tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/tasmania-1398/articlesTasmania – The Conversation2024-03-20T19:04:17Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2257832024-03-20T19:04:17Z2024-03-20T19:04:17ZFrom power prices to chocolate fountains, the Tasmanian election campaign has been a promise avalanche<p>The billboards are fading in the harsh sun. Antony Green is doing his vocal warm-up exercises. The 2024 Tasmanian election campaign is almost done and it’s now over to the voters. </p>
<p>The five-week campaign has been largely uninspiring but not without notable moments, from wildcard independents to promises of the world’s largest chocolate fountain. </p>
<p>So what’s the state of play going into election day? Which announcements have cut through, and what’s been lost in the flood of promises? And of course, what might we prefer to forget?</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/dire-polls-for-labor-in-tasmania-and-queensland-with-elections-upcoming-225455">Dire polls for Labor in Tasmania and Queensland with elections upcoming</a>
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<h2>The key players</h2>
<p>Tasmania has five electorates: Bass, Braddon, Clark, Franklin, and Lyons. Each of these will <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-24/peg-putt-1998-tasmanian-parliament-numbers-chair-protest/101689536">elect seven members</a> to the lower house for the first time since 1998, when each electorate was reduced to five seats. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Tasmania’s lower house is being restored to 35 seats.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Jeremy Rockliff is leader of the Liberal Party (there’s no Coalition down south), and has been premier since April 2022. </p>
<p>He’s had a rough ride. There have been several cabinet reshuffles, and he’s been forced to govern in minority since May 2023, when two of his MPs <a href="https://theconversation.com/tasmania-is-going-to-an-early-election-will-the-countrys-last-liberal-state-be-no-more-216533">quit the party</a> to sit on the crossbench. He called the election in a bid to re-establish his parliamentary majority.</p>
<p>In the opposite camp, Rebecca White is leader of the Labor Party, and will be hoping to avoid her third straight electoral defeat. Like Rockliff, the past few years haven’t been smooth sailing for White and Labor. </p>
<p>She resigned as party leader after the 2021 election defeat and was replaced by David O’Byrne. However, O’Byrne was forced to quit three weeks later following a <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-30/labor-investigates-sexual-harassment-claims-against-david-obyrne/100253560">sexual harassment claim</a>, and White was re-elected as leader. She and Labor have struggled to cut through during the election campaign.</p>
<p>Rosalie Woodruff is the leader of the Greens, which have long been the third party in Tasmania. Woodruff took over from Cassy O’Connor in July 2023, but is something of an unknown quantity, with a lower public profile than previous Greens leaders.</p>
<p>Here’s where things get interesting. This election will see the highest number of independents (29) contesting a Tasmanian election for decades. </p>
<p>While there are too many to list them all, ones to keep an eye on include: </p>
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<li><p>John Tucker and Lara Alexander (the Liberal MPs who quit in 2023)</p></li>
<li><p>David O’Byrne (former Labor leader)</p></li>
<li><p>Kristie Johnson (a sitting independent MP) </p></li>
<li><p>Sue Hickey (former Hobart Lord Mayor, former Liberal then independent MP).</p></li>
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<p>Finally, there’s the Jacqui Lambie Network (JLN), which is running candidates in all seats except Clark. The JLN made the controversial decision not to release any policies, instead pitching themselves as a group of down-to-earth people that wants to “keep the bastards honest”. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/tasmania-is-going-to-an-early-election-will-the-countrys-last-liberal-state-be-no-more-216533">Tasmania is going to an early election. Will the country's last Liberal state be no more?</a>
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<h2>Which issues have dominated the campaign?</h2>
<p>Polling during the campaign showed the <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-15/tas-stateline-election-issues-influencing-voters/103463516">top concerns</a> for most Tasmanian voters were health care and cost of living. Labor and Liberal both put forward several measures aimed at these areas, among others. </p>
<p>Millions of dollars have been promised with the enthusiasm of a discount carpet warehouse closing-down sale – but this <a href="https://www.themercury.com.au/news/tasmania/lyons-is-tasmanias-largest-geographical-electorate-covering-many-regional-areas/news-story/c116fd291dc9b8eb76efc2fe363e49ea">hasn’t necessarily</a> helped win votes. In fact, this sort of policy bonanza can confuse and overwhelm voters.</p>
<p>In an ideal world, we would each decide our vote by comparing each candidate or party’s full set of policies, and figuring out which one best matches our own values. But who has time for that? </p>
<p>In reality, people typically vote based on a combination of <a href="https://daily.jstor.org/what-makes-us-vote-the-way-we-do/">other things</a>, including specific, controversial issues, eye-catching headlines, and candidates’ personalities. This is how democracies tend to work all over the world. </p>
<p>So what were the things that might have shifted votes during this campaign? </p>
<p>The long-running divide in Tasmanian society between environmental conservation and economic development remains, meaning voters may decide whom to side with depending on each party’s stance on salmon farming or the proposed new AFL stadium, for example. </p>
<p>Some influential issues are hyper-local, such as a long-closed <a href="https://www.themercury.com.au/news/tasmania/labor-makes-election-promise-of-5m-to-repair-and-reopen-glenorchy-pool/news-story/88a4ff6da7046cea183d4ac962eecc06">community pool</a>. </p>
<p>There have been a few “headline grabbers” during the campaign, designed to stick in the minds of undecided voters. The best example of this is the Liberals’ promise to build the world’s largest <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/mar/10/pure-imagination-tasmanian-premier-vows-to-build-worlds-largest-chocolate-fountain-if-re-elected">chocolate fountain</a> if elected. Labor’s <a href="https://taslabor.org.au/our-plan/power-prices/">refrain</a> “Tasmanian prices for Tasmanian power” is also in the mix. </p>
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<p>The final thing that may sway voters is what <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/mar/19/its-the-vibe-25-years-on-how-the-castle-became-an-australian-classic#:%7E:text=For%20some%2C%20the%20most%20well,the%20vibe%2C%E2%80%9D%20says%20Denuto.">Dennis Denuto</a> would call “the vibe” around candidates. </p>
<p>Rockliff has benefited from the perception that he’s a “<a href="https://www.themercury.com.au/news/opinion/wooley-libs-launched-back-in-time-by-nice-guy-jrock/news-story/acbafc64fae580379192f2e65ea8aa37">nice guy</a>” in tough circumstances, while White has struggled to separate her brand from the O’Byrne controversy and <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03-30/analysis-labor-strategy-questions-after-winter-snub/100037140">earlier Labor factional fighting</a>.</p>
<p>The Greens have been doorknocking hard, particularly in the state’s <a href="https://www.crikey.com.au/2024/03/15/tasmanian-greens-state-election-braddon/">northwest</a>. That personal contact may help them get a new candidate across the line. </p>
<p>The JLN has leaned heavily on their namesake’s forceful “battler” personality. Each independent has tried to build their own brand, typically by focusing on a specific issue or spruiking their ability to stand up to the major parties. It’s tricky to tell how successful these efforts have been – the proof will be in the votes. </p>
<h2>The lowlights</h2>
<p>There have been a few lowlights during the campaign. First prize goes to the fake JLN site <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-14/jacqui-lambie-slams-liberals-over-website/103581992">set up</a> by the Liberal Party. This particular piece of skulduggery is not against electoral law, but it’s certainly against the spirit of democracy. It might not have the desired effect: this type of negative campaigning can <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-jacqui-lambie-network-is-the-latest-victim-of-cybersquatting-its-the-tip-of-the-iceberg-of-negative-political-ads-online-225774">turn voters away</a> from the offending party.</p>
<p>Another disappointing aspect of the campaign was Rockliff and White repeatedly ruling out offering ministries or policy concessions to independents, the JLN, or the Greens in exchange for their support. This is due to the perceived failure of <a href="https://www.aspg.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/33_2-Michael-Lester.pdf">previous power-sharing</a> deals in Tasmania. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-jacqui-lambie-network-is-the-latest-victim-of-cybersquatting-its-the-tip-of-the-iceberg-of-negative-political-ads-online-225774">The Jacqui Lambie Network is the latest victim of 'cybersquatting'. It's the tip of the iceberg of negative political ads online</a>
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<p>Rockliff even proposed that MPs who quit their party should be <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-19/experts-respond-to-tas-liberals-stability-clause/103599746">booted out</a> of parliament and replaced with a candidate from the same party – a stunt that ignores that our political system is based on candidates being elected to represent a constituency, not a party. </p>
<p>Rockliff and White may come to regret their strident rhetoric when the votes are counted. It looks <a href="https://theconversation.com/dire-polls-for-labor-in-tasmania-and-queensland-with-elections-upcoming-225455">very unlikely</a> either party will win the 18 seats needed to form a majority government.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225783/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Hortle 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>Tasmanians head to the polls on Saturday in an election that was called more than a year early. After a largely uninspiring campaign, here’s your guide to state election.Robert Hortle, Research Fellow, Tasmanian Policy Exchange, University of TasmaniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2261222024-03-20T19:04:04Z2024-03-20T19:04:04Z‘How long before climate change will destroy the Earth?’: research reveals what Australian kids want to know about our warming world<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582994/original/file-20240320-16-lx7lnj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C19%2C6374%2C4224&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/young-boy-taking-photos-land-burnt-1563856276">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Every day, more children discover they are living in a climate crisis. This makes <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(21)00278-3/fulltext">many children feel</a> sad, anxious, angry, powerless, confused and frightened about what the future holds. </p>
<p>The climate change burden facing young people is inherently unfair. But they have the potential to be the most powerful generation when it comes to creating change.</p>
<p>Research and public debate so far has largely <a href="https://www.hhrjournal.org/2014/07/climate-change-childrens-rights-and-the-pursuit-of-intergenerational-climate-justice/">failed to engage</a> with the voices and opinions of children – instead, focusing on the views of adults.
<a href="https://www.cell.com/one-earth/fulltext/S2590-3322(24)00100-3">Our research</a> set out to change this. </p>
<p>We asked 1,500 children to tell us what they wanted to know about climate change. The results show climate action, rather than the scientific cause of the problem, is their greatest concern. It suggests climate change education in schools must become more holistic and empowering, and children should be given more opportunities to shape the future they will inherit.</p>
<h2>Questions of ‘remarkable depth’</h2>
<p>In Australia, research shows <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264546580_Children's_Fears_hopes_and_heroes_Modern_childhood_in_Australia">43% of children</a> aged 10 to 14 are worried about the future impact of climate change, and one in four believe the world will end before they grow up.</p>
<p>Children are often <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.853">seen as</a> passive, marginal actors in the climate crisis. Evidence of an intergenerational divide is also emerging. Young people report feeling <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378023001103">unheard</a> and <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0016718520302748?via%3Dihub">betrayed by older generations</a> when it comes to climate change. </p>
<p>Our study examined 464 questions about climate change submitted to the <a href="https://curiousclimate.org.au/schools/">Curious Climate Schools</a> program in Tasmania in 2021 and 2022. The questions were asked by primary and high school students aged 7 to 18.</p>
<p>The children’s questions reveal a remarkable depth of consideration about climate change.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-well-does-the-new-australian-curriculum-prepare-young-people-for-climate-change-183356">How well does the new Australian Curriculum prepare young people for climate change?</a>
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<img alt="teenagers hold signs at rally" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582991/original/file-20240320-30-u8t2vi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582991/original/file-20240320-30-u8t2vi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582991/original/file-20240320-30-u8t2vi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582991/original/file-20240320-30-u8t2vi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582991/original/file-20240320-30-u8t2vi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582991/original/file-20240320-30-u8t2vi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582991/original/file-20240320-30-u8t2vi.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">The vast majority of children worry about climate change.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/london-uk-united-kingdom-15th-february-1315212515">Shutterstock</a></span>
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<h2>Kids are thinking globally</h2>
<p>The impacts of climate change were discussed in 38% of questions. About 10% of questions asked about impacts on places, such as:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>With the rate of climate change, what will the Earth be like when I’m an adult?</p>
<p>What does the melting of glaciers in Antarctica mean for Tassie (Tasmania) and our climate?</p>
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<p>These questions demonstrate children’s understanding of the global scale of the climate crisis and their concern about places close to home.</p>
<p>How climate change will affect humans accounted for 12% of questions. Impacts on animals and biodiversity were the subject of 9% of questions. Examples include:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Will climate change make us live elsewhere, eg underwater or in space?</p>
<p>What species may become extinct due to climate change, which species could adapt to changing conditions and have we already seen this begin to happen?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Approximately 7% of questions asked about ice melting and/or sea-level rise, while 3% asked about extreme weather or disasters.</p>
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<img alt="four children in school uniforms reading book" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582988/original/file-20240320-30-1bimcz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C6262%2C4694&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582988/original/file-20240320-30-1bimcz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582988/original/file-20240320-30-1bimcz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582988/original/file-20240320-30-1bimcz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582988/original/file-20240320-30-1bimcz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582988/original/file-20240320-30-1bimcz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582988/original/file-20240320-30-1bimcz.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">
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<span class="caption">Children wonder what Earth will look like when they are adults.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/row-multiethnic-elementary-students-reading-book-143878204">Shutterstock</a></span>
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<h2>‘What can we do?’</h2>
<p>Action on climate change was the most frequent theme, discussed in 40% of questions. Some questions involved the kinds of action needed and others focused on the challenges in taking action. They include:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>How would you make rapid climate improvements without sacrificing industry and finance?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Around 16% of questions asked about, or implied, who was responsible for climate action. Governments and politicians were the largest group singled out. Other questions asked about the responsibilities of schools, communities, states, countries and individuals. Examples include:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What can I do as a 12-year-old to help the planet, and why will these actions help us?</p>
<p>If the world knows about climate change, why has not much happened?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Some 20% of questions suggested action by specific sectors of the economy. This included stopping using fossil fuels and moving to renewable energy or nuclear power. Some suggested action related to food, agriculture or fisheries.</p>
<h2>Existential worries</h2>
<p>In 27% of questions, students raised existential concerns about climate change. This reveals the urgency and frustration many children feel.</p>
<p>The largest group of these questions (15%) asked for predictions of future events. Some 5% of questions implied the planet, or humanity, was doomed. They included:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Will all the reefs die?</p>
<p>How long before climate change will destroy the Earth?</p>
<p>How long will we be able to survive on our planet if we do nothing to try to slow down/reverse climate change?</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Why is Earth getting hot?</h2>
<p>Scientific questions about climate change made up 25% of the total. The largest group related to the causes and physical processes, such as: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>What causes the Earth to get hotter due to climate change?</p>
<p>Would our world be the same now if the Industrial Revolution hadn’t happened?</p>
<p>How do they know the climate and percentage of gases, such as methane, in the 1800s?</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>What all this means</h2>
<p>Our analysis indicates children are very concerned about how climate change affects the things and places they care about. Children also want to know how to contribute to solutions – either through their own actions or influencing adults, industries and governments. Children asked fewer questions about the scientific evidence for climate change. </p>
<p>So what are the implications of this?</p>
<p>Research shows that where climate change is taught in schools, it is primarily <a href="http://www.jsedimensions.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Siperstein-JSE-Nov-2015-Hope-Issue-PDF.pdf">represented as</a> a scientific and environmental issue, without focus on the social and political causes and challenges.</p>
<p>While children need information about the science of global warming, our research suggests this is not enough. Climate change should be integrated into all subjects in the curriculum, from social studies to maths to food. </p>
<p>Teachers should also be trained to understand climate challenges themselves, and to identify and support students suffering from climate distress.</p>
