 2009 from head of risk analysis. He is now Chairman of the Risk Committee at global asset managers Kepos Capital LP. He is also a Director at the <a href="http://aodproject.net/">Asset Owners Disclosure Project</a>. Recently in Australia, he was interviewed by climate economics expert Hugh Saddler at the Australian National University. Saddler also sits on the board at <a href="http://www.climateinstitute.org.au/">The Climate Institute</a>. </p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Hugh Saddler</strong>: What sort of risks does climate change pose to investments?</p>
<p><strong>Robert Litterman</strong>: Climate change exposes investments to many types of risks, including both anticipated and unanticipated impacts, and over both short and long run time horizons. </p>
<p>In the short run the first type of risk is the direct physical impact of extreme weather on exposed infrastructure. A second type of short run risk is the decline in demand for assets that create emissions because incentives are created to reduce the production of greenhouse gas emissions. </p>
<p>In the longer run, there are both the direct impacts of weather-related outcomes as well as the indirect effects of climate change such as rising temperatures, severity of storms, floods, droughts, forest fires, rising sea levels, acidification of the oceans, loss of ecosystem services, large increases in species extinctions, disease, human conflicts, food scarcity, etc. </p>
<p>In addition to the anticipated impacts of climate change, there is also the risk of exposure to a sequence of events that creates positive feedbacks leading to time compression and potentially catastrophic outcomes. </p>
<p>There may also be legal liability, similar to that levied against tobacco companies, for those corporations that have either created significant emissions and/or taken actions to prevent appropriate regulatory responses from being implemented.</p>
<p><strong>Hugh Saddler</strong>: Which economic sectors/industries are most exposed to these risks?</p>
<p><strong>Robert Litterman</strong>: Infrastructure investments and real estate are most exposed to extreme weather impacts, whereas high-carbon, expensive to extract, fossil fuel reserves are most exposed to the pricing of emissions.</p>
<p><strong>Hugh Saddler</strong>: How large are these risks?</p>
<p><strong>Robert Litterman</strong>: The size of the risk depends on the valuation of the exposed assets and extent of their exposure. </p>
<p>The magnitude of the exposure of infrastructure depends on its location and resilience to extreme weather. </p>
<p>The size of the exposure of fossil fuel reserves depends on the intensity of the emissions they create as well as the extraction expense. High-carbon fuels and those which are relatively more expensive to extract are the most exposed. </p>
<p>From a portfolio perspective, the magnitude of the total exposure depends on the concentration and size of the exposed assets. </p>
<p><strong>Hugh Saddler</strong>: What is the overall implication of these risks for US investments as a whole? And for Australian investments, particularly superannuation funds?</p>
<p><strong>Robert Litterman</strong>: The main implication of climate risks is that there is an urgent need to create appropriate global incentives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The atmosphere’s ability to safely absorb emissions is a scarce resource that is currently being wasted. Given the virtually unbounded magnitude of worst case climate change outcomes prudent risk management requires that the potential damages created by emissions be reflected in economic activities that create additional greenhouse gases. These implications are true for all investors, including those in the US and Australia.</p>
<p><strong>Hugh Saddler</strong>: Is divesting from fossil fuels an economically sound strategy for an individual or, most particularly, a super fund, rather than just a moral argument?</p>
<p><strong>Robert Litterman</strong>: Divestment of all fossil fuels is a rather blunt, expensive, and potentially risky response to the dangers created by climate change. It rests on a false premise that all fossil fuel companies are somehow unethical or immoral. </p>
<p>Fossil fuel companies are, for the most part, profit maximising entities that are optimising the valuation of shareholder’s investments given the irrational incentives that governments have created for them. </p>
<p>Certain fossil fuels, such as coal, which are often referred to as “stranded assets,” are clearly exposed to the potential loss of value created by the increased expectations of the introduction of incentives to reduce emissions. This asset valuation risk can, and should, be hedged. </p>
<p>Other fossil fuels, in particular natural gas, which is much cleaner than coal, may actually become more valuable, at least for some period of time, if those appropriate incentives to reduce emissions are put in place. Rather than divesting all fossil fuels, an economically sound response for investors is to hedge the stranded assets in a fund.</p>
<p><strong>Hugh Saddler</strong>: What are the impediments to more comprehensive disclosure to individual investors of the nature and size of the risks? Are the regulation settings right? </p>
<p><strong>Robert Litterman</strong>: Disclosure of climate risks embedded in portfolios is made extremely difficult by the complexity of the risks involved and the uncertainty of the global policy response. There have been few, if any, clear guidelines for disclosure, although clearly many funds are moving in the direction of creating additional transparency for their beneficiaries of the extent of their exposures.</p>
<p><strong>Hugh Saddler</strong>: The coal industry argues that coal will be a sound investment for decades thanks to consumption in China and India. Divestment advocates say coal mines will become “stranded assets”. How are we to make sense of these contrasting arguments? What is the evidence that investing in coal is unsound? </p>
<p><strong>Robert Litterman</strong>: The concept of a “carbon budget” refers to the unknown quantity of emissions which can be safely allowed into the atmosphere. The well-understood fact that higher levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere lead to higher risks of extreme, and potentially catastrophic climatic outcomes implies that a rational, risk-averse society should immediately create incentives to sharply reduce emissions. </p>
<p>To the extent that expectations of the creation of such incentives become more likely and at higher levels than currently exist, demand for coal, and thus it’s expected value, will decline. </p>
<p>Future consumption of coal in China and India, as well as the rest of the world, is highly uncertain and dependent on the expected future price of emissions. Arguments that rely on extrapolating past, unsustainable policies indefinitely into the future are fatally flawed. </p>
<p>The best evidence to date that investing in coal is unsound is the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/stanford-millennial-coal-oil-dump-investment-endowmen">recently announced policy</a> of the Stanford University endowment that it is divesting of its coal assets. This decision is likely to be the first of many such actions by investors around the globe. Clearly, investors who anticipate such a response will want to act before valuations are impacted.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/27154/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hugh Saddler is Principal Consultat, Energy Strategies at Pitt & Sherry. He also sits on the board of The Climate Institute. </span></em></p>Divestment from fossil fuels, advocated by climate action campaigners such as Bill McKibben, is a blunt instrument for reducing carbon emissions, according to climate risk analyst Robert Litterman in an…Hugh Saddler, Research Associate, Centre for Climate Economics & Policy, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/262952014-05-12T04:38:36Z2014-05-12T04:38:36ZIn Conversation: Australia needs tax breaks for innovation<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48215/original/f437zwyt-1399858526.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tasmania's alkaloid poppy industry was an Australian innovation success story - until it moved overseas. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/shuttles/3353672422/in/photostream/">Glenn Schultes/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Australian innovation has stagnated in the past 50 years, and could be reinvigorated by focusing on key areas, according to Donald Hector, President of the Royal Society of New South Wales in an interview for The Conversation. </p>
<p>Agriculture, mining and biotechnology all offer huge potential for further development with the right incentives, including tax breaks for research and development, and more secure funding. </p>
<p>With budget cuts looming for Australia’s national science and research body, it’s a good time to assess the best way to encourage innovation. </p>
<p>The Commonwealth Science Innovation and Research Organisation (CSIRO) is <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/csiro-braces-for-budget-cut-of-up-to-150-million-20140413-zqu3d.html">reportedly</a> bracing for cuts up to A$150 million in this week’s federal budget, following 300 jobs announced to go next year, and 400 positions axed last year.</p>
<p>The recent federal <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-about-science-in-the-commission-of-audit-report-26181">Commission of Audit</a> recommended greater oversight of CSIRO, and abolishing climate bodies such as the Climate Change Authority and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. </p>
<p>I interviewed Hector on the state of innovation in Australia today, and how we might once again become a world leader. </p>
<p>Read the full interview transcript <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-conversation-with-donald-hector-full-transcript-26294">here</a></p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Peter Doherty</strong>: Thinking in terms of Australia’s future, how important is it for us to expand activity in the innovation/high technology sector?</p>
<p><strong>Donald Hector</strong>: It’s critically important. If you look at countries that have been successful since the early days of the Industrial Revolution they’ve largely done so through having highly innovative industries that maximise utilisation of technology.</p>
<p><strong>Peter Doherty</strong>: Do you think that an expanded high technology sector should focus solely on areas like IT, encryption, software development and so forth, or should we also be expanding niche manufacturing and both heavy and light engineering applications?</p>
<p><strong>Donald Hector</strong>: ICT is very important because there are enormous business opportunities in the industry; it’s still very much in its infancy.</p>
<p>But it’s also important to be developing niche operations and manufacturing capability in areas where Australia has a natural strength. Biotechnology and pharmaceuticals are a good example of that.</p>
<p>We didn’t really do much in the way of pharmaceuticals manufacturing at all until about 1948. We then started to manufacture penicillin. Australia was only the second country in the world manufacturing penicillin commercially and was the first country to make it available for the general population.</p>
<p>We started making penicillin in 1948 and by the mid-50s we were one of the biggest penicillin producers in the world, if not the biggest. In 1950 the value of locally-produced pharmaceutical actives was £6.7 million and imports were £630,000. Over 90% of pharmaceutical actives used in Australia were manufactured in Australia.</p>
<p>Today the reverse is so. Over 90% of active pharmaceutical ingredients are imported, and the local content is largely limited to formulation and repackaging.</p>
<p>We’ve gone from being in a very dominant position and self-sufficient position to an absolute devastation of that industry.</p>
<p>But it need not be like that. [Biotherapy company] CSL made the transition from government-owned enterprise to a highly-successful publicly-owned company, and is now one of the biggest producers of blood products in the world.</p>
<p>Tasmanian Alkaloids, which was started in Tasmania by Abbot Laboratories in the 1950s to produce opium alkaloids, was sold to Johnson and Johnson – why did this not end up in Australian hands?</p>
<p><strong>Peter Doherty</strong>: What could the universities do better, both in the sense of discovery and translating discovery for economic benefit?</p>
<p><strong>Donald Hector</strong>: I’m rather of the view that universities are best suited to doing pure research, and from time to time really good stuff will come out of that. But I think you need research institutions that are not constrained by a heavy requirement to produce income out of their research.</p>
<p>That’s best left to private sector, and possibly government, and that’s why I think the <a href="http://www.csiro.au/">CSIRO</a> and <a href="http://www.ansto.gov.au/">ANSTO</a> (Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation) are so important.</p>
<p>They should be the commercial arms as was originally intended, and develop industrial research so that it puts Australia at the forefront of innovation.</p>
<p><strong>Peter Doherty</strong>: What could CSIRO and other government research agencies like <a href="http://www.dsto.defence.gov.au/">DSTO</a> (Defence Science and Technology Organisation), ANSTO do better to promote greater economic activity?</p>
<p><strong>Donald Hector</strong>: CSIRO and ANSTO, and particularly CSIRO, are much maligned. They’ve created very innovative inventions over the years, and have been responsible for some truly fantastic technological developments.</p>
<p>But we expect them to deliver success with every project, and research is not like that. We also expect them to do so on shoestring budgets. There’s nothing worse than funding a project that might be expected to cost $50 million and finding out that it needs twice that, and then saying that you don’t have the money to continue and killing the program.</p>
<p>I’m not suggesting that we should be trying to pick winners, nor am I suggesting that we should hesitate in killing off research programs that aren’t going to deliver. But you’ve got make sure that you focus your funding on areas that are likely to be a success, kill off the programs in the early stages when they look like they’re not going to succeed, and heavily fund the ones that show potential until they are successful, recognising that that usually takes a lot more money than you originally expected.</p>
<p><strong>Peter Doherty</strong>: What are the barriers from the business side? </p>
<p><strong>Donald Hector</strong>: What Australian companies, particularly the top 300 of the ASX, have historically done is to have very strong government lobby groups and the Australian governments, irrespective of their political persuasion, have been very heavily persuaded by them.</p>
<p>What I think that’s led to is a lack of entrepreneurship. We lack a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mittelstand"><em>mittelstand</em></a> in Australia of the type they have in Germany. I think there are about three million often relatively small, family-owned companies in Germany that typically that have a few hundred employees and they’re world leaders in a niche area. They supply world marketplaces and the big German manufacturing sector. We’ve never developed that here because we’ve been to eager too look after the larger companies that feel that the Australian government owes them a living.</p>
<p><strong>Peter Doherty</strong>: What can government do better? Are the tax settings right?</p>
<p><strong>Donald Hector</strong>: I’m not sure that a general tax policy in terms of support for industry is a good idea. We certainly need research and development concessions. We need to have some public funding to encourage research and development expenditure, and we’ve got to recognise that issue and provide tax incentives to encourage it.</p>
<p>If you look at the US, a lot of the high-tech industries there have their origins in defence industry. It’s not uncommon to find engineering faculties in the US universities with hundreds of millions of dollars from government research funding for defence.</p>
<p>If Australia decided to be a much bigger player in agriculture and mining where we have some very clear internationally competitive industries, why aren’t we more fully integrated into those industries? Why aren’t we the manufacturers of agricultural and mining equipment as we were once?</p>
<p>Why was the government response to the car industry crisis not more visionary? We could have taken the several hundred millions of dollars of car industry subsidies and made that money available to a couple of the big earth-moving companies like Caterpillar and Komatsu to establish their global research and development and world-scale manufacturing facilities here.</p>
<p>I am of the view that you need government policy to encourage the development of those industries, but you have to do so in a way that will be internationally competitive and will lead to a globally-competitive industry for the long term.</p>
<p><strong>Peter Doherty</strong>: What are you aiming to achieve by re-invigorating the Royal Society of NSW, and how do you see such long-established institutions functioning in modern Australia?</p>
<p><strong>Donald Hector</strong>: We want the Royal Society of New South Wales to be true to its original charter of encouraging studies and investigations in science, art, literature and philosophy. The main aim behind that is to advance knowledge and encourage innovation and entrepreneurship to develop the resources of New South Wales and, more broadly, of Australia. </p>