<p>And children must be given opportunities to get involved in shaping the future. Governments and industry should commit to listening to children’s concerns about climate change, and acting on them.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/i-tend-to-be-very-gentle-how-teachers-are-navigating-climate-change-in-the-classroom-212370">'I tend to be very gentle': how teachers are navigating climate change in the classroom</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/226122/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chloe Lucas received funding from the Centre for Marine Socioecology, the University of Tasmania, and the Tasmanian Climate Change Office for the research and engagement reported in this article, as part of the Curious Climate Schools program. She is also funded by the Australian Research Council. Chloe is a member of the Centre for Marine Socioecology, the Institute of Australian Geographers and the International Environmental Communication Association, and is a member of the Editorial Board of Australian Geographer.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Charlotte Earl-Jones received funding from the Centre for Marine Socioecology, the University of Tasmania, and the Tasmanian Climate Change Office for the research and engagement reported in this article, as part of the Curious Climate Schools program. She is also funded by Westpac Scholars Trust and the Australian Commonwealth Government Research Training Program. She is a member of the Institute of Australian Geographers. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gabi Mocatta received funding from the Centre for Marine Socioecology, the University of Tasmania and the Tasmanian Climate Change Office (now re-named Renewables, Climate and Future Industries Tasmania) for the research and engagement reported here. She is also President of the Board of the International Environmental Communication Association.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gretta Pecl receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Department of Agriculture Water and the Environment, Department of Primary Industries NSW, Department of Premier and Cabinet (Tasmania), the Fisheries Research & Development Corporation, and has received travel funding support from the Australian government for participation in the IPCC process. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kim Beasy received funding from the Centre for Marine Socioecology, the University of Tasmania, and the Tasmanian Climate Change Office for the research and engagement reported in this article, as part of the Curious Climate School program. She is a member of the Centre of Marine Socioecology and the Australian Association of Environmental Education. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rachel Kelly receives funding from the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation, and the Centre for Marine Socioecology at the University of Tasmania.</span></em></p>The result shows climate change education in schools must become more holistic and empowering, and children should be allowed to shape the future they will inherit.Chloe Lucas, Lecturer and Research Fellow, School of Geography, Planning, and Spatial Sciences. Coordinator, Education for Sustainability Tasmania, University of TasmaniaCharlotte Earl-Jones, PhD Candidate, University of TasmaniaGabi Mocatta, Research Fellow in Climate Change Communication, Climate Futures Program, University of Tasmania, and Lecturer in Communication, Deakin UniversityGretta Pecl, Professor, at IMAS and Director of the Centre for Marine Socioecology, University of TasmaniaKim Beasy, Senior Lecturer in Curriculum and Pedagogy, University of TasmaniaRachel Kelly, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Future Ocean and Coastal Infrastructures (FOCI) Consortium, Memorial University, Canada, and Centre for Marine Socioecology, University of TasmaniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2243352024-03-20T19:03:42Z2024-03-20T19:03:42ZTasmania’s tall eucalypt forests will be wiped out by heatwaves unless we step in to help them<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582418/original/file-20240318-26-dug8wt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=22%2C0%2C4898%2C3253&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nicolas Rakotopare</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Tasmania’s tall eucalypt forests are globally significant. They <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S037811270900872X">accumulate carbon faster</a> than any other natural forest ecosystem in the world. </p>
<p>But climate change is making it harder for these forests to remove carbon from the atmosphere and store it in wood. During heatwaves, they <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-06674-x">stop removing carbon</a> altogether and release it instead.</p>
<p>What will happen as <a href="https://climatefutures.org.au/extreme-events-technical-report/">heatwaves occur more frequently</a>? Tasmania’s tall eucalypt forests will become carbon sources more and more of the time. As temperatures continue to rise, the forests will reach a “<a href="https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/sciadv.aay1052">tipping point</a>”. When this happens the forests will no longer be able to store carbon and mass tree deaths will occur. </p>
<p>My <a href="https://bit.ly/Giants-Under-Threat_Report-2024">new report</a> released today makes recommendations about preparing for this. There are serious implications for greenhouse gas emissions, conservation and wood production. We cannot ignore the risks of a warming climate. There is a lot we can do now to prepare and make future forests more resilient. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/in-heatwave-conditions-tasmanias-tall-eucalypt-forests-no-longer-absorb-carbon-176979">In heatwave conditions, Tasmania’s tall eucalypt forests no longer absorb carbon</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Forests of immense value</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/181/">Tasmania Wilderness World Heritage Area</a> is <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/news/2344">ranked number one</a> of all UNESCO sites globally for taking carbon out of the atmosphere and storing it. That’s because western Tasmania’s <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/geb.12171">high rainfall and cool temperatures are ideal for forest growth</a>.</p>
<p>These tall eucalypt forests contribute greatly to Tasmania’s claim to net-zero emissions in its <a href="https://recfit.tas.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/440592/Tasmanian_Greenhouse_Gas_Emissions_Report_2023.pdf">greenhouse gas accounts</a>.</p>
<p>The forests have produced most of the high-quality sawlogs supplying Tasmania’s sawmilling industry for more than a century.</p>
<p>They also provide unique and long-lasting habitat for wildlife. Large logs support diverse communities of insects and fungi.</p>
<p>The forest supports unique <a href="https://tahuneadventures.com.au/">tourism experiences</a> and an emerging opportunity for “<a href="https://www.bigtreestate.com/">big tree tourism</a>”.</p>
<p>Tall eucalypt forests are dominated by one or two or three species of <em>Eucalyptus</em>: </p>
<ul>
<li><em>E. obliqua</em> (messmate or stringy bark)</li>
<li><em>E. regnans</em> (swamp gum or mountain ash) </li>
<li><em>E. delegatensis</em> (alpine ash or gum-top stringybark). </li>
</ul>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582466/original/file-20240318-24-2fq2cg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582466/original/file-20240318-24-2fq2cg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582466/original/file-20240318-24-2fq2cg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=831&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582466/original/file-20240318-24-2fq2cg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=831&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582466/original/file-20240318-24-2fq2cg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=831&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582466/original/file-20240318-24-2fq2cg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1044&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582466/original/file-20240318-24-2fq2cg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1044&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582466/original/file-20240318-24-2fq2cg.png?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"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Stringybark flowers <em>(Eucalyptus obliqua)</em></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tim Wardlaw</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Preparing for tipping points</h2>
<p>As temperatures continue to rise, many ecosystems are predicted to reach a <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/sciadv.aay1052">tipping point</a>. This is the point at which the ecosystem can no longer function and is eventually replaced by a different ecosystem.</p>
<p>Many plant-based ecosystems, mostly in the tropics, are expected to reach a tipping point within three decades. Tasmania’s tall eucalypt forests may be among them because they share <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0084378">similarities with tropical rainforest</a>. </p>
<p>World Heritage values would be jeopardised, huge amounts of stored carbon would be released, and biodiversity dependent on the tall trees would be threatened. So there is an urgent need to begin preparing now for a future tipping point in these forests. </p>
<p>The main ambition of the measures outlined in my <a href="https://bit.ly/Giants-Under-Threat_Report-2024">report released today</a> is to restore forested areas after the original forest is lost – or damaged irreversibly. The new forests would be grown from the same species of eucalypts but the seed sown would regenerate forests better suited to the new climate than the original forest.</p>
<p>To achieve this ambition, we need to decide what features of tall eucalypt forests we want to retain in future forests. Capacity for rapid growth after disturbance would be high on the list of those features. </p>
<p>We also need to know what features need to change to make the forests better suited to a new climate. Increasing the optimum temperature for carbon uptake is the top priority. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582465/original/file-20240318-16-1k5k0h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Peering inside the forest, looking through ferns and sedges at ground level and trees of various heights beneath the canopy" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582465/original/file-20240318-16-1k5k0h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582465/original/file-20240318-16-1k5k0h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582465/original/file-20240318-16-1k5k0h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582465/original/file-20240318-16-1k5k0h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582465/original/file-20240318-16-1k5k0h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582465/original/file-20240318-16-1k5k0h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582465/original/file-20240318-16-1k5k0h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Beneath the canopy of the tallest trees there is a mid-layer of trees and a lower layer of ferns and sedges.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tim Wardlaw</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Producing climate-ready seed for sowing</h2>
<p>In new research, soon to be published, I reviewed several studies that compared the features of Tasmanian tall eucalypt forests with other forests on the Australian mainland. </p>
<p>I wanted to understand why Tasmania’s forests were so sensitive to heatwaves and what, if anything, could be done to lessen their impact. I found the poor response to heatwaves had more to do with the local conditions than anything else. The forests are accustomed to high rainfall and a narrow temperature range. </p>
<p>Could we speed up natural selection to help Tasmania’s tall eucalypt forests adapt to a new, warmer climate? </p>
<p>Previous research has shown forests can be managed to speed up natural selection and <a href="https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ecm.1333">produce seed better suited to new climates</a>. But this is only feasible in forests managed for wood production. </p>
<p>We need to find out whether natural selection can increase the optimum temperature for carbon uptake by the forest, and if so, by how much. </p>
<p>We need to ensure the right policy settings are in place. A policy to end logging of native forests, for example, would rule out speeding up natural selection.</p>
<p>And we need to think and plan what to do if tall eucalypt forests in reserves are lost or irreparably damaged. Should we try to restore new generations of tall eucalypt forests, and if so, how?</p>
<p>Finally, community support is required. People need to understand what we are trying to achieve. They can also bring new ideas about how to make tall eucalypt forests more resilient. </p>
<p>Timely, accurate, trusted, and accessible information will be crucial. Ongoing <a href="https://www.tern.org.au/tern-ecosystem-processes/warra-tall-eucalypt-supersite/">monitoring</a> of the tall eucalypt forest in the upper reaches of Tasmania’s Huon Valley can provide much of this information.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582464/original/file-20240318-18-dzlsif.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Aerial view of the Warra landscape looking looking south from the Warra flux tower above the canopy" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582464/original/file-20240318-18-dzlsif.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582464/original/file-20240318-18-dzlsif.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582464/original/file-20240318-18-dzlsif.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582464/original/file-20240318-18-dzlsif.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582464/original/file-20240318-18-dzlsif.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582464/original/file-20240318-18-dzlsif.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582464/original/file-20240318-18-dzlsif.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&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 Warra Supersite in the upper reaches of the Huon Valley is one of 16 intensive ecosystem monitoring field stations in Australia’s Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Michael Brown, ComStar Systems</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Future forests</h2>
<p>Clearly, humanity must cut greenhouse gas emissions and limit global warming. But some climate impacts are now unavoidable and we need to be prepared.</p>
<p>As heatwaves intensify, Tasmania’s tall eucalypt forests will reach a tipping point. Trees will die. The forest we know today will be lost forever. </p>
<p>But if we are prepared, we can ensure another forest takes its place. With our help, future generations of tall eucalypt forests can still exist – forests better suited to Tasmania’s new climate.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/hard-to-kill-heres-why-eucalypts-are-survival-experts-222743">Hard to kill: here's why eucalypts are survival experts</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224335/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>I receive funding from the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network.</span></em></p>Our tallest trees are world champions when it comes to capturing and storing carbon, but they don’t like the heat. Climate change will trigger mass tree deaths in Tasmania. Here’s what can be done.Tim Wardlaw, Research Associate, University of TasmaniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2257742024-03-14T05:54:48Z2024-03-14T05:54:48ZThe Jacqui Lambie Network is the latest victim of ‘cybersquatting’. It’s the tip of the iceberg of negative political ads online<p>Firebrand senator Jacqui Lambie is furious. Amid the Tasmanian election campaign (in which she’s running candidates), her party, the Jacqui Lambie Network, has fallen victim to one of the many pitfalls in the world of online political advertising.</p>
<p>Her party’s website is lambienetwork.com.au. You might understand her anger, then, after <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-14/jacqui-lambie-slams-liberals-over-website/103581992">finding out</a> the Tasmanian Liberal party created a website to campaign against her, called lambienetwork.com. It’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it difference.</p>
<p>This is a textbook example of what’s known as cybersquatting. It’s when internet domain names that are similar to existing trademarked material or the names of people or organisations are bought up by competitors to use against the original. In fact, the major parties have purchased <a href="https://www.crikey.com.au/2022/04/08/crikeys-australian-political-party-domain-register/">a heap</a> of domain names.</p>
<p>As political parties desperately battle for voters’ attention in a world full of distractions and <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-02-08/trust-slump-as-division-rules/101939406">dwindling trust in government</a>, cybersquatting is one of many online tools in the toolkit. But the toolkit is full of blunt instruments that may only be effective on a minority of people. The true damage is being done to the majority, who have less and less faith in politics and its institutions.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/all-governments-are-guilty-of-running-political-ads-on-the-public-purse-heres-how-to-stop-it-191766">All governments are guilty of running political ads on the public purse. Here's how to stop it</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A crowded, manufactured landscape</h2>
<p>In commercial marketing, there’s a focus on long-term brand building. In political marketing, there’s just one goal: winning.</p>
<p>With such high pressure, and little time to hit objectives, parties and candidates use highly emotive messaging and narratives to drive rapid attention and engagement, and hopefully convince people to vote for them.</p>
<p>With markets splintered into ever-smaller segments, based at times on very specific needs, <a href="https://theconversation.com/facebook-videos-targeted-texts-and-clive-palmer-memes-how-digital-advertising-is-shaping-this-election-campaign-115629">social media</a> has helped move voters quickly and developed narratives around leaders’ personal brands. </p>
<p>Instagram was used successfully by former prime minister Scott Morrison with <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/language/punjabi/en/article/prime-minister-scott-morrison-makes-scomosas-says-would-have-liked-to-share-them-with-narendra-modi/fzx9zmmkg">his Scomosas</a> and attempt at Bunnings DIY. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1266952463464071171"}"></div></p>
<p>His successor, Anthony Albanese, has replicated that strategy, letting us get a glimpse of who he really is, even having a <a href="https://twitter.com/TotoAlbanese?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1529271741683339264%7Ctwgr%5E2db6b443e67a568315e7a33f81e6cd31f916b63d%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.perthnow.com.au%2Fpolitics%2Fanthony-albanese%2Fanthony-albaneses-dog-toto-gains-huge-following-on-twitter-c-6934822">Twitter/X account for his dog Toto</a>. This is aimed at developing resonance and building up likeability for his brand. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1531395641582047232"}"></div></p>
<p>Of course, as any royal watcher or user of social media can tell you, <a href="https://theconversation.com/yes-kate-middletons-photo-was-doctored-but-so-are-a-lot-of-images-we-see-today-225553">curated images are exactly that</a>: manufactured, for us. So we are trusting this method less and less. This will only get worse the longer voters are exposed to it.</p>
<p>Stories such as that in the 2022 federal election of Labor-aligned groups <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-04-08/aec-investigating-union-tiktok-accounts-ahead-of-election/100969896">considering paying influencers</a> to post friendly content, doesn’t help either. </p>
<p>As a result, when we see content posted by an influencer, we’re now more likely to be sceptical. Do they really like this product, or are they just being paid to say they do?</p>
<h2>‘Angertainment’ is highly effective</h2>
<p>So it’s back to square one. Enter negativity, or “angertainment”.</p>
<p>Reality shows are full of it. One example is <a href="https://www.girlmuseum.org/media-analysis-the-villain-edit/#:%7E:text=When%20a%20participant%20is%20edited%20in%20a%20way,footage%20of%20someone%20is%20presented%20to%20the%20audience.">the villain edit</a>, where certain contestants are framed to be the antagonist for the sake of drama. There’s also the cued music to make us feel this is the “season-defining moment”. </p>
<p>They do this for the same reasons politicians have done it for decades. It works. It gets our attention. We get engaged. We change our vote. Ratings of these shows don’t lie. </p>
<p>In the past, this was called “wedge politics”, as it wedged one group of voters against others. A party or candidate could then become that group’s champion, and hello election victory. Simple narrative construction. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/we-tracked-election-ad-spending-for-4-000-facebook-pages-heres-what-theyre-posting-about-and-why-cybersecurity-is-the-bigger-concern-182286">We tracked election ad spending for 4,000 Facebook pages. Here's what they're posting about – and why cybersecurity is the bigger concern</a>
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<hr>
<p>This was easy when competition for our attention was less fierce. John Howard’s 2001 election-opening “<a href="https://theconversation.com/issues-that-swung-elections-tampa-and-the-national-security-election-of-2001-115143">we decide</a>” statement about immigration was pure wedge politics. </p>
<p>The aim is still the same now, but in a competitive environment for our attention and retention, modern methods have allowed for new ways to reach the average voter. Having not seen them before, people are <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-scare-campaigns-like-mediscare-work-even-if-voters-hate-them-62279">more susceptible to believing</a> them. </p>
<p>Clive Palmer has used <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/sep/08/clive-palmer-and-craig-kelly-using-spam-text-messages-to-capture-rightwing-vote-ahead-of-election-expert-says">spam text messages</a> over the years to grab some attention, although it hasn’t necessarily translated into electoral success.</p>
<p>A more inventive use of the internet to campaign was Pauline Hanson’s <a href="https://www.onenation.org.au/please-explain">cartoon series</a>. The first three episodes racked up <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/tv-and-radio/pauline-hanson-as-a-superhero-these-cartoons-could-be-the-future-20211123-p59b9u.html">750,000 views</a> in two weeks on YouTube. </p>
<p>Both Labor and Liberal have had a strong presence on Snapchat. In 2016, the Liberals were among the first to <a href="https://www.marketingmag.com.au/social-digital/liberal-party-makes-world-history-first-sponsored-snapchat-lens-political-advertising/">make a filter</a> on the app. Labor was the <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/technology/how-are-politicians-using-social-media-to-campaign-20220418-p5ae6q.html">only major party</a> to use it during the 2022 federal election campaign.</p>
<p>These are all new ways of communicating a party’s key messages, including scare or smear campaigns. </p>
<p>Think “Mediscare”, so well done by Labor in 2016 via SMS, and then the revenge sequel of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jun/08/it-felt-like-a-big-tide-how-the-death-tax-lie-infected-australias-election-campaign">death taxes</a> in 2019 by the Coalition. They used Facebook groups very well. </p>
<p>Angertainment is now seen as being more likely to get the message across, and thereby victory, than anything else. </p>
<p>A significant aspect of these campaigns was disinformation, including the misrepresentation or impersonation of candidates. Senator David Pocock was a key target in the ACT in 2022, but <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-04-27/david-pocock-lodges-complaint-over-advance-australia-corflutes/101016990">successfully ran a challenge</a> through the Australian Electoral Commission. </p>
<p>But this is 2024, and two years is an aeon in social media. The Jacqui Lambie Network (JLN) website trick we saw this week is an old-school one. Unlike some of the other strategies, it’s not effective. It is, however, childish. </p>
<p>So why bother? The attacking party would be obvious to most, if not by the authorised name as required by electoral laws. This dilutes the effect and it likely reinforces the reasons to vote for the JLN. </p>
<p>But political parties do it to capitalise on those who don’t realise they’re receiving a message in bad faith. Even if it’s a minority, it’s someone. In a tight political climate, it might be enough to tip the scales in their favour.</p>
<p>The collateral damage, of course, is the spread of misinformation and public disillusionment with politics and elections.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/few-restrictions-no-spending-limit-and-almost-no-oversight-welcome-to-political-advertising-in-australia-181248">Few restrictions, no spending limit, and almost no oversight: welcome to political advertising in Australia</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Can we stop this?</h2>
<p>We can, easily. </p>
<p>Cybersquatting is in a grey area legally. There are gaps in the relevant legislation that make it very difficult for those affected to get websites taken down. They’re often managed by international organisations with laborious processes.</p>
<p>But the government can ban cyber hijacking or squatting of politicians or parties’ web addresses or social channels. It can restrict negative advertising, and bring in green ticks to verify truthful advertising. </p>
<p>Government can also ensure social media companies take more responsibility for content, and tolerate fewer excuses for poor behaviour. This isn’t restricting freedom of speech, only restricting disinformation. Some independents <a href="https://mumbrella.com.au/new-bill-tabled-to-bring-much-needed-accountability-to-political-advertising-806487">have already</a> introduced bills in parliament on this issue.</p>
<p>If it’s so easy, why hasn’t it been done? Because that requires political support. Considering politicians are the ones who benefit most from the existing framework, we don’t need a negative ad to tell us how unlikely they are to do anything about it anytime soon.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225774/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Hughes 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 political parties desperately battle for voters’ attention, cybersquatting is one of many online tools in the toolkit. It’s only effective at further diminishing trust in government.Andrew Hughes, Lecturer, Research School of Management, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2231992024-03-12T19:14:35Z2024-03-12T19:14:35ZFire represents power and control for an Indigneous teenager who lacks both, in Melanie Saward’s compassionate debut novel<p>“From the moment I got here, I’ve wanted to set the whole of Brisbane on fire,” reflects Andrew, the protagonist of Melanie Saward’s debut novel.</p>
<p>Saward, a Bigambul and Wakka Wakka author, moved to Bracken Ridge in the northern suburbs of Brisbane as a teenager, after growing up in Tasmania. So does Andrew, who like her, is Indigenous.</p>
<p>When we meet him, he is in Year 10 and has recently moved to Bracken Ridge with his mother, Linda, and her boyfriend, Dave. Neither of them show Andrew much love or care and he is saving to return to Tasmania to find his father, who he is no longer in contact with. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: Burn – Melanie Saward (Affirm Press)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>In alternating chapters, Saward fills in the back story. After eight-year-old Andrew lit a fire in his primary school’s bathroom, his father pulled him out of school and they all moved from social housing in an impoverished suburb of Launceston to a caravan in Port Sorell on the north-east coast of Tasmania. </p>
<p>The novel is structured around three main fires. The first is the one Andrew lights at his primary school. Then a fire lands Andrew and his closest friend Sarah, an adopted Indigenous girl being raised by religious parents, in the youth justice system. Threaded through the book, there’s the drama of a third, serious fire in Queensland, in which Andrew is implicated. </p>
<p>Fire is symbolic: it’s power and control for Andrew, who has precious little control over his life.</p>
<h2>Reading as ‘invited guests’</h2>
<p>In her chapter “Presencing” in <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-companion-to-the-australian-novel/4AE03434E69DB67466E58C9AD5CDCADD">The Cambridge Companion to the Australian Novel</a>, Wiradjuri writer and scholar <a href="https://www.uqp.com.au/authors/jeanine-leane">Jeanine Leane</a> urges settlers to approach Indigenous texts not as “tourists” but “invited guests”. Writes Leane: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Presencing means the recognition that First Nations works are happening in the same ‘now’ as the settler reader. The writer and the reader are in the same moment in time, but this moment in time is interpreted from different cultural standpoints and perspectives. </p>
</blockquote>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579103/original/file-20240301-17-qbt90m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=38%2C83%2C1559%2C977&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579103/original/file-20240301-17-qbt90m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=38%2C83%2C1559%2C977&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579103/original/file-20240301-17-qbt90m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579103/original/file-20240301-17-qbt90m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579103/original/file-20240301-17-qbt90m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579103/original/file-20240301-17-qbt90m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579103/original/file-20240301-17-qbt90m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579103/original/file-20240301-17-qbt90m.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">Melanie Saward’s debut novel is set in the Brisbane suburbs she moved to as a teenager. Jill Kerswill.</span>
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<p>I also had a Tasmanian adolescence. While my own experience was very different, I recognise the way poverty and deprivation press up against natural beauty in Saward’s novel. </p>
<p>As an adult living in Melbourne, I became gradually aware of the <a href="https://www.griffithreview.com/editions/tasmania-the-tipping-point/">economic gap between the mainland and Tasmania</a>. High levels of youth unemployment and lack of opportunity, low levels of education, limited health services, and an appalling lack of duty of care to young, vulnerable people were all part of my adolescence. They were reasons I left the state when I was old enough to do so. </p>
<p>The consolation of a Tasmanian adolescence was wilderness. I grew up in the foothills of a mountain, observing the way the weather moved across the landscape. I was soothed by the sound of Silver Falls, and the way streams of bright sun penetrated the fern forests on the pipeline track where we used to go to drink, smoke, bitch and have sex. </p>
<p>Despite living in Melbourne for nearly 30 years, I still feel the thread Saward writes about, connecting me to Tasmania.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Dad used to say that we were connected to Tassie, even though we didn’t really know who our people were. ‘It’s about where you’re made as much as where your people come from,’ he said. I never understood what he meant by that till Mum told me we were leaving. From the minute the plane took off, I felt the thread connecting me to home get more and more stretched.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Like Andrew and his father, I was made in Hobart. But I was the child of a third-generation Tasmanian mother descended from Scottish and Irish farmers and teachers, and a father who moved to Tasmania as a ten-pound pom after his first marriage ended. </p>
<p>When I was a child in the 1980s, we were taught in schools that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/aug/28/unesco-removes-hurtful-document-claiming-tasmanian-aboriginal-people-extinct#:%7E:text=The%20inaccurate%20claim%2C%20stating%20that,world%20heritage%20list%20in%201982.">Tasmanian Aboriginals were extinct</a>, a lie that serves the idea colonialism is something that has already happened and exists only in the past – in remote, almost mythical, places like Botany Bay and Port Arthur. </p>
<p>By turning her gaze on the impacts of <a href="https://www.indigenousmhspc.gov.au/publications/trauma">intergenerational trauma</a>, Saward shows the full force of present-day colonialism in Australia. </p>
<p>I was tender towards Andrew and understood his rage. I was angry with his absent and neglectful parents. Burn, however, generates a type of “presencing” that allows you to see complexity in the way the past manifests in the present. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-30-years-after-mabo-what-do-australias-battler-stories-and-their-evasions-say-about-who-we-are-187110">Friday essay: 30 years after Mabo, what do Australia's battler stories – and their evasions – say about who we are?</a>
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<h2>Inside family trauma</h2>
<p>When eight-year-old Andrew first lands in Port Sorrell with his parents, he is happy there, fishing and riding his bike with his father. However, Andrew’s mother’s mental health worsens and Andrew’s dad withdraws, emotionally at first, before finally leaving town without saying goodbye.</p>
<p>Before that happens, Andrew’s dad takes him fishing in a tidal pool, but warns him not to swim there.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“We don’t know how deep it is,” he said the first time I started wading in for a paddle. “And we don’t know if there are sharks and other nasties trapped in there. They’ll be angry about being stuck and hungry. If a nice, warm, nearly nine-year-old boy gets in, they might think you’re their dinner.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The tidal pool becomes a recurring image for trauma. In one scene, Sarah dares him to go skinny-dipping in the tidal pool. Andrew warns her against it, remembering his father’s warning. This scene poignantly foreshadows both Andrew’s resilience and Sarah’s inability to resist her own hidden darkness. </p>
<p>At first Andrew’s mother, Linda, reminded me of the cold, angry mother in Jasper Jones, a flat character with no redemption. But unlike Craig Silvey, whose loyalty lies solely with his young characters, Melanie Saward writes with deep compassion and understanding for Andrew’s parents. </p>
<p>We see inside family trauma, how the dynamics are self-perpetuating. The parents are confronted with the messiest, most vulnerable, most hidden and shameful parts of themselves – made manifest in Andrew. </p>
<p>We also bear witness to the role institutions play in exacerbating trauma associated with colonialism, such as ongoing disconnection from culture. School, youth justice, community housing and the health system all fail Andrew and his parents in multiple ways, even when individuals within these institutions mean well. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/my-favourite-fictional-character-queenie-a-young-black-woman-living-and-dating-in-london-is-complex-funny-broken-fun-188297">My favourite fictional character: Queenie, a young Black woman living and dating in London, is 'complex, funny, broken, fun'</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Crossover appeal</h2>
<p><a href="https://affirmpress.com.au/browse/book/Melanie-Saward-Burn-9781922848482">Burn</a> has obvious crossover appeal for teen and adult audiences, with a strong adolescent protagonist driving the story. So it interests me that this novel has been published as adult fiction. In fact as a young adult author and once-upon-a-time editor of books for teenagers, I puzzled over the decision. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579105/original/file-20240301-16-8hnnku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579105/original/file-20240301-16-8hnnku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579105/original/file-20240301-16-8hnnku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579105/original/file-20240301-16-8hnnku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579105/original/file-20240301-16-8hnnku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579105/original/file-20240301-16-8hnnku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579105/original/file-20240301-16-8hnnku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579105/original/file-20240301-16-8hnnku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>But ultimately, Burn breaks a particular young adult formula. When teaching young adult fiction to creative writing and publishing classes, I often ask <a href="https://www.liliwilkinson.com.au/">Dr Lili Wilkinson’s</a> four powerful plotting questions: What does your character want? What’s stopping them from getting what they want? What will happen if they fail? What do they need to do? </p>
<p>In this novel, there is nothing Andrew alone can do to break the cycle of intergenerational trauma. The only answer posed to the question, “What does Andrew need to do?” is: light fires. The most uncomfortable truth at the heart of this novel is that Andrew exists in a narrow space of limited possibility. He can’t save himself. Individual agency is not the solution to intergenerational trauma or broken systems. </p>
<p>Andrew lights fires under the adults who have turned from him and failed him. Andrew lights fires to disrupt colonialism and patterns of intergenerational trauma. Andrew lights fires which destroy, but Andrew’s fires also offer regeneration and renewal. </p>
<h2>‘Who’s your mob?’</h2>
<p>Something I particularly loved about this novel was the way the adolescent characters try to take care of each other. In Tasmania, Sarah and Andrew try and fail to imagine new futures for themselves, to generate a fantasy of who they might be. In Queensland, friends Doug and Trent strive to dismantle Andrew’s barriers. New love interest, Tess, makes clumsy attempts to connect with Andrew, and he in turn tries hard not hurt her. </p>
<p>In a white, middle-class novel about a young protagonist, these friendships might have become Andrew’s found family – the non-biological ties that so often permeate youth stories in the face of adult failure. However, Melanie Saward decides not to place the burden of Andrew’s continued wellbeing on his peers. Instead, she allows herself a speculative experiment in future thinking, within the framework of contemporary realism. </p>
<p>What could an ending for a kid like Andrew look like when youth justice is decolonised? Melanie Saward looks to the adults and the systems they control to step up and take control.</p>
<p>The question Sarah asks Andrew – “Who’s your mob?” – demands an answer, in order to end the cycle of trauma and create a hopeful ending. This question cuts to the heart of what it means to belong: to family, to Country, to culture and to your own story.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223199/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Penni Russon 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>Bigambul and Wakka Wakka author Melanie Saward’s Burn is structured around three fires. It bears witness to the role institutions play in exacerbating trauma associated with colonialism.Penni Russon, Senior Lecturer, School of Communication, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2230972024-02-14T04:51:36Z2024-02-14T04:51:36ZJacqui Lambie Network could win balance of power at Tasmanian election; Labor lead steady in federal polls<p>Tasmanian Liberal Premier Jeremy Rockliff <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-14/tasmania-jeremy-rockliff-calls-early-election/103420790">today announced</a> the Tasmanian election would be held on March 23, more than a year early. The election was called early <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-13/jeremy-rockliff-to-ask-for-an-early-election/103462354">owing to disagreements</a> between the Liberals and former Liberal MPs Lara Alexander and John Tucker. The Liberals had lost their parliamentary majority when these two MPs defected in May 2023.</p>
<p>Tasmania uses the proportional Hare Clark system for its lower house elections. At this election there will be <a href="https://www.parliament.tas.gov.au/resources/about-parliament/parliament#:%7E:text=In%202022%20the%20Expansion%20of,each%20of%20the%20five%20electorates.">35 members elected</a>, up from 25 previously. Tasmania uses the same five electorates for state and federal elections, with seven members to be elected per electorate, up from five previously. The quota for election will be one-eighth of the vote or 12.5%, down from one-sixth or 16.7%.</p>
<p>Tasmania’s upper house has elections every May for two or three of its 15 seats, with members serving six-year terms. The upper house will not be contested at this election.</p>
<p>The two most recent polls were an early January <a href="https://au.yougov.com/politics/articles/48296-the-tasmanian-state-liberal-vote-is-down-17-since-the-last-election">YouGov poll</a> and a late November <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/63435f017f0007502ab52a5d/t/6567dd27d6227f53ebff4ac0/1701305655222/EMRS+State+Voting+Intentions+Report+-+November+2023.pdf">EMRS poll</a>. The YouGov poll gave the Liberals 31%, Labor 27%, the Jacqui Lambie Network (JLN) 20%, the Greens 15% and independents 7%. If this poll were repeated at an election, the JLN would hold the balance of power.</p>
<p>The EMRS poll was far better for the Liberals, suggesting they had recovered from a slump in May. The Liberals had 39%, Labor 29%, the Greens 12% and all Others 19%. This poll did not ask for the JLN. The Liberals would still fall short of a majority if this poll were repeated at the election.</p>