<p>We see our role as providing a forum where we can bring together people who are interested in seeing those things happen and being a facilitator so that we can bring important issues to public attention and to influence policy. We want to provide a place for people to meet who are engaged in those areas of human knowledge, for them to exchange ideas and to learn from one another.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/26295/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter C. Doherty is a member of the advisory committee to the CSIRO Biosecurity Flagship. He is on the board of The Conversation.</span></em></p>Australian innovation has stagnated in the past 50 years, and could be reinvigorated by focusing on key areas, according to Donald Hector, President of the Royal Society of New South Wales in an interview…Peter C. Doherty, Laureate Professor, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/262942014-05-12T04:38:16Z2014-05-12T04:38:16ZIn Conversation with Donald Hector: full transcript<p><strong>Peter Doherty</strong>: Thinking in terms of Australia’s future, how important is it for us to expand activity in the innovation/high technology sector?</p>
<p><strong>Donald Hector</strong>: It’s critically important. If you look at countries that have been successful since the early days of the Industrial Revolution they’ve largely done so through having highly innovative industries that maximise utilisation of technology.</p>
<p><strong>Peter Doherty</strong>: Do you think that an expanded high technology sector should focus solely on areas like IT, encryption, software development and so forth, or should we also be expanding niche manufacturing and both heavy and light engineering applications?</p>
<p><strong>Donald Hector</strong>: It’s all of the above. ICT is very important because there are enormous business opportunities in the industry; it’s still very much in its infancy.</p>
<p>But it’s also important to be developing niche operations and manufacturing capability in areas where Australia has a natural strength. Biotechnology and pharmaceuticals are a good example of that. Also industries that provide capability for areas where we are globally competitive such as mining and agriculture. And doing these on a world scale is also an opportunity that Australia has persistently overlooked.</p>
<p>There was a report commissioned by the government in the 1950s to take a snapshot of Australian industry immediately following the Second World War; pharmaceuticals are a really interesting case study.</p>
<p>We didn’t really do much in the way of pharmaceuticals manufacturing at all until about 1948. We then started to manufacture penicillin. Australia was only the second country in the world manufacturing penicillin commercially and was the first country to make it available for the general population.</p>
<p>We started making penicillin in 1948 and by the mid-50s we were one of the biggest penicillin producers in the world, if not the biggest. In 1950 the value of locally-produced pharmaceutical actives was £6.7 million and imports were £630,000. Over 90% of pharmaceutical actives used in Australia were manufactured in Australia.</p>
<p>Today the reverse is so. Over 90% of active pharmaceutical ingredients are imported, and the local content is largely limited to formulation and repackaging. We’ve gone from being in a very dominant position and self-sufficient position to an absolute devastation of that industry.</p>
<p>But it need not be like that. [Biotherapy company] CSL made the transition from government-owned enterprise to a highly-successful publicly-owned company, and is now one of the biggest producers of blood products in the world.</p>
<p>Tasmanian Alkaloids, which was started in Tasmania by Abbot Laboratories in the 1950s to produce opium alkaloids, was sold to Johnson and Johnson – why did this not end up in Australian hands?</p>
<p>Apart from a bit of generic pharmaceutical manufacturing in Australia we no longer make the medication that we need to treat chronic disease such as hypertension, diabetes and heart disease. If the supply of those were interrupted for some reason we’d be in a lot of strife.</p>
<p><strong>Peter Doherty</strong>: What could the universities do better, both in the sense of discovery and translating discovery for economic benefit?</p>
<p><strong>Donald Hector</strong>: I’m rather of the view that universities are best suited to doing pure research, and from time to time really good stuff will come out of that. But I think you need research institutions that are not constrained by a heavy requirement to produce income out of their research.</p>
<p>That’s best left to private sector, and possibly government, and that’s why I think the CSIRO and ANSTO [Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation] are so important. They should be the commercial arms as was originally intended, and develop industrial research so that it puts Australia at the forefront of innovation.</p>
<p><strong>Peter Doherty</strong>: What could CSIRO and other government research agencies like DSTO (Defence Science and Technology Organisation), ANSTO do better to promote greater economic activity?</p>
<p><strong>Donald Hector</strong>: I’m not sure I’d include DSTO in that because they have very specific purpose.</p>
<p>I think CSIRO and ANSTO, and particularly CSIRO, are much maligned. They’ve created very innovative inventions over the years, and have been responsible for some truly fantastic technological developments.</p>
<p>But we expect them to deliver success with every project, and research is not like that. We also expect them to do so on shoestring budgets. There’s nothing worse than funding a project that might be expected to cost $50 million and finding out that it needs twice that, and then saying that you don’t have the money to continue and killing the program. The reality of research and development is that if you think you’ve got a project $50 million then you’ve at least got to have a couple of hundred in the pocket to take it through, if you think once you get to $50 million it’s still got potential and that with more money it can deliver success.</p>
<p>I’m not suggesting that we should be trying to pick winners, nor am I suggesting that we should hesitate in killing off research programs that aren’t going to deliver. There needs to be a very critical examination using some sort of stage gate process to do that. But you’ve got make sure that you focus your funding on areas that are likely to be a success, kill off the programs in the early stages when they look like they’re not going to succeed, and heavily fund the ones that show potential until they are successful, recognising that that usually takes a lot more money than you originally expected.</p>
<p><strong>Peter Doherty</strong>: What are the barriers from the business side?</p>
<p><strong>Donald Hector</strong>: We’re not particularly good at managing risk in Australia. We’re not particularly good at taking risks, nor are we good at managing them. What Australian companies , particularly the top 300 of the ASX, have historically done is to have very strong government lobby groups and the Australian governments, irrespective of their political persuasion, have been very heavily persuaded by them.</p>
<p>Historically, the argument was that Australia’s not a big enough economy to have a fully competitive market place and so oligopolies and duopolies have been the flavour of the day. But that’s no longer the case. We have a population of 25 million, we can have a fully open and competitive economy and there’s more than enough room to have full competition without looking after these duopolies in the way that’s been done in the past.</p>
<p>What I think that’s led to is a lack of entrepreneurship. We lack a <em>mittelstand</em> in Australia of the type they have in Germany. I think there’s three million smallish, family owned companies in Germany that typically that have a few hundred employees and they’re world leaders in a niche area. They supply world marketplaces and the big German manufacturing sector. We’ve never developed that here because we’ve been too eager to look after the larger companies that feel that the Australian government owes them a living.</p>
<p><strong>Peter Doherty</strong>: Are we too risk-averse?</p>
<p><strong>Donald Hector</strong>: I don’t think we’re risk averse – I think we don’t understand the nature of risk. In managing risk you’ve got to be very skilled and have the capacity to understand the extent to which you know the ambiguities of situations and the likelihood or otherwise of success. That’s very difficult. It requires a great deal of judgement and a great deal of experience. In Australia we tend to be fairly gung-ho and somewhat undisciplined, but the people I’ve met when I’ve worked overseas are generally people who manage risk well are not risk takers. They know when to take steps and when not to take steps and they generally have very good business judgement. I think we often lack that in Australia.</p>