<p>Tasmania is the only Australian jurisdiction that is currently governed by the conservative parties. However, the Liberal National Party is likely to win the October Queensland election, so even if Labor takes power in Tasmania, unified Labor government probably won’t last long.</p>
<h2>Federal YouGov poll: 69% support tax changes but Albanese’s ratings drop</h2>
<p>A <a href="https://au.yougov.com/politics/articles/48586-69-of-australian-voters-favour-the-changes-to-the-stage-3-tax-cut-proposal">national YouGov poll</a>, conducted February 2–7 from a sample of 1,502, gave Labor a 52–48 lead, unchanged from the <a href="https://au.yougov.com/politics/articles/48430-labor-support-rises-to-52-two-party-preferred-vote">mid-January YouGov poll</a>. Primary votes were 36% Coalition (down one), 32% Labor (steady), 14% Greens (up one), 8% One Nation (up one) and 10% for all Others (down one).</p>
<p>Albanese’s net approval was down three points to -16, while Dutton’s net approval was up three points to -8. Albanese led Dutton by 45–38 as preferred PM, a narrowing from 45–35 in January.</p>
<p>On the changes to the stage three tax cuts, 69% supported the changes while 31% supported the original stage three proposal. Supporters of all parties favoured the changes, including 55% of Coalition voters.</p>
<h2>Labor gains in Essential poll</h2>
<p>In a national <a href="https://essentialreport.com.au/reports/federal-political-insights">Essential poll</a>, conducted February 7–11 from a sample of 1,148, Labor led by 50–46 including undecided (48–46 two weeks ago). This is Labor’s largest lead in Essential since early October.</p>
<p>Primary votes were 34% Coalition (steady), 31% Labor (down one), 14% Greens (up one), 7% One Nation (steady), 1% UAP (down one), 9% for all Others (up two) and 5% undecided (steady). Preference flows favoured Labor more than last fortnight.</p>
<p>Respondents were asked to rate <a href="https://essentialreport.com.au/reports/13-february-2024">Albanese and Dutton</a> from 0 to 10. Scores of 0–3 were counted as negative, 4–6 as neutral and 7–10 as positive. Albanese was at 35–33 negative (37–32 in December), while Dutton was at 33–32 negative (37–28 in December).</p>
<p>By 56–16, voters supported the revised stage three tax cuts when told there would be more benefits for lower and middle-income earners, and less to higher-income earners. However, by 53–47, they thought it is never acceptable to break an election promise over it being acceptable if circumstances change.</p>
<p>By 59–15, voters supported employees’ “right to disconnect”. On Taylor Swift’s upcoming Eras Tour in Sydney and Melbourne, 76% said they weren’t interested in seeing her, 21% wished they were going to see her, 3% were seeing her and 3% didn’t know who she was.</p>
<h2>Labor down in a Redbridge poll</h2>
<p>A <a href="https://redbridgegroup.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/RedBridge-Federal-vote-intention-and-public-opinion-Feb-2024.pdf">national Redbridge</a> poll, conducted January 30 to February 7 from a sample of 2,040, gave Labor a 51.2–48.8 lead, a 1.6-point gain for the Coalition since the <a href="https://redbridgegroup.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Federal-vote-intention-and-public-opinion-Dec-2023.pdf">last Redbridge poll</a> in December. Primary votes were 38% Coalition (up three), 33% Labor (steady), 13% Greens (steady) and 16% for all Others (down three).</p>
<p>Despite the narrow Labor lead on voting intentions, Labor held a 32–28 lead on economic management, which is usually a relative strength for the Coalition.</p>
<p>On negative gearing, 39% said it should be left alone and 39% said it should be phased out or scrapped immediately. By 60–22, voters supported the changes to the stage three tax cuts, but by 51–33 voters agreed that if Labor breaks the promise to deliver the original cuts, I can’t trust them in the future.</p>
<h2>Morgan and Dunkley byelection polls</h2>
<p>I <a href="https://theconversation.com/labors-newspoll-lead-unchanged-since-december-as-62-support-stage-three-changes-222257">previously covered</a> a national Morgan poll that gave Labor a 50.5–49.5 lead. Labor’s lead increased to 53–47 in last week’s <a href="https://www.roymorgan.com/findings/9451-federal-voting-intention-february-5-2024">Morgan poll</a> that was conducted January 29 to February 4. </p>
<p>In this week’s <a href="https://www.roymorgan.com/findings/9453-federal-voting-intention-february-12-2024">Morgan poll</a>, conducted February 5–11 from a sample of 1,699, Labor led by 52–48. Primary votes were 37% Coalition (steady since last week), 34.5% Labor (up 1.5), 12% Greens (steady), 4.5% One Nation (down 0.5) and 12% for all Others (down one).</p>
<p>The federal byelection to replace the deceased Labor MP Peta Murphy will be held on March 2. A <a href="https://australiainstitute.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Polling-Dunkley-Byelection-and-Stage-3.pdf">uComms poll of Dunkley</a> for The Australia Institute, conducted February 5–6 from a sample of 626, gave Labor a 52–48 lead from primary votes of 40.1% Labor, 39.3% Liberal, 8.2% Greens, 1.6% Libertarian and 10.8% for all Others.</p>
<p>Preferences were respondent-allocated, and Labor would be higher if the previous election preferences were used. <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/dunkley-by-election-2024">Labor won Dunkley</a> by 56.3–46.7 at the 2022 election, so this poll suggests a 4% swing to the Liberals. Seat polls are unreliable. Eight candidates will contest the Dunkley byelection.</p>
<p>In other byelection news, the South Australian state byelection in <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-08/dunstan-by-election-march-23-south-australia/103429880">Dunstan</a> to replace former Liberal premier Steven Marshall will be held March 23. Marshall won Dunstan at the 2022 election by 50.5–49.5 against Labor.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.pollbludger.net/2024/02/12/monday-miscellany-redbridge-poll-dunkley-and-teal-seat-polls-preselection-latest-open-thread/">Poll Bludger</a> reported Monday that uComms polls for The Australia Institute in the teal independent held seats of Kooyong, Mackellar and Wentworth, conducted February 5 from samples of 602 to 647. In Kooyong, teal MP Monique Ryan led the Liberals by 56–44, in Mackellar teal MP Sophie Scamps led by 54–46 and in Wentworth teal MP Allegra Spender led by 57–43.</p>
<h2>US Democrats gain federal House seat at byelection</h2>
<p>I covered the United States federal byelection for New York’s third congressional district for <a href="https://www.pollbludger.net/2024/02/14/us-new-yorks-third-by-election-and-indonesian-election-live/">The Poll Bludger</a>. Democrats easily gained from the Republicans. I also covered the latest presidential primaries that show both Donald Trump and Joe Biden cruising to their parties’ nominations.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223097/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adrian Beaumont 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>The Tasmanian Liberal government has called an early election, but some recent polling suggests a rise in the popularity of Jacqui Lambie’s party.Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2165332024-02-14T04:18:58Z2024-02-14T04:18:58ZTasmania is going to an early election. Will the country’s last Liberal state be no more?<p>After months of speculation about an early election and a battle to keep minority government alive, Tasmanian Premier Jeremy Rockliff – Australia’s last remaining Liberal Premier – has called an election for March 23, three years into a four-year term.</p>
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<p>In making the announcement, Rockliff said he wanted the stability of majority government.</p>
<p>“I’m not going to allow myself or my government to be held to ransom for the next 12 months. It’s bad for Tasmania, it’s bad for Tasmanians.”</p>
<p>What issues are likely to dominate the campaign? What is the likely outcome, and will it have any implications beyond the shores of Australia’s island state?</p>
<h2>What’s been going on?</h2>
<p>The Tasmanian Liberals have governed since 2014, but recently Rockliff has had to manage a series of ructions. </p>
<p>There have been seven reshuffles since the 2021 election, sparked in some cases by high profile ministerial resignations. </p>
<p>In mid-May 2023, two government back benchers <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-05-12/tasmania-liberal-government-in-minority-mps-defect-over-stadium/102333446">quit the party</a> to sit on the cross bench, citing a range of grievances. </p>
<p>Lara Alexander and John Tucker’s agreement with Rockliff to guarantee supply and confidence in the House lasted until early February when the premier issued a <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-02/tas-premier-rockliff-issues-early-election-threat-to-mps/103413562">second ultimatum</a> effectively demanding the rebel MPs support all government legislation.</p>
<p>Given neither of the independents were willing to cede their independence an early election became inevitable. Now, the real question is whether Tasmanian voters will blame the premier or the rebel MPs for taking them to the polls a year early?</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-tasmanian-afl-team-turned-into-a-political-football-205846">How the Tasmanian AFL team turned into a political football</a>
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<p>Due to Tasmania’s 25-seat Lower House (which has been <a href="https://www.parliament.tas.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0028/47584/47_of_2022-srs.pdf">restored</a> to 35 members for this election), these events have stretched Rockliff’s talent pool and contributed to a feeling among voters that the government is approaching its used by date.</p>
<p>Rubbing salt in the wound, Labor and the Greens have relished pointing out that a party which had <a href="https://www.premier.tas.gov.au/speeches/state-of-the-state-address">promised to deliver</a> stable majority government was now in minority. Indeed, Jeremy Rockliff cited
the need restore majority government and avoid “governing with one hand tied behind my back” as a <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-02/tas-rockliff-stateline-analysis-early-election-trigger/103413270">justification</a> for going to the polls a year early.</p>
<p>Given Tasmania’s proportional Hare Clark electoral system, where candidates only need to secure about 15% of the vote after preferences to win a seat, it seems inevitable that forming government will require some form of power sharing or coalition arrangement. </p>
<p>This is reinforced by polling data that suggests Tasmanian voters are turning their backs on both major parties. A <a href="https://au.yougov.com/politics/articles/48296-the-tasmanian-state-liberal-vote-is-down-17-since-the-last-election">YouGov poll</a> conducted in January had both Liberal and Labor polling around 30% (31% Liberal, 27% Labor), with the Jacquie Lambie Network (20%), Greens (15%) and other independents (7%) sharing the remaining 40%.</p>
<h2>The key issues</h2>
<p>This all suggests that well established campaign strategies will once again be trotted out. </p>
<p>The government will talk up the strong (but <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-04/tasmanias-economy-slumps-from-first-to-sixth-in-aus/103065236">slowing</a>) economy and run a scare campaign against
minority government. This approach has served the Liberals well in the past, but their current minority status may undermine the pitch. </p>
<p>Labor, the Greens, independents, and the Jacqui Lambie Network will all point to the failure to address persistent housing, hospital, and transport challenges, as well as growing concerns about transparency and accountability.</p>
<p>One wildcard is government support for Hobart’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jun/11/the-devils-and-the-detail-of-the-715m-afl-stadium-dividing-tasmania">proposed waterfront AFL stadium</a>. Most Tasmanians want an AFL team, but many have concerns about the mooted funding
model in which the government covers most of the cost – and the financial risk.</p>
<p>Finally, the rise and dominance of hyper-local issues is making it hard for parties to develop and deliver a cohesive long-term strategy for the state. History shows that laundry lists of election promises don’t provide the basis for good government.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/tasmanias-reached-net-zero-emissions-and-100-renewables-but-climate-action-doesnt-stop-there-160927">Tasmania's reached net-zero emissions and 100% renewables – but climate action doesn't stop there</a>
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<h2>Federal eyes on the campaign</h2>
<p>Mainland pundits will be watching the election closely for two main reasons.</p>
<p>Firstly, the March poll will be an early test of electoral support for a more conservative Liberal party in Tasmania and beyond. While Rockliff is a moderate, the conservative faction of the Tasmanian Liberals is in the ascendancy with former long-serving federal senator Eric Abetz seeking to make a comeback in the state seat of Franklin. </p>
<p>Abetz will likely be elected, but it remains to be seen whether this occurs despite a broader swing against the Liberals. </p>
<p>If the party can retain government in Tasmania, it may provide an early indication that the national political tide is turning.</p>
<p>Secondly, the election may provide further evidence of fragmentation in Australian politics. </p>
<p>If significant numbers of Tasmanians, particularly those from regional and less well-off communities, vote for independents or minor parties, the major parties will have some serious soul searching to do. They’ll need to rethink their strategies for future state and national elections.</p>
<h2>What does the crystal ball say?</h2>
<p>Tasmanian elections are notoriously hard to predict.</p>
<p>Given the most likely outcome will be some form of coalition or power-sharing arrangement, negotiations after polling day will be just as important and interesting as the vote itself.</p>
<p>Will the Liberals be willing to form a minority government, and would Jeremy Rockliff be prepared to lead it? </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/nothing-left-in-the-tank-resigning-tasmanian-premier-peter-gutwein-deserves-credit-on-covid-and-economics-180596">‘Nothing left in the tank’: resigning Tasmanian premier Peter Gutwein deserves credit on COVID and economics</a>
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<p>After ten years in the wilderness (not such a bad place to be in this part of the world!) Labor is desperate to govern, but will be reluctant to enter into an agreement with the Greens due to past experience. They may, however, be willing to govern with the support of the Jacqui Lambie Network and/or independents.</p>
<p>Tasmanian politics has always had a unique and interesting dynamic, and the March election is unlikely to disappoint. The real test is whether members of the next Tasmanian Parliament are able to put the interests of the community above petty politics to deliver the good government Tasmanians deserve.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216533/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Eccleston is an appointed a member of two public advisory boards providing advice to the Tasmanian government.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Hortle 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>After frontbench resignations, MPs going rogue and months of speculation, the Apple Isle is headed to the polls. What can we expect?Richard Eccleston, Professor of Political Science; Director, Tasmanian Policy Exchange, University of TasmaniaRobert Hortle, Research Fellow, Tasmanian Policy Exchange, University of TasmaniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2182982024-01-18T22:00:22Z2024-01-18T22:00:22ZFlipping Indigenous regional development in Newfoundland upside-down: lessons from Australia<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570173/original/file-20240118-27-4y6ku6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4031%2C1816&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Newfoundland and Tasmania, Australia, have been described as 'mirror islands' with striking linkages. Site of one of the field excursions during the authors' 12-day exchange to Tasmania, Australia.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Author Provided, Brady Reid)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/flipping-indigenous-regional-development-in-newfoundland-upside-down-lessons-from-australia" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>In an era of <a href="https://www.activesustainability.com/climate-change/global-boiling/?_adin=02021864894">“global boiling”</a> the Canadian government has set ambitious targets to transition towards a <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/services/environment/weather/climatechange/climate-plan/net-zero-emissions-2050.html">net-zero future</a> with important caveats that this transition must be <a href="https://climateinstitute.ca/reports/canadas-net-zero-future/recommendations/">fair and inclusive</a>. </p>
<p>However, does this future include vibrant, self-determined Indigenous communities? Research shows that inadequate engagement between settler governments, corporations and Indigenous communities leads to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2020.101897">poor indications of reconciliation</a>. </p>
<p>This is a troubling reality given the <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/aboriginal-people-economic-conditions">ongoing socio-economic challenges</a> imposed on Indigenous communities across the land now called Canada.</p>
<h2>Risk and uncertainty</h2>
<p>Everywhere in Canada has unique, and equally important, developmental considerations and climate risks.</p>
<p>For regional Ktaqmkuk (Newfoundland) Mi’kmaw communities in Nujio’qonik, (the St. George’s Bay region), the uncertainty of the future is complicated by large-scale, natural resource developments. </p>
<p>A clear example of one such development is Project Nujio’qonik, billed as the <a href="https://worldenergygh2.com/about/">world’s first large-scale green hydrogen project in western Newfoundland and Labrador</a>. </p>
<p>Mi’kmaw communities and leaders, such as <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/calvin-white-powwow-qa-1.6907384">Elder Calvin White</a>, led the movement for recognition of the Mi’kmaq in Ktaqmkuk post-Confederation, and continue to do so today. </p>
<p>However, the <a href="https://www.sac-isc.gc.ca/eng/1319805325971/1572459825339">controversial</a> establishment of the Qalipu Mi’kmaq First Nation has hampered efforts by Mi’kmaw across the west coast of Ktaqmkuk to fully realize effective stewardship and control over decisions impacting communities and surrounding territories. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas are an important example of self-governance for Indigenous Peoples. Overview of IPCAs produced by the Conservation Through Reconciliation Partnership.</span></figcaption>
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<p>The complexities behind the establishment of the Qalipu Mi'kmaq First Nation continue to be <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/qalipu-enrolment-court-decision-1.6882390">challenged in court</a> and <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/radio/outintheopen/stranger-in-your-own-land-1.4407020/mi-kmaq-communities-divided-over-federal-government-s-qalipu-band-membership-decisions-1.4407060">families remain divided to this day</a>. </p>
<p>While the situation may seem intractable there are surprising insights to be gained from the experiences of Indigenous groups halfway around the world. </p>
<h2>18,000 km away</h2>
<p>Despite being geographically poles apart, both Newfoundland and Tasmania have been described by locals and scholars as <a href="https://figshare.utas.edu.au/articles/thesis/Artists_and_the_articulation_of_islandness_sense_of_place_and_story_in_Newfoundland_and_Tasmania/23240777">“mirror islands” with striking linkages and similarities throughout history</a>. </p>
<p>Indigenous groups in both regions have fought for decades to assert their rights and agency on traditional territory and continue to push back against a shared <a href="https://www.gov.nl.ca/publicat/royalcomm/research/Hanrahan.pdf">history of erasure</a> and <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-13/winning-indigenous-aboriginal-rights-in-tasmania/11202128">extinction myths</a>. </p>
<p>Inequalities continue to facilitate patterns of uneven growth and opportunity with real impacts upon local communities.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/closing-the-first-nations-employment-gap-will-take-100-years-205290">Closing the First Nations employment gap will take 100 years</a>
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</p>
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<p>In response to growing concerns for the future of their communities Mi’kmaw leaders Chief Joanne Miles of the Flat Bay Band and Chief Peggy White of the Three Rivers Mi’kmaq Band travelled to Tasmania with PhD candidate Brady Reid. </p>
<p>The goal of the trip was to share knowledge and learn about advances in <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/connections-to-sea-country-cultural-fisheries-program-launched-for-tasmanias-aboriginal-people/ka7rfqm5f">sustainable and culturally-grounded economic development projects within Australia</a>. </p>
<p>The exchange took place between Nov. 4-16, 2023 in Hobart, the capital city of Tasmania, with some excursions to various locations around the southern part of the island. </p>
<p>At the invite of local Indigenous leaders, Professor Emma Lee of the National Centre for Reconciliation, Truth, and Justice at Federation University and Uncle Rodney Dillon of the <a href="https://www.ilsc.gov.au/">Land and Sea Aboriginal Corporation</a> — among others — shared Indigenous regional development and recognition initiatives. </p>
<h2>Shared lessons</h2>
<p>Recognizing, renewing and supporting Indigenous management and stewardship over traditional territories and resources is a key step in re-shaping settler-Indigenous relationships. This is especially true for Indigenous communities denied access to treaty resources and rights.</p>
<p>Though not without challenges, the Tasmanian and Australian governments have <a href="https://www.frdc.com.au/supporting-cultural-fisheries-research-aboriginal-tasmanians">supported Indigenous-led research and partnership development</a>. These efforts have helped to realize an economically viable and culturally significant fisheries industry. </p>
<p>Through Tasmanian Aboriginal efforts to align supportive federal policy with state regulations, top-down strategies have transformed local reluctance into regional development opportunities. </p>
<p>Lessons gleaned from discussions with federal and state representatives in Tasmania have helped shape future strategies to realize self-determined resource governance in Ktaqmkuk.</p>
<p>The shared experiences in colonial history — and the mutual legacy of marine industries — between the islands of Tasmania and Ktaqmkuk have led to similarities in actions Indigenous Peoples can take. </p>
<p>Actions which can serve to share knowledge, collectively strengthen self-determination rights, and develop social licence strategies that favour Indigenous-led regional development while re-shaping relationships across all levels of government.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/canadas-nature-agreement-underscores-the-need-for-true-reconciliation-with-indigenous-nations-217427">Canada’s Nature Agreement underscores the need for true reconciliation with Indigenous nations</a>
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<p>While change takes time, it is incredibly important that settler government, agencies and representatives support initiatives led by Indigenous communities and do not create barriers in bureaucratic policy or procedure, especially when strong business cases are evident. </p>
<h2>Moving forward</h2>
<p>Recommendations from the <a href="https://climateinstitute.ca/">Canadian Climate Institute</a> support green policy action that improve social and economic indicators, including <a href="https://theconversation.com/canada-needs-to-set-its-businesses-up-for-success-in-the-clean-energy-transition-206276">business interests and opportunities</a>. </p>
<p>After learning more about the <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/connections-to-sea-country-cultural-fisheries-program-launched-for-tasmanias-aboriginal-people/ka7rfqm5f">Tasmanian cultural fisheries pilot</a> we kept asking ourselves, why not assert Mi’kmaw communities as leaders in regional development over our own traditional territories? </p>
<p>In making clear statements that align traditional knowledge with renewable energy policies, Indigenous Peoples are <a href="https://www.saltwire.com/atlantic-canada/news/were-facing-extinction-as-a-people-in-our-territory-indigenous-leaders-from-bay-st-george-south-and-port-au-port-peninsula-say-wind-energy-project-is-needed-100914527/">creating the terms</a> for effective and fair transitions to a better future. </p>
<p>We saw this in Tasmania, where a groundswell of support for cultural fisheries operating within commercial quota led to a fascinating and consequential shift in relationship-building. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">A report on the solar initiatives of the Métis Nation of Alberta produced by the CBC. Indigenous People have huge potential to create the terms of Canada’s renewable energy future.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Traditional institutions, such as universities and <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/services/environment/fisheries.html">fishery statutory authorities</a>, remain the obvious places of collaboration. However, it was the non-traditional avenues, such as Indigenous procurement initiatives at <a href="https://www.govhouse.tas.gov.au/vice-regal-news/professor-emma-lee-national-centre-reconciliation-truth-and-justice-federation">Government House</a>, that were most surprising and fruitful. </p>
<p>Indigenous-led regional development, as a fair and equitable process, is about recognizing that Indigenous Peoples want Indigenous cultural innovation to advance all sectors of society. </p>
<p>In re-shaping settler-Indigenous relationships, the emphasis here is on how self-assertion of rights has mutual gains at its heart. If renewable energy can come together to support cultural fisheries for healthier relationships, then our unique island character is retained as a strength rather than a deficit.</p>
<p>We learned and shared invaluable knowledge from a variety of stakeholders in Tasmania that have sparked ideas and creative strategies for improved relations at home in Ktaqmkuk. </p>
<p>Importantly, we know that for effective transitions to a better future and more sustainable society, the only way forward is to respect the terms of Indigenous Peoples’ regional development goals.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218298/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This article follows a two-week Indigenous exchange from Newfoundland, Canada to Tasmania, Australia that received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the University of Waterloo, and the Marine Biomass Innovation Project (<a href="http://www.mbiproject.ca">www.mbiproject.ca</a>). </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chief Joanne Miles is the Chief of the Flat Bay Band.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chief Peggy (Margaret) White (BA, JD, LLM) is the Chief of the Three Rivers Mi'kmaq Band. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emma Lee is a board director of the Land and Sea Aboriginal Corporation Tasmania and is a current recipient of the Pew Fellows Program in Marine Conservation.</span></em></p>The lessons from Tasmania are clear. Asserting Indigenous rights in Canada can be mutually beneficial for all.Brady Reid, PhD Student, Sustainabilty Management, University of WaterlooChief Joanne Miles, Chief of the Flat Bay BandChief Peggy (Margaret) White, Chief of the Three Rivers Mi'kmaq BandEmma Lee, Professor, National Centre for Reconciliation, Truth, and Justice, Federation University AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2161162023-12-01T12:34:49Z2023-12-01T12:34:49ZWhy men in 19th century Wales dressed as women to protest taxation<p>South-west Wales was reeling in the wake of social unrest in November 1843. There had been a series of protests over several years by farmers furious at taxation levels, mainly attacking tollgates. Often, the men involved dressed as women and were therefore known in Welsh as <em>Merched Beca</em> (Rebecca’s daughters). The events that unfolded came to be known as the <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Rebecca_s_Children.html?id=7-ohAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">Rebecca riots</a> in English. </p>
<p>There has been speculation that the name “Rebecca” stemmed from a literal interpretation of <a href="https://biblehub.com/genesis/24-60.htm">Genesis 24:60</a> in the Bible, which refers to Rebekah’s offspring possessing the gates of their enemies. But the truth is, nobody really knows why the name was chosen.</p>
<p>Tollgates had been <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/transportcomms/roadsrail/overview/turnpikestolls/">introduced</a> in Britain from the late 17th century as a means of raising revenue to maintain public roads. They were regulated and maintained by the <a href="https://www.campop.geog.cam.ac.uk/research/projects/transport/onlineatlas/britishturnpiketrusts.pdf">Turnpike Trusts</a>, individual bodies set up by parliament. </p>
<p>Tolls had long been regarded as a burden by the people. But complaints to magistrates about their unfair regulation were largely ignored. The tollgates therefore became regarded as symbols of oppression to be demolished by the Rebeccaites, with unrest largely concentrated across Carmarthenshire, Cardiganshire and Pembrokeshire. </p>
<p>The first recorded appearance of Rebecca was on <a href="https://www.peoplescollection.wales/content/rebecca-riots">May 13 1839</a>, when a tollgate at Efailwen in Pembrokeshire was demolished. Rebecca emerged again during the winter of 1842, with protests <a href="https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/rebecca-riots/">intensifying</a> throughout the summer of 1843. </p>
<p>The attacks targeted tollgates and private property, while toll-keepers and authority figures were also intimidated. These included the local gentry, who upheld law and order locally as magistrates and oversaw the administration of the tolls as members of the Turnpike Trusts.</p>
<p>Those who protested were predominantly young men who were tenant farmers, farm servants and agricultural labourers. But other protesters included non-agricultural labourers from industrialised regions of Carmarthenshire and neighbouring Glamorgan.</p>
<p>A striking element of the protest was the adoption of women’s clothing to conceal the identities of those involved. This was theatrically woven into the ritual of protest as “Rebecca”, the name given to the leader of the various protests, called on her children to tear down any gate that blocked their way. </p>
<p>However, the Rebecca riots were more than just a protest movement against the tolls. They were also a reaction to the socio-economic climate, to agricultural depression, failing harvests, rising levels of rent and the weight of various taxes. All these factors collectively placed substantial pressure on rural communities. </p>
<p>There was also widespread <a href="https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/1834-poor-law/">criticism</a> of the administration of the new <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/livinglearning/19thcentury/overview/poorlaw/">Poor Law</a>, introduced in 1834, which ensured that poor people were housed in <a href="https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Victorian-Workhouse/">workhouses</a>, where families were separated, subjected to hard work and harsh living conditions.</p>
<h2>Escalation</h2>
<p>On June 19 1843, a procession in the market town of Carmarthen led to the storming of the <a href="https://coflein.gov.uk/en/site/17651/">workhouse</a>. This signalled a turning point that saw the protests intensify, with attacks on private property in addition to tollgates. </p>
<p>There were reports of physical violence and use of firearms too, with one recorded death, that of <a href="https://historypoints.org/index.php?page=site-of-fatal-rebecca-riot-hendy">Sarah Williams</a>, the 75-year-old keeper of the Hendy tollgate in Carmarthenshire. Someone shot her while she tried to rescue her belongings from the burning tollhouse on September 9 1843.</p>
<p>Following the Carmarthen workhouse attack, The Times newspaper <a href="https://oro.open.ac.uk/78848/1/DE-WINTON_A329_RVOR.pdf">sent</a> Thomas Campbell Foster to report on “The State of South Wales”. His reports disseminated news of Rebecca and her daughters across Britain. </p>
<p>Even Queen Victoria was concerned by the events. She wrote in her <a href="http://www.queenvictoriasjournals.org/search/displayItem.do?FormatType=fulltextimgsrc&QueryType=articles&ResultsID=3399090357290&filterSequence=0&PageNumber=1&ItemNumber=1&ItemID=qvj03918&volumeType=PSBEA">journal</a> how she strongly advised the home secretary, Sir James Graham, to apprehend and punish the Rebeccaites. She feared events in Wales would spur on the movement in Ireland to repeal the laws which tied Ireland to Great Britain.</p>
<p>Into the autumn and winter months of 1843, Rebecca and her daughters appeared less frequently. Although a Carmarthenshire land agent, Thomas Herbert Cooke, <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Land_Agent/dy5JEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0">wrote</a> in late November how “an incendiary fire however occurs now and then to let people know that Rebecca is still alive, and sometimes awakes from her slumbers”.</p>
<h2>Government inquiry</h2>
<p>During this time, a government <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Report_of_the_Commissioners_of_Inquiry_f.html?id=W5Z7YgEACAAJ&redir_esc=y">inquiry</a> was conducted into the causes of the riots, reporting its findings in the spring of 1844. Although the tollgates survived, the findings of the inquiry led to greater regulation of the Turnpike Trusts in Wales. New county police forces were also <a href="https://journals.library.wales/view/1386666/1423395/118#?xywh=-1917%2C-209%2C6097%2C3912">established</a> in the wake of the riots. </p>
<p>In total, around 250 tollhouses and gatehouses were <a href="https://museum.wales/stfagans/buildings/tollhouse/">destroyed</a> by Rebecca. In the aftermath, those captured and accused were punished by transportation to the penal colonies in Tasmania. Those such as <a href="https://convictrecords.com.au/convicts/hughes/john/72743">John Hughes</a>, known as <em>Jac Tŷ Isha</em>, were never to return to their native Wales. Others took on an almost mythical identity among local people, such as <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/In_Pursuit_of_Twm_Carnabwth/irhAzwEACAAJ?hl=en">Thomas Rees</a>, or <em>Twm Carnabwth</em>, remembered as the leader of the first Rebecca attack at Efailwen.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A wooden sculpture showing a horse flanked by two women leaping over a gate." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562391/original/file-20231129-19-8ksnxf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562391/original/file-20231129-19-8ksnxf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562391/original/file-20231129-19-8ksnxf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562391/original/file-20231129-19-8ksnxf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562391/original/file-20231129-19-8ksnxf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562391/original/file-20231129-19-8ksnxf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562391/original/file-20231129-19-8ksnxf.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">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A wooden sculpture depicting the Rebecca riots in St Clears, Carmarthenshire.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/wooden-sculpture-depicting-rebecca-riots-1839-517024174">James Hime/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, Rebecca did not disappear entirely, and instances of protest and threatening letters sent in her name appear later in other parts of Wales. During the 1870s, Rebecca and her daughters appeared in protests concerning salmon poaching on the river Wye in mid Wales, <a href="https://journals.library.wales/view/1326508/1326739/35#?xywh=-1863%2C-216%2C6676%2C4285">described</a> as the “second Rebecca Riots”. </p>
<p>In the 20th century, the concept of Rebecca was invoked once more. In 1956, Welsh language newspaper, <em>Y Seren</em>, <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Tryweryn_New_Dawn/zxn5zwEACAAJ?hl=en">inferred</a> that “the spirit of Beca” was once again needed to campaign against the flooding of Cwm Tryweryn in Gwynedd to <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-64799911">create a reservoir</a> to provide drinking water for Liverpool. </p>
<p>And Rebecca continues to resonate in Wales to this day, inspiring <a href="https://nation.cymru/news/welsh-village-to-stage-re-enactment-of-historic-tollgate-attack-that-sparked-rebecca-riots/">re-enactments</a> and community <a href="https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/news/view/2721666-students-and-academics-take-cardiff-university-to-the-urdd-eisteddfod">engagement</a> – it shows that the fight for justice and the tradition of protest continues to play a powerful part in Welsh society.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216116/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lowri Ann Rees 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>The Rebecca riots saw Welsh farmers disguised as women destroy tollgates as a way of challenging what they believed was an oppressive taxation system.Lowri Ann Rees, Senior Lecturer in Modern History, Bangor UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2143892023-11-03T08:15:53Z2023-11-03T08:15:53ZCan we eat our way through an exploding sea urchin problem?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557013/original/file-20231101-21-pz1lh7.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=3%2C11%2C2583%2C1082&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">John Keane on an extensive urchin barren</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">John Keane</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Longspined sea urchins are native to temperate waters around New South Wales. But as oceans heat up, their range has expanded more than 650km, through eastern Victoria and south to Tasmania. Their numbers are exploding in the process, clear-felling kelp forests and leaving “urchin barrens” behind.</p>
<p>The species (<em>Centrostephanus rodgersii</em>) is now the single largest and most <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022098111000803">urgent threat</a> to kelp forests along the southeastern coast of Australia’s <a href="https://greatsouthernreef.com/learn">Great Southern Reef</a>. </p>
<p>What can we do? Here’s one excellent solution: eat their roe, a buttery delicacy that can fetch hundreds of dollars per kilogram. Tasmania already has a government-backed urchin fishery. When combined with a mix of other tools, as outlined in <a href="https://www.imas.utas.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/1623593/IMAS-Submission-to-the-senate-inquiry-on-climate-related-marine-and-invasive-species_Final.pdf">our submission</a> to the invasive marine species <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Environment_and_Communications/Invasivemarinespecies">Senate inquiry</a>, harvesting urchins can put the brakes on this overabundant, range-extending marine species. </p>
<p>Today, the <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Environment_and_Communications/Invasivemarinespecies/Report">Senate handed down its findings</a>, identifying <a href="https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/committees/reportsen/RB000056/toc_pdf/Win-winunderouroceansClimate-relatedmarineinvasivespecies.pdf">investment in commercial harvesting</a> as a frontline climate-ready tool to combat the urchin. It presents a win-win opportunity by maximising socioeconomic and environmental returns for kelp ecosystems, while lessening the ongoing cost of control.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/nsLLLT908Kk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Strategies for urchin control.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-southern-reef-is-in-more-trouble-than-the-great-barrier-reef-201235">The Great Southern Reef is in more trouble than the Great Barrier Reef</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Dealing with urchins is urgent</h2>
<p><a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/gcb.15634">Almost 200 marine species</a> have been documented shifting range in Australian seas as climate change heats the oceans. But longspined sea urchins are the most damaging so far. </p>
<p>The waters along hundreds of kilometres of coastline have now warmed above a winter average of 12°C. This is the temperature at which <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1365-2486.2008.01543.x">urchin larvae can develop</a> during spawning. The ocean is warming faster than land, heating at a rate of <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0079661123000897">4°C per century</a>.</p>
<p>The Senate inquiry shows the government is listening. The inquiry and accompanying <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStore.ashx?id=7ceb303f-b642-4674-82cc-0195ba034fb3">five-year plan</a> for control methods are based on more than <a href="https://www.imas.utas.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/1623593/IMAS-Submission-to-the-senate-inquiry-on-climate-related-marine-and-invasive-species_Final.pdf">two decades</a> of scientific research. </p>
<h2>The tragedy of the barrens</h2>