<p><strong>Peter Doherty</strong>: Do we persistently under-invest?</p>
<p><strong>Donald Hector</strong>: We often under-invest and then don’t make sure that we get adequate return on the capital that we do invest. We often think that a project is going to cost a certain amount of money, and then when we get to the point where we’ve either run out of money and there’s no more available or people get cold feet and don’t want to take it through to completion.</p>
<p><strong>Peter Doherty</strong>: What can government do better? Are the tax settings right?</p>
<p><strong>Donald Hector</strong>: I’m not sure that a general tax policy in terms of support for industry is a good idea. We certainly need research-and-development tax concessions. We need to have some public funding to encourage research and development expenditure, and we’ve got to recognise that issue and get a tax break on that.</p>
<p>I’m also of the view that if you’re going to develop competitive industries you’ve got to have early-stage government support to do that. Virtually every major industry around the world is a consequence of government research programs, very often in defence sector.</p>
<p>If you look at the US, a lot of the industries there have their origins in defence industry. It’s not uncommon to have in engineering faculties in the leading US universities to have hundreds of millions of dollars from government research funding for defence projects.</p>
<p>Australia could decide to be a much bigger player industries where we have some very clear internationally-competitive positions. For example in agriculture and mining, why aren’t we more fully integrated into those industries? Why aren’t we the manufacturers of agricultural and mining equipment as we were once?</p>
<p>Why was the government response to the car industry crisis not more visionary? We could have taken the several hundred millions of dollars of car industry subsidies and made that money available to a couple of the big earth-moving companies like Caterpillar or Komatsu to establish their global research and development and world-scale manufacturing facilities here.</p>
<p>To me you need government policy to encourage the development of those industries, but you’ve got to do so in a way that will be internationally competitive and is going to develop an industry for the long term.</p>
<p>As occurs in countries like Singapore, and in the various US States, should government be actively pursuing financial and tax relief packages to persuade high-tech R&D to locate here?</p>
<p>I’ve been involved in one instance a billion dollar project that didn’t get built in Australia, even though it would have been a good place to build, because there was too much bureaucracy from the federal government and the state governments to agree what sort of tax incentives and regulatory incentives would encourage investment. Eventually that plant went to China.</p>
<p><strong>Peter Doherty</strong>: How do we encourage greater philanthropy, “angel investors” and so forth?</p>
<p><strong>Donald Hector</strong>: I’m not sure that there’s necessarily a place for philanthropy in developing technology, but certainly there is for angel investors.</p>
<p>One of the problems in finding angel investors in Australia historically is that there’s just not enough private wealth here. But I think that’s changing now because of the very great economic growth that’s taken place in the last decade. My guess is that there’s no shortage of angel investors if you’ve got good managers that they’ve got the risk of the project under control, and they’re good, professional, capable managers. We probably don’t have enough experience of that here, so we’re probably going to be relying on bringing people in from overseas, particularly the US, to manage start-up companies.</p>
<p><strong>Peter Doherty</strong>: How important is it that we get a much better public buy-in to the idea that science and technology are important for our future?</p>
<p><strong>Donald Hector</strong>: It’s very important because science and technology nowadays are so complex that it’s hard for lay people to really understand what the issues are. They get heavily influenced by special interest groups that might have an axe to grind about technologies coming to fruition.</p>
<p>I think we’ve seen this very much with issues like climate change where scientists have been vilified for speaking their mind and special interest groups are very quick to distort facts and throw misinformation into the debate to muddy the waters and pursue their own interests.</p>
<p>It’s very important to have institutions there that can lead the discussion and make some of these things more readily available to the general public and more able to have the information accessible.</p>
<p><strong>Peter Doherty</strong>: What are you aiming to achieve by re-invigorating the Royal Society of NSW, and how do you see such long-established institutions functioning in modern Australia?</p>
<p><strong>Donald Hector</strong>: We want the Royal Society of New South Wales to be true to its original charter of encouraging “…studies and investigations in science, art, literature and philosophy”. The main aim behind that is to advance knowledge and encourage innovation and entrepreneurship to develop the resources of New South Wales and, more broadly, of Australia.</p>
<p>We see our role as providing a forum where we can bring together people who are interested in seeing those things happen and being a facilitator so that we can bring important issues to public attention and to influence policy. We want to provide a place for people to meet who are engaged in those areas of human knowledge, for them to exchange ideas and to learn from one another.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/26294/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter C. Doherty is a member of the advisory committee to the CSIRO Biosecurity Flagship. He is on the board of The Conversation.</span></em></p>Peter Doherty: Thinking in terms of Australia’s future, how important is it for us to expand activity in the innovation/high technology sector? Donald Hector: It’s critically important. If you look at…Peter C. Doherty, Laureate Professor, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/248952014-03-27T19:06:18Z2014-03-27T19:06:18ZGrattan on Friday: In Conversation with Tony Abbott<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44867/original/9xvxkmp9-1395890139.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tony Abbott has had a tumultuous first few months as prime minister. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Alan Porritt</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Tony Abbott has been in office six months, and this week marks 20 years since he was elected to parliament. On Thursday he sat down with The Conversation in his Parliament House office to talk about settling in to the most demanding job in the nation’s political life.</p>
<p>Abbott admits being prime minister is fatiguing but with six hours sleep a night “I can survive indefinitely”. It’s a “very collegial” and “like-minded” government, despite some senior members being in a “slightly different philosophical space to mine”. “The outliers are not very far away from the mainstream,” he adds. His cabinet often makes changes to items coming to it – “that’s what cabinet government is all about”.</p>
<p>He expresses confidence that his one <a href="https://theconversation.com/sinodinos-stands-aside-during-corruption-inquiry-24571">ministerial casualty</a>, Arthur Sinodinos, who has stood aside because he’s before ICAC, will come through – “I will be amazed if any significant adverse finding is made against him”.</p>
<p>He canvasses his formal and informal advice networks, and mounts a spirited defence of his <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-latest-on-the-command-and-control-front-19855">controversial chief of staff</a>, Peta Credlin. Discussing the accelerated political process, he says anonymous social media can be much more vitriolic and extreme than “normal media”, likening it to “electronic graffiti”.</p>
<p>Abbott explains his failure to take his surprise <a href="https://theconversation.com/knights-dames-be-honest-australia-you-love-it-24875">“knights and dames”</a> initiative to cabinet and the party room by saying this was a matter between him and the Queen.</p>
<p>On <a href="https://theconversation.com/changing-the-racial-discrimination-act-the-power-of-one-versus-the-voice-of-many-24300">proposed changes</a> to the Racial Discrimination Act, he says the government is not “impervious to a further argument”.</p>