<p>Urchins chew through entire forests of kelp. Once the big kelp is gone, they switch to feeding on tiny encrusting seaweeds that can regrow rapidly and persist in the face of intensive grazing. This creates <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2013.0269">“hyper-stable” urchin barrens</a>. </p>
<p>The damage is dramatic, with the local loss of <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00442-008-1043-9">hundreds of kelp-associated species</a> ranging from valuable abalone to the iconic leafy seadragon. </p>
<p>Barrens in southern NSW, eastern Victoria and Tasmania can now be measured in the scale of kilometres, with whole reefs turned into <a href="https://hiddendeserts.com/the-project/">underwater deserts</a>. </p>
<p>They expand fast, too. In Tasmania, early sightings off the northeast in 1978 have turned into a population <a href="https://www.imas.utas.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/1176026/129569-Resurvey-of-the-Longspined-Sea-Urchin-Centrostephanus-rodgersii-and-associated-barren-reef-in-Tasmania.pdf">estimated at 20 million</a> around the eastern coastline. Barren areas now cover 15% of Tasmanian reefs. If left unchecked, 50% of reef habitat could be lost by the 2030s, as we’ve seen in southern NSW and eastern Victoria. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557021/original/file-20231101-21-8uhhst.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="diver in a kelp forest looking for sea urchins" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557021/original/file-20231101-21-8uhhst.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557021/original/file-20231101-21-8uhhst.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557021/original/file-20231101-21-8uhhst.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557021/original/file-20231101-21-8uhhst.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557021/original/file-20231101-21-8uhhst.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557021/original/file-20231101-21-8uhhst.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557021/original/file-20231101-21-8uhhst.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Research divers assessing sea urchin spread off St Helens in Tasmania’s northeast.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Matt Testoni</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Correcting an imbalance of nature</h2>
<p>Rock lobsters are a natural predator of urchins. They boost <a href="https://www.imas.utas.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/1556522/Centro_lobster_exp_site_resurvey_final_report.pdf">kelp bed resilience</a> and even prevent barren expansion in some areas off limits to lobster fisheries. </p>
<p>The Tasmanian East Coast Rock Lobster Rebuilding Strategy focuses on rebuilding stocks to help combat the urchin. However, the lobsters’ strong preference for <a href="https://academic.oup.com/icesjms/article/79/4/1353/6565266">local prey</a> such as abalone, their <a href="https://www.imas.utas.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/1556522/Centro_lobster_exp_site_resurvey_final_report.pdf">negligible capacity to rehabilitate extensive barrens</a> once urchins reach hyperabundance, and high recreational and commercial fisheries value, constrains the scale of effectiveness. </p>
<p>Another option is culling, where divers kill urchins underwater. The upshot is that kelp can grow back quickly, within just 18 months, if all visible urchins are culled. But it’s <a href="https://www.frdc.com.au/sites/default/files/products/2011-087-DLD.pdf">extremely expensive</a> and urchins can reemerge, meaning culling needs to be ongoing. </p>
<h2>An affordable, scalable, long-term solution?</h2>
<p>Yes. Make it profitable. The main game here isn’t the urchins themselves but their roe, known as “uni” in Japan. Urchin roe is a delicacy, renowned for its sweet, buttery, umami flavours and bright golden colour. Premium roe returns top dollar in markets from across South East Asia, the United States and the Middle East.</p>
<p>If commercial fisheries are viable, we can remove vast quantities of urchins from reefs in a low-cost urchin control program over large areas. </p>
<p>But there are challenges here too. Extracting the roe is labour-intensive. Roe quality can vary greatly, dropping as overgrazing ensues. To date, infrastructure, access to markets, and detailed knowledge of processing techniques has been a limiting factor. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556999/original/file-20231101-15-pghp65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A commercial diver bags a haul of sea urchins destined for international markets" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556999/original/file-20231101-15-pghp65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556999/original/file-20231101-15-pghp65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556999/original/file-20231101-15-pghp65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556999/original/file-20231101-15-pghp65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556999/original/file-20231101-15-pghp65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556999/original/file-20231101-15-pghp65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556999/original/file-20231101-15-pghp65.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"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A commercial diver removes a haul of sea urchins destined for international markets.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Matt Testoni</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Tasmania is showing it can be done. In 2018, the state government invested in a <a href="https://fishing.tas.gov.au/community/long-spined-sea-urchin-management/abalone-industry-reinvestment-fund">fledgling urchin fishery</a> in conjunction with the abalone industry by offering <a href="https://tasfisheriesresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Cresswell-et-al.-Centrostephanus-Subsidy-Program-Initial-Evaluatio.pdf">harvest subsidies</a>.</p>
<p>These gave urchin processors the financial certainty to invest. In a few years, annual urchin fishery yields have grown from <a href="https://www.imas.utas.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/1659268/TASMANIAN-LONGSPINED-SEA-URCHIN-FISHERY-ASSESSMENT-2021-22.pdf">40 tonnes to 500 tonnes</a>, all harvested by hand by divers.</p>
<p>To date, the fishery has created more than 100 jobs and boosted regional economies. It’s <a href="https://www.imas.utas.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/1623593/IMAS-Submission-to-the-senate-inquiry-on-climate-related-marine-and-invasive-species_Final.pdf">starting to work too</a>. The fishery has not only slowed the expansion of urchin barrens, but allowed recovery of kelp habitats in some heavily fished areas. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/sea-urchins-have-invaded-tasmania-and-victoria-but-we-cant-work-out-what-to-do-with-them-194534">Sea urchins have invaded Tasmania and Victoria, but we can’t work out what to do with them</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Expanding urchin fisheries</h2>
<p>Tasmania’s example shows the potential of fishery-led control of overabundant, problematic species. Making the most of it means adding value, such as by expanding the international market, developing new uses for low-grade urchin roe and <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4395/12/12/2919">selling waste products</a>. If it’s more profitable, divers will be able to travel farther from port and fish down urchin stocks.</p>
<p>We can also direct fishery efforts for better urchin control by offering subsidies to <a href="https://www.imas.utas.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/1659268/TASMANIAN-LONGSPINED-SEA-URCHIN-FISHERY-ASSESSMENT-2021-22.pdf">fish high priority areas</a>. </p>
<p>Other states hit hard by urchins too, such as Victoria, could benefit from control-by-fishery. </p>
<p>Achieving national, widespread urchin control will require challenging coordination. We need to:</p>
<ul>
<li>support dive fisheries to become the heavy lifter of urchin control</li>
<li>add <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFbB0bPHUDQ">extra urchin control measures</a> on high-value reefs</li>
<li>begin restoring degraded barrens to a mosaic of urchin fisheries or kelp forests</li>
<li>boost populations of urchin predators on healthy reefs, to increase resilience in the first place.<br></li>
</ul>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557026/original/file-20231101-19-e51xgv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Photo showing a healthy kelp ecosystem" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557026/original/file-20231101-19-e51xgv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557026/original/file-20231101-19-e51xgv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557026/original/file-20231101-19-e51xgv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557026/original/file-20231101-19-e51xgv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557026/original/file-20231101-19-e51xgv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557026/original/file-20231101-19-e51xgv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557026/original/file-20231101-19-e51xgv.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">Healthy kelp ecosystems are vital for abalone.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Matt Testoni</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If we do this right, Australia’s control of the longspined sea urchin could be a global exemplar of <a href="https://www.climatereadyaustralia.com.au/">climate-ready</a> management of overabundant and range extending species, boosting <a href="https://www.frdc.com.au/project/2014-301">rural economies</a> and <a href="https://www.csiro.au/en/research/natural-environment/land/regional-prosperity">social wellbeing</a>. As species keep moving, finding low- or zero-cost control measures will be essential to keeping ecosystems intact. </p>
<p>Controlling troublesome species is often seen as a major cost to government. Our work and the work of many others has shown it doesn’t have to be. Creating viable urchin fisheries turns a cost into a benefit. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/marine-species-are-being-pushed-towards-the-poles-from-dugong-to-octopuses-here-are-8-marine-species-you-might-spot-in-new-places-207115">Marine species are being pushed towards the poles. From dugong to octopuses, here are 8 marine species you might spot in new places</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214389/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Keane receives funding from the Fisheries Research Development Corporation and the Tasmanian Government.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Scott Ling receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>Controlling invasive sea urchins is expensive. Why not make it profitable by fishing for them and selling their roe as a delicacy?John Keane, Research Fellow (Dive Fisheries), University of TasmaniaScott Ling, Associate professor, University of TasmaniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2156012023-10-25T19:10:24Z2023-10-25T19:10:24ZLegal in one state, a crime in another: laws banning hate symbols are a mixed bag<p>Queensland has now joined several other states in <a href="https://statements.qld.gov.au/statements/95214">outlawing extremist hate symbols</a>. </p>
<p>Far-right and neo-Nazi groups pose a significant ongoing threat to national security, in <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-05-24/concerns-of-rise-in-right-wing-extremist-groups-in-australia/102388498">Australia</a> and <a href="https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/understanding-global-right-wing-extremism">globally</a>. It is crucial to counter their hateful ideology, which has no place in Australian society.</p>
<p>However, banning specific symbols and gestures is a tricky thing to do. </p>
<p>So with each state going its own way, how are these laws working together? And importantly, how will we know if they’re effective?</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/would-a-law-banning-the-nazi-salute-be-effective-or-enforceable-198143">Would a law banning the Nazi salute be effective – or enforceable?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>What are the laws across the country?</h2>
<p>Over the last 16 months, Victoria, NSW and Tasmania have enacted laws banning the public display of Nazi symbols and salutes. Victoria was the first; it chose initially to <a href="https://www.premier.vic.gov.au/nazi-hate-symbols-now-banned-victoria">ban only the Nazi Swastika </a>. </p>
<p>Last week, it expanded this to include <a href="https://www.legislation.vic.gov.au/bills/summary-offences-amendment-nazi-salute-prohibition-bill-2023">any symbols used by the Nazi party</a>, including paramilitary arms like the SS.</p>
<p><a href="https://dcj.nsw.gov.au/news-and-media/media-releases-archive/2022/public-display-of-nazi-symbols-banned-in-nsw-1.html">New South Wales</a> and
<a href="https://www.premier.tas.gov.au/site_resources_2015/additional_releases/nazi-symbols-and-salutes-now-prohibited-in-tasmania">Tasmania</a> ban “Nazi symbols”, which is likely broader than the Victorian law. The courts will have a bigger say in whether something qualifies as one. </p>
<p>This should be simple enough for the most recognisable, such as the Swastika or Schutzstaffel (SS), but the question will be trickier if the law is enforced more broadly.</p>
<p>For example, neo-Nazi groups often use numbers like 14 (to indicate a 14-word white supremacist slogan) or 88 for “Heil Hitler” (because H is the 8th letter of the alphabet). The Anti-Defamation League maintains a large <a href="https://www.adl.org/resources/hate-symbols/search">database</a> of these sorts of hate symbols. </p>
<p>It is unclear which could provide the basis for a charge under NSW and Tasmanian law.</p>
<p>In Tasmania, the same <a href="https://www.parliament.tas.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0033/68766/2_of_2023.pdf">law bans Nazi gestures</a>. That was the first Australian law to criminalise the Sieg Heil salute, followed by <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-21/victoria-police-nazi-salute-offence-new-laws/103005966">Victoria</a>. </p>
<p>Neo-Nazi groups use the salute in public places to intimidate, <a href="https://theconversation.com/would-a-law-banning-the-nazi-salute-be-effective-or-enforceable-198143">spread fear</a>, raise their profile and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/apr/27/australia-nationwide-ban-nazi-salute-insignia-would-help-prevent-far-right-radicalisation-asio-intelligence-agency-says">recruit new members</a>. </p>
<p>These laws all target public displays of Nazi ideology. This would include, for example, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jan/19/police-seize-neo-nazi-paraphernalia-raids-south-east-queensland">hanging a Nazi flag from a bridge</a>, or waving Swastika signs at a neo-Nazi rally, but not <a href="https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/queensland/this-can-t-stand-hateful-neo-nazi-messages-left-in-brisbane-letterboxes-20230110-p5cbho.html">letterbox drops</a> or possessing Nazi paraphernalia at home.</p>
<p>All the laws include exemptions where symbols are displayed for legitimate <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/amid-australian-ban-on-nazi-symbols-asian-faith-groups-seek-to-reclaim-the-swastika-from-its-nazi-association/kiq813hhl">religious</a>, artistic, legal, historical, or educational purposes.</p>
<p>The federal government has also put forward its own <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislation/Bills_Search_Results/Result?bId=r7048">national ban laws</a>, but those are yet to pass parliament.</p>
<h2>How do Queensland’s laws compare?</h2>
<p>In two key ways, Queensland’s laws take a broader approach.</p>
<p>First, the <a href="https://documents.parliament.qld.gov.au/tp/2023/5723T390-BC17.pdf">laws do not list any prohibited symbols</a>. In fact, they do not mention anything about the Nazi party or its symbols. Instead, a list will be made and updated in regulations.</p>
<p>This will, in theory, allow the Queensland government to <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-12/qld-hate-symbols-laws-explainer/102965556">adapt to new hate symbols</a> as the need arises. But it’s unusual to give the executive so much power in determining the scope of a crime.</p>
<p>No one knows, at this point, what the laws will actually ban. It is a crucial aspect of the <a href="https://www.ruleoflaw.org.au/what-is-the-rule-of-law/">rule of law</a> that laws state clearly when conduct is a crime. </p>
<p>To ban a symbol or gesture, the Attorney-General must first consult with the chair of the Crime and Corruption Commission and the Human Rights and police commissioners. </p>
<p>She can recommend a symbol be listed if she is satisfied that it is <a href="https://documents.parliament.qld.gov.au/tp/2023/5723T390-BC17.pdf">“widely known”</a> to represent an ideology of “extreme prejudice”. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/does-australia-need-new-laws-to-combat-right-wing-extremism-196219">Does Australia need new laws to combat right-wing extremism?</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<p>Given the <a href="https://www.adl.org/resources/hate-symbols/search">large numbers of hate symbols</a> used by extremist groups, with varying degrees of public knowledge about them, seeking clear advice on this question could prove difficult. </p>
<p>Second, Queensland’s approach is not limited to public displays. It includes publishing and public distribution. The main question is whether a member of the public might reasonably feel menaced, harassed or offended. </p>
<p>This will give law enforcement tools to address a wider range of behaviours, such as handing out neo-Nazi flyers in public, but it raises some difficult questions. </p>
<p>It is not clear, for example, whether publication would include posting on social media, or whether public distribution would include <a href="https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/queensland/this-can-t-stand-hateful-neo-nazi-messages-left-in-brisbane-letterboxes-20230110-p5cbho.html">letterbox drops</a>, as the content cannot be seen from a public place.</p>
<p>Whether members of the community might feel menaced, harassed or offended will be clear where a group uses recognisable Nazi symbols, hate speech and physical intimidation in public spaces. But it will be a trickier question elsewhere. </p>
<p>For example, a lot of far-right content online is more subtle, spreading effectively through <a href="https://gnet-research.org/2023/07/28/schrodingers-joke-the-weaponisation-of-irony-and-humour-in-the-alt-right/">memes and humour</a>.</p>
<h2>How consistent are the laws?</h2>
<p>Victoria, Tasmania and NSW’s laws are broadly consistent, with Queensland as a clear outlier. </p>
<p>However, there are key differences.</p>
<p>For example, it will now be an offence to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/mar/16/queensland-to-ban-nazi-swastika-tattoos-as-part-of-crackdown-on-hate-symbols">display a Nazi tattoo</a> in Queensland and NSW, but not in <a href="http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/vic/consol_act/soa1966189/s41k.html">Victoria</a> and <a href="https://www.parliament.tas.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0033/68766/2_of_2023.pdf">Tasmania</a>.</p>
<p>The penalties also vary significantly, ranging from three months imprisonment in Tasmania (or six months for a repeat offence in a short time), to six months in Queensland, to 12 months in NSW and Victoria.</p>
<p>These inconsistencies are not necessarily a bad thing. </p>
<p>One of the benefits of a federal system is that states can create different laws and later fall in line if best practice emerges. </p>
<p>But it does suggest a degree of experimentation, with no consensus on the most effective approach.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/far-right-groups-have-used-covid-to-expand-their-footprint-in-australia-here-are-the-ones-you-need-to-know-about-151203">Far-right groups have used COVID to expand their footprint in Australia. Here are the ones you need to know about</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>How will we know if the laws are effective?</h2>
<p>In any state, neo-Nazi groups may simply <a href="https://theconversation.com/would-a-law-banning-the-nazi-salute-be-effective-or-enforceable-198143">avoid prosecution</a> under these laws by adapting the symbols, slogans and gestures they use.</p>
<p>For example, they already use the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/03/ok-sign-gesture-emoji-rightwing-alt-right">“OK” hand symbol to indicate white power</a>. It would be difficult, even under Queensland’s approach, to ban this otherwise mundane gesture.</p>
<p>However, if the groups are prevented from using their most recognisable and intimidating symbols, it will rob them of key recruitment tools and reduce their ability to spread fear and hatred.</p>
<p>A group of white supremacists using the OK hand symbol and signs saying 14 and 88 is still intimidating, but less so than the same group using the Swastika and Sieg Heil salute.</p>