<p>Looking to the new post-July 1 Senate, he promises the government will keep the crossbenchers “very much in the loop” as it tries to get its bills through.</p>
<p>And what has he really, really enjoyed in the job? “The contact with the military at every level.”</p>
<p>The interview started on the subject of whether a PM can have a life apart from the job.</p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> How are you managing the work-life balance?</p>
<p><strong>Tony Abbott:</strong> No senior politician can expect to have work-life balance. I’m afraid there are some jobs for which work-life balance inevitably goes out the window. If you want work-life balance you just have to accept that you can’t be a senior member of a government, or for that matter a senior member of an opposition.</p>
<p>So I’m not really managing the work-life balance, I’m just accepting that the work increases and the ordinary life has to decrease when you’re the prime minister.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44887/original/8fry3mct-1395894052.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44887/original/8fry3mct-1395894052.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44887/original/8fry3mct-1395894052.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44887/original/8fry3mct-1395894052.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44887/original/8fry3mct-1395894052.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44887/original/8fry3mct-1395894052.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44887/original/8fry3mct-1395894052.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44887/original/8fry3mct-1395894052.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tony Abbott with his wife and daughters on election night 2013.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Dean Lewins</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> You did try to hang on to a few things. Have you given that up?</p>
<p><strong>Tony Abbott:</strong> I haven’t, but inevitably the space for “self time” decreases even further when you become PM and that’s just the way it is. I’m not complaining, it’s just a fact of life.</p>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> Have you hung on to anything?</p>
<p><strong>Tony Abbott:</strong> I’m still getting my exercise at five o'clock in the morning, that’s good. So far I’ve managed to hold on to a bike ride on Saturday or Sunday morning, probably at least two weekends out of three. But there has been bugger-all surfing since the election. For the first half of January I got a surf in most days, but that’s really the only surfing there’s been since the election.</p>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> And the fire brigade?</p>
<p><strong>Tony Abbott:</strong> I got one night and one day with the brigade up in those Blue Mountain fires in October and I think I’ve done two duty days since then. So just enough to stay an efficient firefighter and I’ll try to get another Sunday in some time between now and the budget.</p>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> Are you still in your Sydney house?</p>
<p><strong>Tony Abbott:</strong> Yes.</p>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> Are you going to stay there?</p>
<p><strong>Tony Abbott:</strong> Look, the security people are anxious, but there has been no definitive decision made. That one’s still being weighed.</p>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> How different is the prime minister’s job from what you expected?</p>
<p><strong>Tony Abbott:</strong> Again, Michelle, I should stress that this isn’t all about me. This isn’t about me and my experience, it’s about the people and their experience of the new government. Hopefully the people’s experience of the new government will be that it’s competent and considered, trustworthy and candid, in a way that the former government wasn’t.</p>
<p>There’s a sense in which lots of things help prepare you for this job, but nothing can completely prepare you for the job. I was a very senior minister in the Howard government and I sat around this particular table [in the prime ministerial office] in many discussions. The difference between being a senior minister and the prime minister is that ultimately the buck does stop with the prime minister and in the end the prime minister has to make those critical judgement calls and that’s the big difference.</p>
<p>It is a very heavy responsibility to make, but someone has to make it for our country and I am thrilled and honoured to have that opportunity and that responsibility.</p>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> I’ve heard it said that you believe the political process has speeded up considerably since the Howard days. Do you think the PM’s job has changed since those days?</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44889/original/z8jyw7mk-1395894077.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44889/original/z8jyw7mk-1395894077.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44889/original/z8jyw7mk-1395894077.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44889/original/z8jyw7mk-1395894077.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44889/original/z8jyw7mk-1395894077.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44889/original/z8jyw7mk-1395894077.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44889/original/z8jyw7mk-1395894077.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44889/original/z8jyw7mk-1395894077.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">John Howard has been a mentor for Tony Abbott in many ways.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>Tony Abbott:</strong> I think there is no doubt that the advent of 24/7 news channels, which are voracious in their demand for constant new content, has accelerated the political process. The rise of social media, in addition to talkback, I think has intensified the political process.</p>
<p>The thing about social media is that it is anonymous, so it can be much more vitriolic and extreme than normal media and yet it is there for everyone to see. It is kind of like electronic graffiti. The political process is accelerated and intense in a way that I don’t believe it ever really has been before.</p>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> And that’s changed the prime minister’s job?</p>
<p><strong>Tony Abbott:</strong> It is just an added element of pressure, that’s all.</p>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> Is the job very fatiguing?</p>
<p><strong>Tony Abbott:</strong> Yes, but I’m lucky in that I’ve got quite a bit of stamina, Michelle. I don’t need more than six hours sleep a night – if I get six hours sleep a night I can survive indefinitely. I can bound out of bed at five o'clock in the morning, get my hour of exercise and feel very refreshed for the day.</p>
<p>That doesn’t mean there aren’t periods during the day when you don’t start to feel like the odd yawn, but nevertheless I find I can go through the day till about ten o'clock pretty comfortably.</p>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> How would you rate your start in the job?</p>
<p><strong>Tony Abbott:</strong> Well, Michelle, I’ve always avoided those sorts of self-assessments because if you give yourself a 10 out of 10 people think you’re a big head, if you give yourself a 6 out of 10 they think you’re plagued with self-doubt, so I’m just not going to rate myself.</p>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> When we <a href="https://theconversation.com/tony-abbott-interview-the-prime-minister-is-probably-a-little-more-than-first-amongst-equals-17750">spoke before the election</a>, you said the prime minister should be somewhat more than first among equals, but leave a lot to his ministers. Now you’re in the position do you still think this is the appropriate formula?</p>
<p><strong>Tony Abbott:</strong> I do. There are some issues where ministers should come and talk to the prime minister, if the prime minister hasn’t already talked to them. Any issue which a minister thinks is going to be profoundly controversial, where we do not have a clear existing position, it is important that there be a conversation between the minister and the prime minister. I think they all understand that and I think it is working very well.</p>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> Have you had to intervene with ministers more than you expected?</p>
<p><strong>Tony Abbott:</strong> No. It’s a very collegial government. The media – and I’m not blaming them – obviously like to seize on the differences between people and, sure, there are some senior members of the government who are in a slightly different philosophical space to mine. But do not underestimate the substantial single-mindedness of this government.</p>
<p>We are a very like-minded group, the senior members of this government. The outliers are not very far away from the mainstream.</p>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> How difficult for you personally was the Sinodinos affair?</p>
<p><strong>Tony Abbott:</strong> I have a lot of respect for Arthur. I’ve known Arthur for a very long time. I’ve worked closely with him over a very long period of time. Arthur is a fundamentally decent man and I will be amazed if any significant adverse finding is made against him.</p>
<p>Arthur is also a tough political professional and he realised that it was going to be difficult for the government if he simply toughed it out and that’s why he came to tell me what he told me.</p>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> What are your various sources of advice; do you maintain an informal network as a sounding board?</p>
<p><strong>Tony Abbott:</strong> Every prime minister has a whole series of networks, and there are official formal networks and there are unofficial informal networks. I’m lucky in that I have good official formal networks, starting with my own office, the leadership group, the cabinet and the party room.</p>
<p>But I’ve also got some informal networks. I guess the people I cycle with are inevitably a bit of an informal network. The people up at the fire brigade are inevitably a bit of an informal network. My wife and daughters are inevitably a bit of an informal network.</p>
<p>I’m confident that there are plenty of people who have the strength of character and the presence of mind to warn me of difficulties and alert me to opportunities.</p>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> You didn’t mention the public service in that list.</p>
<p><strong>Tony Abbott:</strong> Of course I should have, but in the end the public service is there to implement the policies of the government as well as to offer frank and fearless advice.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44910/original/4z5vn8vt-1395910013.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44910/original/4z5vn8vt-1395910013.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44910/original/4z5vn8vt-1395910013.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44910/original/4z5vn8vt-1395910013.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44910/original/4z5vn8vt-1395910013.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44910/original/4z5vn8vt-1395910013.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44910/original/4z5vn8vt-1395910013.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44910/original/4z5vn8vt-1395910013.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Peta Credlin has come under fire in the early days of the government.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> Your office has got a good deal of flak, particularly your chief of staff [Peta Credlin], for being too controlling. Does this concern you at all?</p>
<p><strong>Tony Abbott:</strong> I think it is curious, Michelle, that when a female chief of staff is strong the term “controlling” is used, whereas when a male chief of staff is strong “decisive” is the term used. I think she is doing a terrific job and I’m very proud of my office.</p>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> What have you found the most rewarding areas of the job and what have been the most difficult?</p>
<p><strong>Tony Abbott:</strong> It is such an honour and a privilege, and most of the time such an exhilarating honour and privilege, that I’m reluctant to single out any particular aspect. Like the Governor-General, when asked what you enjoy most about the job my tendency is to say “today”, because of the insights you get into our nation and because of the privileged contact you have with so many people.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44890/original/hxrw58zr-1395894082.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44890/original/hxrw58zr-1395894082.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44890/original/hxrw58zr-1395894082.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44890/original/hxrw58zr-1395894082.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44890/original/hxrw58zr-1395894082.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44890/original/hxrw58zr-1395894082.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44890/original/hxrw58zr-1395894082.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tony Abbott has enjoyed having the opportunity to get to meet the military.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Mike Bowers</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It’s nearly all been good. I suppose, being a fairly traditional person, the contact with the military at every level, from the service chiefs to the squadies that I’ve been lucky enough to do PT with, has been a special highlight.</p>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> And the downsides?</p>
<p><strong>Tony Abbott:</strong> It just goes with the territory, but no one likes criticism which they think is completely unjustified. Although as a mate of mine said to me once, unfair criticism is a compliment in disguise.</p>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> Is there a particularly egregious example of this you can give?</p>
<p><strong>Tony Abbott:</strong> No, if I start going into details I will be thought to be whinging and I don’t want to be thought to be whinging because as I said it goes with the territory.</p>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> You were hit in the early days by some really tough and unexpected issues, notably the revelations about <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-11-18/australia-spied-on-indonesian-president-leaked-documents-reveal/5098860">spying in Indonesia</a> and the announced closure of the Australian operations of <a href="https://theconversation.com/toyota-ponders-future-as-holden-exits-21374">two car manufacturers</a>. How tough were they to deal with and did you feel prepared to deal with them?</p>
<p><strong>Tony Abbott:</strong> They were both tough issues and I think the government has handled them both, in the end, as well as they could have been handled. Whenever you’re in a very difficult position it is important to have principles and values to fall back on.</p>
<p>In respect of Indonesia, I am determined to be the best possible friend of Indonesia that I can be, consistent with my overriding duty to protect our country. We would never do anything that was damaging to Indonesia, because we want Indonesia to flourish. We want Indonesia to take its rightful place as one of the really important countries of the world, as it will, sooner or later.</p>
<p>So I’m never going to do anything that’s damaging to Indonesia. I want to be a very good friend to Indonesia, but there are some things which are non-negotiable. Border protection is just non-negotiable. Maintaining a strong security network is just non-negotiable. I think the Indonesians understand that. I just think it is a pity that the inevitable domestic politics of Indonesia, the inevitable sensation-seeking of the media here and there, turned what was always going to go the way it went into some kind of a big storm.</p>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> You blindsided your colleagues this week with your plan to bring back knights and dames. Why didn’t you take that to cabinet and the party room, especially after the criticism when you bypassed the party room in opposition on paid parental leave?</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44888/original/dkx7spz7-1395894051.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44888/original/dkx7spz7-1395894051.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44888/original/dkx7spz7-1395894051.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44888/original/dkx7spz7-1395894051.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44888/original/dkx7spz7-1395894051.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44888/original/dkx7spz7-1395894051.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44888/original/dkx7spz7-1395894051.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44888/original/dkx7spz7-1395894051.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Tony Abbott had the opportunity to meet the Queen, while in opposition.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lyndon Mechielsen</span></span>
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<p><strong>Tony Abbott:</strong> In the end the relationship between the prime minister and the monarch is very much a personal one and when it comes to the constitution of the Order of Australia, which is headed by the monarch, this is governed by letters patent, which are a matter between the prime minister and the monarch.</p>