<p>In addition, the laws will allow police to disrupt and arrest those who pose a threat to our communities. This will need to be done in a way that does not escalate tensions at a public rally or protest.</p>
<p>In any case, the criminal law serves a moral purpose as well as a practical one. These developing laws send a clear signal that Nazi ideology has no place in Australian society.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/215601/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Keiran Hardy 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>Queensland is the latest state bring in laws banning neo-Nazi and far-right symbols, but no one knows yet precisely what will be banned. Here’s how the laws differ across the country.Keiran Hardy, Senior Lecturer, Griffith Criminology Institute, Griffith UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2116702023-08-16T06:36:33Z2023-08-16T06:36:33ZGiant old trees are still being logged in Tasmanian forests. We must find ways of better protecting them<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542963/original/file-20230816-15-evtmsp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=10%2C2%2C948%2C513&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bob Brown Foundation</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The photo said it all. On the back of a logging truck, a tree so large it could barely fit. It was cut down in Tasmania’s Florentine Valley, not far from Mount Field, where it had started life as a seedling over a century ago. </p>
<p>The photo triggered outrage from conservationists and the public. Greens founder Bob Brown <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/aug/16/protest-tree-estimated-hundreds-of-years-old-cut-down-tasmania">called the felling</a> “a national disgrace” and urged a halt to the felling of old growth giants. </p>
<p>Giant trees are supposed to be protected as a matter of normal process. Trees over 85 metres high or with a trunk volume of 280 cubic metres should be retained with a 100 metres radius of uncleared bush around them. The loggers say this one was cut down for “safety reasons”. We don’t know if this one met those criteria. </p>
<p>Whether or not that’s true, the felling has sparked a new battle in Tasmania’s long-running forest wars. Unlike in Victoria, old growth logging in Tasmania doesn’t look like ending any time soon. But we must find ways to better protect these giants of nature, the tallest flowering trees in the world. They store huge amounts of carbon in their trunks and in the soil, provide habitat for many forest creatures and produce awe in humans who see them. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542927/original/file-20230816-29-ngu4pv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="florentine valley logged tree`" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542927/original/file-20230816-29-ngu4pv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542927/original/file-20230816-29-ngu4pv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1302&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542927/original/file-20230816-29-ngu4pv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1302&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542927/original/file-20230816-29-ngu4pv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1302&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542927/original/file-20230816-29-ngu4pv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1636&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542927/original/file-20230816-29-ngu4pv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1636&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542927/original/file-20230816-29-ngu4pv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1636&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 fallen giant.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bob Brown Foundation</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Why was this giant logged?</h2>
<p>The truck transporting the trunk of the tree was seen exiting Tasmania’s Florentine Valley. This valley has been the site of many protests over the years. Part of it is in the World Heritage Area, but logging is still allowed in other parts of it.</p>
<p>Why was a tree this size cut down? Safety. </p>
<p>“On occasion, it may be necessary for Sustainable Timber Tasmania to remove a large tree where it presents an access or safety risk,” a spokeswoman told <a href="https://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/natural-wonder-gone-tasmanian-forestry-photo-slammed-as-utter-environmental-travesty/news-story/2af220353dc281ac9abb24b80e36fca9?btr=9f5301b881f640a9ebe7c711d214386b">news.com.au</a>. </p>
<p>That is possible. Giant old trees can hollow out as they age and become a safety risk if people are allowed near them. But the trunk in the published photo shows no sign of hollowing out. If it was a giant, the mandatory 100 metre protection zone would eliminate almost all risk. </p>
<p>At the very least, the felling suggests not all of Tasmania’s ancient trees are adequately protected. What it shows is the need for independent assessment of areas slated for logging likely to be home to giants – and to ensure trees felled for “safety” reasons" genuinely need to be removed. </p>
<p>And what about trees that are not quite big enough to be protected? As ecologist and tall-tree expert Dr Jennifer Sanger <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/aug/16/protest-tree-estimated-hundreds-of-years-old-cut-down-tasmania">has observed</a>, the 85-metre figure is arbitrary. We need to plan for the giant trees of the future by keeping the almost giant trees of now. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/after-the-chainsaws-the-quiet-victorias-rapid-exit-from-native-forest-logging-is-welcome-and-long-overdue-206181">After the chainsaws, the quiet: Victoria's rapid exit from native forest logging is welcome – and long overdue</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Ancient giants matter</h2>
<p>Mountain ash (<em>Eucalyptus regnans</em>) is the world’s largest flowering plant. The trees can live up to 700 years and reach over 100 metres in height. </p>
<p>Do they matter more than other trees? Yes. That’s because big old trees begin to decay in interesting ways, creating hollows for possums and birds to nest in, and even hollowing out inside the trunk, which makes habitat for bats. They play an outsized role in ecosystems in providing shelter, hollows and food. </p>
<p>Ironically, these processes of decay can make these giants all but useless for timber. If you’re logging a giant to turn it into large structural beams, you might find it’s hollow inside and all but useless. </p>
<p>The sheer size of these trees also means they have more habitat to offer for other forms of life. Native animals, birds and invertebrates rely on these trees. Plus, they store massive amounts of carbon, both above ground and in the soil. Cutting down the old growth forests of which these trees are a part and turning them into production forests results in a substantial ongoing leakage of soil carbon for many generations.</p>
<p>The trees induce awe and wonder in most who see them. People are passionate about keeping them on the planet – one of the reasons for the forest wars in the first place. These huge trees attract tourists to walk beneath them or up in their canopies. </p>
<h2>Haven’t Tasmania’s forest wars stopped?</h2>
<p>Sadly, no. The decades-long battle between loggers and conservationists in Tasmania has certainly become less intense after many old growth forests such as the Weld, Styx, Florentine and Great Western Tiers <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/tasmanias-old-growth-forests-win-heritage-protection-20130624-2os3p.html">gained World Heritage protection</a> in 2013. </p>
<p>But native forest logging in Tasmania shows no sign of stopping entirely. Old-growth logging continues around the state, including in the Florentine Valley where this giant tree was felled. Rainforest trees in some reserves are available for logging. </p>
<p>In May, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews <a href="https://theconversation.com/after-the-chainsaws-the-quiet-victorias-rapid-exit-from-native-forest-logging-is-welcome-and-long-overdue-206181">announced</a> his state would this year end native forest logging, which has long been a loss-making industry. Instead, plantation logging will be expanded. </p>
<p>Why can’t Tasmania do this? It mostly <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-electioneering-is-at-the-root-of-tasmanias-forest-furore-22773">comes down</a> to politics. Tasmania is the poorest state in Australia, and the few jobs logging native forests are politically important. </p>
<p>Also, the wood from larger trees are better for ends such as veneer, exposed beams and furniture than most plantation-sourced wood. Their felling can be rewarding financially for the companies that do it, as no-one has to pay to grow them and they can contain large volumes of high quality wood. </p>
<p>But overall, cutting down old growth forests may not stack up economically, with the quasi-government enterprises managing production forests often making losses. It didn’t make much <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/environment/conservation/logging-agency-vicforests-blames-legal-woes-for-record-financial-loss-20221221-p5c7yl.html">financial sense</a> in Victoria, and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/29/tasmanian-forest-agreement-delivers-13bn-losses-in-giant-on-taxpayers">may not</a> in Tasmania. </p>
<p>Will the felling of this giant bring change? Don’t bet on it. Probably the best we can hope for is to preserve as many giants – and near-giants – as we can. And to do that, we’ll need independent assessments of old growth forest slated for logging to double-check measurements of these precious trees. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/photos-from-the-field-capturing-the-grandeur-and-heartbreak-of-tasmanias-giant-trees-144743">Photos from the field: capturing the grandeur and heartbreak of Tasmania's giant trees</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211670/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Professor Jamie Kirkpatrick sits on the Tasmanian Independent Science Council</span></em></p>Tasmania’s forestry wars aren’t over, if the uproar over the felling of a large mountain ash is anything to go by.Jamie Kirkpatrick, Professor of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of TasmaniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2107022023-08-15T01:48:07Z2023-08-15T01:48:07ZAmid dreadful sexual abuse, sport brings grace in a school memoir that resists easy judgement<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540385/original/file-20230801-15-ewgsbx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C0%2C3817%2C2160&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A friend likes to remind me about the one time I attended an Ashes test in Melbourne, Boxing Day, 1974. The crowd was waiting, excited, to watch the English team, and Dennis Amiss particularly, front up to the wicket. On he came, bravely facing just eight balls. Then he was caught out, having scored a paltry four runs. I cried. How humiliating and soul-shrivelling for him, I thought. But my Australian (male) friends couldn’t understand at all. Crying? For an Englishman!</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: The Empty Honour Board: a school memoir – Martin Flanagan (Viking)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Then there were all those years growing up with a father who insisted on watching <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine%27s_Wide_World_of_Sports">Wide World of Sports</a> every Sunday at lunchtime. The kitchen table would be carried in to the TV and we were made to sit in religious silence, eating our roast, watching grown men hand-balling through a hole in the wall, and rehashing the events/scores/heroes of the previous day’s matches. </p>
<p>These anecdotes are not random. They were part of my personal mythology, my long dislike of the Australian religion of sport. Back then I saw it all as being at the expense of, say, literature, or intellectual debate, or spiritual depth. </p>
<p>I am deciding in later life that pitting sport against culture, or intellect, or spirituality is not a very productive idea. That kind of oppositional mentality chisels down your options and your enjoyments. I have writer Martin Flanagan to thank for shaking my narrowness. He hasn’t completely set me free (I’m sure that wasn’t his aim); but life, and sons, and what Flanagan in his memoir <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-empty-honour-board-9780143779131">The Empty Honour Board</a> describes as “the athletic grace” of sport and sportspeople, have contributed to my education.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540382/original/file-20230801-29-a5tyah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540382/original/file-20230801-29-a5tyah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540382/original/file-20230801-29-a5tyah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=823&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540382/original/file-20230801-29-a5tyah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=823&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540382/original/file-20230801-29-a5tyah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=823&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540382/original/file-20230801-29-a5tyah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1034&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540382/original/file-20230801-29-a5tyah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1034&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540382/original/file-20230801-29-a5tyah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1034&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">Martin Flanagan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Penguin Random House Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This book, described by Flanagan as “a school memoir” is that, and much more – spanning the 1960s of Flanagan’s childhood to the present. </p>
<p>The famous Flanagan sports-writing flair is given plenty of scope; but at this book’s centre are stories from a boy’s world: the Tasmanian Catholic boarding school he attended as a child in the 1960s and ‘70s, the priests who taught there, and the camaraderie of boys who felt themselves constantly under threat from male violence (regular canings, bashings, enforced piety, touchings, and full-on abuse).</p>
<p>From 1966 to 1971, from the ages of 10 to 16, Flanagan went to this school, not named in the book for privacy reasons. Many boys – Flanagan to a minor extent – were sexually abused to differing degrees. Others were bullied and traumatised at this school, which has since been disbanded. </p>
<p>As the violent, dreadful stories of sexual abuse are slowly told in the book, often in ragged, little images that say it all, we are also given many sports stories, and wider Flanagan life experiences. They made this reader listen, these stories of on-field valour and sporting prowess of the past. Playing football and cricket was the escape and joy of many boys, as sport became a free space:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In this grey world, I discovered sport… Sport, unlike school and religion, had <em>life!</em> I discovered sport like others I have read discover theatre - as a magical space where aspects of humanity otherwise kept hidden away come out to play. For the first time I saw grace … athletic grace that took my breath away, acts of skill and daring that imprinted themselves indelibly on my brain. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Empty Honour Board is also a book about the way memory and the past and one’s boyhood passions and nightmares can collide, often unexpectedly, later in life, resulting in new readings of the self. We see that for Flanagan “the self” is a hard-won, self-questioning and restless entity. One memory, retrieved in later life by the author, is startling in its openness about the struggle for self:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In the end, one hot day I was standing beside a Blackwood tree in the paddock beside our little home, when a shadow hurried across the grass towards me. With it came a great fear that I was about to be extinguished or swallowed up, and I cried out: ‘I have a right to be!’</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This memory is told in a straightforward, non-self-dramatising way, not blaming any one person for “the negative imprint of those early years”, but registering the life-long impact nevertheless. It is the act of writing, we are told, which gave (and gives) Flanagan his “sanity”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540386/original/file-20230801-19-q5gdci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540386/original/file-20230801-19-q5gdci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540386/original/file-20230801-19-q5gdci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540386/original/file-20230801-19-q5gdci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540386/original/file-20230801-19-q5gdci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540386/original/file-20230801-19-q5gdci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540386/original/file-20230801-19-q5gdci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540386/original/file-20230801-19-q5gdci.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">Flanagan writes of the breathtaking athletic grace of sport,</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Morgan Hancock/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/to-believe-or-not-to-believe-child-witnesses-and-the-sex-abuse-royal-commission-55561">To believe or not to believe: child witnesses and the sex abuse royal commission</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Pity for the loneliness of priests</h2>
<p>Flanagan the writer emerges with many selves: poet, passionately non-Catholic thinker (despite his mother’s desires), journalist of eclectic scope, traveller, and most interestingly, perhaps, someone who refuses to be judgemental even in the face of awful and dire life situations.</p>
<p>Yet we are given plenty to judge: a full blast of life as a child from a Catholic family landed in a boarding school from the age of 11, where multiple forms of violence are always hovering, and where religious faith is not experienced as real for the boy. </p>
<p>However, this doesn’t turn into a story of victimhood. The boy (and the man) does not resent his parents for sending him away, but remembers feeling ready to face the freedom of being out of home. He doesn’t even despise the priests who inflict such violence on the boys in their “care”. There is more a sense of pity for the loneliness of such priests.</p>
<p>In the words of “celebrity barrister” Geoffrey Robertson, at the time of the 2019 trials of several of the priests, (quoted by Flanagan), most accused priests</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[…] are not even paedophiles, but rather sexually maladjusted, immature and lonely individuals unable to resist the temptation to exploit their power over children who are taught to revere them as agents of God. </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540384/original/file-20230801-15-oma1fj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540384/original/file-20230801-15-oma1fj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540384/original/file-20230801-15-oma1fj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540384/original/file-20230801-15-oma1fj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540384/original/file-20230801-15-oma1fj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540384/original/file-20230801-15-oma1fj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540384/original/file-20230801-15-oma1fj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540384/original/file-20230801-15-oma1fj.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">There is more pity than judgement.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There is more human pity than judgement informing this stance. For Flanagan, judgementalism is usually produced by simplistic thinking, in the “current realm”</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[…] now termed binary thinking where issues about deeply sensitive subjects like race and sexuality and gender are reduced almost immediately to black-and-white terms […] So much contemporary media – particularly social media – reduces human dramas to scenarios in which the forces of darkness are pitted against the forces of light. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Flanagan’s expressed wish in this book is to be “uplifting”. He sees himself as an optimist, and asks humbly, from the wells of his human experience: “Whose light didn’t come with a shadow?” </p>