<p>I think the prime minister is entitled to make these sorts of decisions with the monarch. I took a few soundings. In fact I took some quite widespread soundings on this and, as you’d expect, some people were more in favour than others. The soundings that I took obviously didn’t deter me from a particular course of action.</p>
<p>Obviously I know there has been a predictable reaction from the usual suspects, but I think it will quickly settle down. Under the new arrangements we’re not going to have a flood of new knights and dames; there will be four a year and I think that is appropriate given the very single honour that a knighthood or a damehood is.</p>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> Do you care that a lot of fun is being made of the initiative at your expense?</p>
<p><strong>Tony Abbott:</strong> I’ve seen some amusing cartoons and I’ve had a bit of a chuckle about it. So be it.</p>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> Is this a return to traditional Tony – was it a case of letting your instincts off the leash?</p>
<p><strong>Tony Abbott:</strong> I want to stress that in the same week that this announcement has been made, I gave quite a significant foreign policy speech, we had red tape repeal day in the parliament as part of our deregulatory agenda, we announced the sale of Medibank Private, we had important legislation such as the mining tax repeal bill dealt with in the Senate.</p>
<p>So the idea that I’ve spent most of the last week thinking about this is simply wrong. But nevertheless, as I said the other day, I think that this will be a grace note in our society and I’m pleased that it has happened.</p>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> You are losing a lot of skin over your planned changes to the Racial Discrimination Act. You feel strongly that a legal injustice was done to columnist Andrew Bolt, but is the course you are taking worth the flak? Do you understand the fears of ethnic communities and the Jewish community [about the proposed changes]?</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44911/original/n7jzf94z-1395910485.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44911/original/n7jzf94z-1395910485.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44911/original/n7jzf94z-1395910485.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44911/original/n7jzf94z-1395910485.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44911/original/n7jzf94z-1395910485.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44911/original/n7jzf94z-1395910485.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44911/original/n7jzf94z-1395910485.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44911/original/n7jzf94z-1395910485.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Columnist Andrew Bolt has been central to the debate about the racial discrimination act.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Julian Smith</span></span>
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<p><strong>Tony Abbott:</strong> This was an election commitment. In the aftermath of the Bolt case there was quite a fierce debate and we said any number of times, orally and in print, that we were going to repeal section 18C in its current form. What we’ve done is entirely consistent with that commitment.</p>
<p>We’ve removed “insult”, “offend” and “humiliate”, we’ve kept “intimidate” and we’ve added “vilify”. I think we’ve produced a stronger prohibition on real racism, while maintaining freedom of speech in ordinary public discussion. So I’m very comfortable with where we’re at. We’re not dogmatic or impervious to a further argument, that’s why we released it as an exposure draft rather than simply releasing it straight into the parliament.</p>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> Is <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/george-brandis-rolled-on-changes-to-racial-discrimination-act-20140326-35iyh.html">the Fairfax story</a> today about George Brandis being done over in cabinet essentially correct? [The report said cabinet this week forced Brandis to water down his original proposals for changes to the Racial Discrimination Act.]</p>
<p><strong>Tony Abbott:</strong> Without commenting on that story, what’s the point of having a cabinet if from time to time proposals that are taken to the cabinet aren’t modified and improved? That’s the whole point of having a cabinet surely, so that a minister can bring a proposal forward, the cabinet discussion can ensue and the proposal might be amended because of that discussion.</p>
<p>There are very few things that come to cabinet that aren’t changed in some way and there is nothing wrong with that. That’s what cabinet government is all about.</p>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> On economic matters – in your tough line on SPC Ardmona and the car industry, we’ve seen a very “dry” line from you. Some of your colleagues are surprised. Do you feel your thinking on economics has shifted? When did you “dry out”?</p>
<p><strong>Tony Abbott:</strong> This is where putting labels on people is so counter-productive. Most of us on some issues could be considered conservative, on other issues could be considered progressive, on other issues might be thought of as being moderate, on other issues might be thought of as being rather forthright.</p>
<p>I think all senior politicians tend to be rather more subtle then the commentators would have it. It is a natural tendency for human beings to try to classify. We all have this classification urge – so and so is such and such, that person is in that camp – but look, most sophisticated people defy stereotype.</p>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> One of the government’s major tasks will be dealing with the new Senate after July 1 in which Clive Palmer’s party will be very important. You two have had your moments in the past. Will you be meeting regularly with him, or leaving the negotiations mainly to others?</p>
<p><strong>Tony Abbott:</strong> This is something that will evolve. What will most certainly happen is that there will be very clear and full communication between the government and independents and minor parties. The precise mechanisms will evolve over time, but we certainly intend to keep the minor parties and the independents very much in the loop. We have to if we want our legislative agenda to have a reasonable chance of success and that’s what we intend to do.</p>
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<span class="caption">Tony Abbott has already spent a lot of time travelling during his prime ministership.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Made Nagi</span></span>
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<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> You’ve already done quite a bit of travel and you have a substantial trip coming up in April to China, Korea and Japan. Then you will be off to the United States. How hard is it to juggle the overseas travel with keeping a grip on domestic priorities in these early days? For example you will be out of the budget process for a week or so when you go to China and the other countries.</p>
<p><strong>Tony Abbott:</strong> I don’t think anyone should overestimate how out of the loop people are these days. In the era of mobile phones and emails, you’re no more out of the loop in China than you are in Sydney. There’s not even much of a time change. In terms of the time change, the time change is no different to Perth. So I’ll be staying in close touch.</p>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> Nevertheless, your mind has to be on what you’re doing there and it is a bit different when Joe Hockey can just pop into this office and say “look I want to talk about this for five minutes”.</p>
<p><strong>Tony Abbott:</strong> If we were in the pre-budget month and I was in Western Australia for a week, for instance, I’d be just as much out of the loop there as I would be in China. It is very important for our long-term economic future that the relationship with Japan, Korea and China, who are our three biggest trading partners, be ever stronger. That’s why I’m making this trip.</p>
<p>I think the fact that I am making this trip quite early on in the life of the new government is a sign that we understand the importance of these relationships to our long-term economic security.</p>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> Just speaking of Western Australia, you’ll be there next week, which is the last week before the Senate election. Do you think you’ll hold your three senators?</p>
<p><strong>Tony Abbott:</strong> I think we can and should, but I don’t presume to prejudge what the electors will do.</p>
<p><strong>Michelle Grattan:</strong> Just finally, if you were to fast forward a year, what are the three things you would most like to have achieved by this time 12 months on?</p>
<p><strong>Tony Abbott:</strong> We’ve got to stop the boats, get the budget under control and repeal the carbon tax and the mining tax. They’re the things that we have to get done in these first 12 months.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/24895/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Tony Abbott has been in office six months, and this week marks 20 years since he was elected to parliament. On Thursday he sat down with The Conversation in his Parliament House office to talk about settling…Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/245782014-03-19T10:12:12Z2014-03-19T10:12:12ZIn Conversation with Lord Krebs: UK fighting climate change with more nuclear energy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44294/original/m2p27xcb-1395211350.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">To fight climate change, the UK will invest in renewing nuclear energy. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/pandaposse/5202277447/">pandaposse/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Recent floods in the UK have awoken the country to the possibly severe impacts of climate change. Like many other parts of the world, including Australia, the UK will see rising temperatures and increasing extreme weather events such as drought and flooding. </p>
<p>The UK has a legislated emissions target of 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. The <a href="http://www.theccc.org.uk/">Committee on Climate Change</a> — the UK equivalent of Australia’s Climate Change Authority — is charged with independently advising and reporting on the government’s progress. </p>
<p>Like Australia, the UK is increasing renewable energy production to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But unlike Australia, other key strategies in the UK include renewing the nuclear power fleet. </p>
<p>Lord John Krebs, chair of adaptation for the Committee on Climate Change and independent member of the House of Lords, is in Australia to participate in the <a href="http://www.vcccar.org.au/">Victorian Centre for Climate Change Adaptation Research</a> annual forum. He spoke to Rod Keenan from the University of Melbourne for The Conversation. </p>
<p>Read the full transcript <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-conversation-with-lord-krebs-full-transcript-24575">here</a>. </p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Rod Keenan</strong>: What do you see as the challenges of adapting to climate change in the UK?</p>
<p><strong>Lord Krebs</strong>: On the one hand, too much water: flooding events, coastal flooding, riverine flooding and heavy rain as we’ve seen over the past couple of months. </p>
<p>At the other end of the spectrum, slightly oddly, the UK is is quite water-stressed, particularly in the south east where there is a combination of high population and relatively low rainfall. </p>
<p>So in the long run we expect an increase in long periods of drought, and we expect periods of intense rainfall to become more common. Sea level rise is going to be an issue for low-lying areas, particularly the east coast.</p>
<p><strong>Rod Keenan</strong>: How have some of the recent events, particularly extensive flooding, affected how people perceive climate change?</p>
<p><strong>Lord Krebs</strong>: In the news coverage and public discourse, people were horrified by the events and the need for emergency action. But over days people began to ask the question “is this something unusual?” So it did then move into a discussion of ‘is this a consequence of climate change’?</p>
<p>You can’t attribute any single event to climate change, but the likelihood is that these kind of extreme events will become more common in the future. So if we’re thinking about how we prepare ourselves to be a more resilient nation, we should be thinking about how we handle these events, and how we can invest to prevent damage. </p>
<p>So I think the public perception is yes, these floods are a sign of things to come in the future.</p>
<p><strong>Rod Keenan</strong>: What developments in climate change mitigation have we seen in the UK?</p>
<p><strong>Lord Krebs</strong>: Some of the things the government is doing to meet the targets are to do with energy efficiency — home insulation, energy efficient cars and washing machine. </p>
<p>On the electricity generation side, the Climate Change Committee’s key recommendation is to largely de-carbonise the electricity supply by 2030. If you can get there can start running a lot of things off de-carbonised electricity, which creates savings for later years to get to our 80% reduction. </p>
<p>We’re not prescriptive about the precise lengths, but we say you need to do three things. One is invest heavily in renewables. In the UK that has largely meant offshore wind. There’s some onshore wind, and also solar. </p>
<p>The second part is there needs to be renewed generation from nuclear power stations. At the moment the UK has half a dozen nuclear power stations, most of which are ending their useful life, and they provide between 15-20% of electricity. There’s no way you can fill that gap without building new nuclear power stations. </p>
<p>The third element will be continued use of fossil fuel, but with the development of carbon capture and storage — taking CO<sub>2</sub> emissions from power stations and pumping them underground. But carbon capture and storage has never been demonstrated at scale.</p>
<p>The government is doing pretty well on renewables. They’re behind target on nuclear. On carbon capture and storage we’re a bit behind, but we’ve now commissioned a number of demonstration works. On energy efficiency measures, the government is rather behind.</p>
<p><strong>Rod Keenan</strong>: Is energy security and reliance on Russian gas weighing heavily on Europe? </p>
<p><strong>Lord Krebs</strong>: Energy security, or sovereignty, is another very important argument for reducing reliance on fossil fuels. We have some reserves left in the North Sea, and potentially reserves in the Atlantic if technology makes it economically feasible. But that’s a long shot.</p>
<p>With the incredible success of fracking in the US, many people in UK are very excited about the possibility of fracked gas. Areas that have historically had very large coal reserves are also associated with natural gas. </p>
<p>But there’s huge uncertainty about the amount of gas — anywhere from a year to decades; it’s not going to be easy to get out unlike in the US, because the rocks are highly fragmented; and some of the places where gas is likely to be abundant are densely populated or sites of natural beauty. </p>
<p><strong>Rod Keenan</strong>: How are Australia’s climate policies viewed in the UK? </p>
<p><strong>Lord Krebs</strong>: What we read in the papers in the UK is that Australia is a country likely to be very vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. You already have many areas that are water-stressed, and you’ve had some interesting weather events in recent years. </p>
<p>I would have thought Australia ought to be very alive to the risks of climate change, and the need to adapt and play a part in mitigation. The political environment doesn’t seem uniformly positive, so I can see an interesting challenge to maintain momentum. </p>
<p><strong>Rod Keenan</strong>: Internationally, we’re aiming for an agreement at the end of 2015 for binding targets. How optimistic are you that we’ll have binding targets?</p>
<p><strong>Lord Krebs</strong>: It’s disappointing that we haven’t had a new global agreement since Kyoto. Maybe 2015 will be the year. But in the absence of an agreement, many countries around the world are taking action themselves, including big polluters like China and the US. China has set quite strenuous carbon intenstity targets to reduce its carbon footprint. The US, partly by switching from coal to gas, has reduce emissions and many of the states have emissions targets. </p>
<p>A recent study on climate actions surveyed 66 countries around the world, responsible for over 80% of greenhouse gas emissions. In those countries there were around 500 different pieces of legislation to do with climate mitigation or adaptation. There is a hell of a lot happening out of self-interest.</p>
<p>It may be that a global agreement emerges from a kind of synthesis of national action.</p>
<p><em>Lord John Krebs is participating in the Victorian Centre for Climate Change Adaptation Research annual forum.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/24578/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rod Keenan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Recent floods in the UK have awoken the country to the possibly severe impacts of climate change. Like many other parts of the world, including Australia, the UK will see rising temperatures and increasing…Rod Keenan, Professor, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.