<p>As the book proceeds to unpack the offences and trials of the different priests from his school, placing his narrative in the larger context of sexual abuse allegations surrounding <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/sep/30/george-pell-returns-to-rome-after-acquittal-on-child-abuse-charges">Archbishop George Pell</a> and others, Flanagan maintains both his pity, but also his sense of justice.</p>
<p>He continued to like some of the priests who later turned out to be abusers, but still delivered “my testimony hard and exact”, 30 years later when he agreed to testify in court about abuse in the school. </p>
<p>As Flanagan narrates, in straightforward, factual prose at the beginning of the book: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Three of the 12 priests on the staff when I arrived have since gone to prison for sexual crimes committed while I was there, and allegations have been publicly directed against others. Further sexual abuse cases occurred at the school after I left, so that as it now stands six former staff members have been sent to jail. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Spiritual depth</h2>
<p>The last section of the book is poised between pity and optimism, with a straightforward, straight-talking sense of realism peeling back to reveal the brutishness of which humans are capable. Placing his work in the context of literature and the genre of boyhood education – Lord of the Flies, Tom Brown’s School Days, Huckleberry Finn – is helpful for readers thinking about what kind of text this is.</p>
<p>There are many heroes named along the way. Flanagan never exaggerates his own personal story of abuse, but bullying and cowardice and outright violence were the air all the boys breathed at the school. Yet there is also hope, with moving tributes made to heroes. These tributes buoy up Flanagan’s memoir with grace and strength, embodying what is possible beyond the shabbiness of predatory human actions. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540383/original/file-20230801-17-ea2imr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540383/original/file-20230801-17-ea2imr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540383/original/file-20230801-17-ea2imr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540383/original/file-20230801-17-ea2imr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540383/original/file-20230801-17-ea2imr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540383/original/file-20230801-17-ea2imr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1173&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540383/original/file-20230801-17-ea2imr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1173&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540383/original/file-20230801-17-ea2imr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1173&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many figures stand out as cherished influences in Flanagan’s story, some of them beacons of hope: Indigenous leader <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Dodson">Patrick Dodson</a>, Martin’s wife Polly, his brothers, especially Tim, his parents, writers such as Howard Goldenberg, George Orwell and William Golding, musician Archie Roach, and a long, long roll call of sportsmen, and fellow students who bravely rode the waves of the dark world that was school life: Paul and Steve O’Halloran, Rinso, Peter Rowe, and others.</p>
<p>Finally, there is one subtext of this memoir which needs highlighting: Flanagan’s broken, often angry, but ongoing relationship with spirituality. When it boils down to the institution of the Catholic church – its priesthood, schools, rituals and disciplines – there is little warmth. And who can blame him? </p>
<p>But in his honouring of people’s warmth, his tributes to the church’s joyful priests, its service to the marginal, its rituals of memory, Flanagan is still alive to the need for spiritual depth. </p>
<p>He finds this depth in Aboriginal spirituality and the example of Pat Dodson. And as he tells us, when meeting the late <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desmond_Tutu">South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu</a> and hearing his “raucous cackle”, he asked him “Does God laugh?” Flanagan reports Tutu’s response:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>He took my forearm solemnly in his hands and said slowly and with emphasis: ‘Yes, my friend. God laughs – and God cries,’ and I saw within him, as deep as a mine-shaft, where despair has taken him … In South Africa I got seriously scared by the evil of torture and in South Africa I saw that hope, like love, can be made. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This nonjudgmental equanimity crowns Flanagan’s memoir. He tells a bleak set of stories, but the volume is indeed uplifting in the face of so much darkness. I’m even tempted to seek out some more of his sports writing.</p>
<p><em>Correction: an earlier version of this article mis-spelt the name of the barrister Geoffrey Robertson. It has now been corrected.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210702/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lyn McCredden 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>Martin Flanagan’s school memoir describes bullying, male violence and abusive priests. But rather than a story of victimhood, it explores the grace and release of sport, finding hope amid darkness.Lyn McCredden, Personal Chair, Literary Studies, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2111142023-08-13T20:04:02Z2023-08-13T20:04:02ZRising seas and a great southern star: Aboriginal oral traditions stretch back more than 12,000 years<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541869/original/file-20230809-16-26pa2s.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C19%2C4340%2C2245&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/aerial-photo-neck-on-bruny-island-2270935801">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Content note: this article mentions genocide and acts of colonial violence against Aboriginal people.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>How long do you think stories can be passed down, generation to generation? </p>
<p>Hundreds of years? Thousands?</p>
<p>Today, we publish new research in the <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440323000997">Journal of Archaeological Science</a> demonstrating that traditional stories from Tasmania have been passed down for more than 12,000 years. And we use multiple lines of evidence to show it.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-memory-code-how-oral-cultures-memorise-so-much-information-65649">The Memory Code: how oral cultures memorise so much information</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Tasmania’s violent colonial history</h2>
<p>Within months of establishing a colonial outpost on the island in 1803, British officials had committed several <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/cambridge-world-history-of-genocide/genocide-in-van-diemens-land-tasmania-18031871/ED82A107B2C76801551EB3F51CA6179D">acts of genocide</a> against Aboriginal Tasmanian (Palawa) people. By the mid-1820s, soldiers, convicts, and free settlers had taken up arms to fight what became known as the “Black War”, aimed at capturing or killing Palawa and dispossessing them of their Country.</p>
<p>Tasmania’s colonial government appointed George Augustus Robinson to “conciliate” with the Palawa. From 1829 to 1835, Robinson travelled with a small group of Palawa, including <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truganini">Trukanini</a> and her husband, Wurati. By 1832, Robinson’s “friendly mission” had turned to forced removals.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541689/original/file-20230808-19-8664yu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An illustrated postcard showing the (so-called) 'Friendly Mission', led by George Augustus Robinson (1941)" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541689/original/file-20230808-19-8664yu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541689/original/file-20230808-19-8664yu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541689/original/file-20230808-19-8664yu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541689/original/file-20230808-19-8664yu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541689/original/file-20230808-19-8664yu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541689/original/file-20230808-19-8664yu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541689/original/file-20230808-19-8664yu.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"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A postcard showing the (so-called) ‘Friendly Mission’, led by George Augustus Robinson (1941), colourised version.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library of Victoria</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/coming-to-terms-with-tasmanias-forgotten-war-11333">Coming to terms with Tasmania's forgotten war</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Robinson kept a daily journal, which included records of Palawa languages and traditions. Over time, Palawa men and women slowly began to share some of their knowledge, explaining how their ancestors came to Tasmania (Lutruwita) by land from the far north, before the sea formed and turned their home into an island. They also spoke about the Sun-man, the Moon-woman, and a bright southern star. </p>
<p>These stories are of immense importance to today’s Palawa families who survived the devastating impact of colonisation, and who continue to share these unique creation stories. Through careful investigation of colonial records, and collaborating with Palawa knowledge-holders, we found something remarkable.</p>
<h2>Rising seas and the formation of Lutruwita</h2>
<p>Over the past 65,000 years, Australia’s First Peoples witnessed natural disasters and significant changes to the land, sea and sky. Volcanoes spewed fire, earthquakes shook the land, tsunamis inundated the coastlines, droughts plagued the continent, meteorites fell to the earth, and the stars shifted in the night sky. </p>
<p>Some 20,000 years ago, the world was in the grip of an ice age. Australia was conspicuously drier than it is today, and the ocean was significantly lower. All of that sea water was bound up in glaciers that swathed vast tracts of land, particularly across the Northern Hemisphere, and polar ice caps much larger than ours today.</p>
<p>As time passed, temperatures gradually rose and the ice began to melt. After 10,000 years, the sea level had risen 125 metres; a process that dramatically transformed coastlines and submerged landscapes that had been ancestral Country for thousands of generations. This forced humans to change where and how they lived.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ancient-aboriginal-stories-preserve-history-of-a-rise-in-sea-level-36010">Ancient Aboriginal stories preserve history of a rise in sea level</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>During the ice age, both Lutruwita and Papua New Guinea were connected to mainland Australia by dry land, forming a landmass called <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/sahul-pleistocene-continent-172704">Sahul</a>. As the seas rose, Tasmania’s connection gradually narrowed to form what geologists call the Bassian Land Bridge.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Topographic map of the Bass Strait" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541680/original/file-20230808-27-2tqj1z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541680/original/file-20230808-27-2tqj1z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=725&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541680/original/file-20230808-27-2tqj1z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=725&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541680/original/file-20230808-27-2tqj1z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=725&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541680/original/file-20230808-27-2tqj1z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=910&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541680/original/file-20230808-27-2tqj1z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=910&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541680/original/file-20230808-27-2tqj1z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=910&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A topographic map of the Bass Strait, showing the conditions before the Bassian Land Bridge was submerged. The yellow shaded area represents geography of the land bridge, while the broken red line indicated the last vestige of a continuous Bassian Land Bridge between Tasmania and the mainland.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Patrick Nunn</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>People continued to live on this “land bridge”, but by 12,700 years ago it had narrowed to just 5 kilometres wide (lime-green shading on the map above). Habitable land was gradually reduced as the sea closed in. Less than 300 years later, the “land bridge” was gone and Lutruwita was completely surrounded by water.</p>
<p>Palawa traditions from that time survived hundreds of generations of retelling, forming part of a larger canon of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander stories around Australia. They described rising seas and submerging coastlines as the ice sheets melted before levelling off around 7,000 years ago. Stories of similar antiquity are known from other parts of the <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/worlds-in-shadow-9781472983497/">world</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ancient-aboriginal-stories-preserve-history-of-a-rise-in-sea-level-36010">Ancient Aboriginal stories preserve history of a rise in sea level</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A great south star</h2>
<p>Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures developed rich and complex <a href="http://www.thefirstastronomers.com">knowledge systems</a> about the stars, which are still used today. They describe the movements of the Sun, Moon, and stars, as well as rare cosmic events, such as <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2011/06/15/3244593.htm">eclipses</a>, supernovae, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/finding-meteorite-impacts-in-aboriginal-oral-tradition-38052">meteorite impacts</a>.</p>
<p>In the 1830s, a Palawa Elder spoke about a time when the star Moinee was near the south celestial pole. He laid down a pair of spears in the sand and drew a few reference stars to triangulate its position.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/stories-from-the-sky-astronomy-in-indigenous-knowledge-33140">Stories from the sky: astronomy in Indigenous knowledge</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Colonists seemed perplexed about the presence of an antipodean counterpart to Polaris, as no southern pole star exists today. Some tried to identify the stars on the star map, but seemed confused and labelled them incorrectly, as they were unaware of an important astronomical process called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_precession">axial precession</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2JJjNc1xPKw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>As the Earth rotates, it wobbles on its axis like a spinning top. This shifts the location of the celestial poles, tracing out a large circle every 26,000 years. As thousands of years pass by, the positions of the stars in the sky slowly change.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/stars-that-vary-in-brightness-shine-in-the-oral-traditions-of-aboriginal-australians-85833">Stars that vary in brightness shine in the oral traditions of Aboriginal Australians</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Long ago, Canopus was at its southernmost point in the sky. Lying just over 10 degrees from the south celestial pole, it appeared to always hover in the southern skies each night. That last occurred 14,000 years ago, before rising seas turned Lutruwita into an island.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542074/original/file-20230810-17-uh89zk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A star map showing the location of Canopus 14,000 years ago." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542074/original/file-20230810-17-uh89zk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542074/original/file-20230810-17-uh89zk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=310&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542074/original/file-20230810-17-uh89zk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=310&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542074/original/file-20230810-17-uh89zk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=310&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542074/original/file-20230810-17-uh89zk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542074/original/file-20230810-17-uh89zk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542074/original/file-20230810-17-uh89zk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=390&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">Stars in the southern sky as they would have appeared 14,000 years ago, accounting for precession, nutation, and proper motion. Canopus is very close to the south celestial pole (SCP).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://stellarium-web.org/">Stellarium</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<h2>Exciting collaborative futures</h2>
<p>We can see through independent lines of evidence that Palawa stories have been passed down for more than twelve millennia. We also find here the only example in the world of an oral tradition describing a star’s position as it would have appeared in the sky over 10,000 years ago.</p>
<p>Our investigation of colonial records that record traditional systems of knowledge has demonstrated a powerful cross-cultural way of better understanding deep human history. This also recognises the immense value of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander traditions today.</p>
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<p><em>This research was co-authored by graduate Michelle Gantevoort from RMIT University, and student researchers Ka Hei Andrew Law from the University of Melbourne and Mel Miles from Swinburne University of Technology.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211114/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Duane W. Hamacher receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Lady Foundation.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Greg Lehman receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Patrick D. Nunn receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Asia-Pacific Network, and the British Academy</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rebe Taylor receives funding from Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>Ancient stories of the sea and the sky date back to the end of the last ice age.Duane Hamacher, Associate Professor, The University of MelbourneGreg Lehman, Pro Vice Chancellor, Aboriginal Leadership, University of TasmaniaPatrick D. Nunn, Professor of Geography, School of Law and Society, University of the Sunshine CoastRebe Taylor, Associate Professor of History, University of TasmaniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2073122023-06-21T02:20:41Z2023-06-21T02:20:41ZCOVID didn’t change internal migration as much as claimed, new ABS data show<p>At its height, the COVID-19 pandemic <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/population-change-2020">disrupted</a> well-established patterns of migration within Australia. Reports of a <a href="https://newsroom.kpmg.com.au/covid-19s-impact-population-growth-regional-renaissance-melbourne-sydney-decline/">regional renaissance</a> suggested city dwellers were <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-02/abs-data-confirms-city-exodus-during-covid/13112868">moving to regional areas</a> in droves. The governments of Tasmania, South Australia and the Northern Territory were also keen to promote new migration flows to reverse long-standing declines in their shares of the national population.</p>
<p>Advice from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) that internal migration numbers were “<a href="https://population.gov.au/data-and-forecasts/key-data-releases/national-state-and-territory-population-september-2021">implausibly high</a>” received less attention. The ABS suspended these data releases due to this concern. Its latest <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/national-state-and-territory-population/dec-2022#states-and-territories">population data release</a> uses a revised model for <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/detailed-methodology-information/information-papers/2021-census-update-net-interstate-migration-mode">net interstate migration</a>. </p>
<p>These data indicate a new normal rather than a renaissance for South Australia, the Northern Territory and Tasmania. </p>
<p>Internal migration losses for capital cities have also slowed.</p>
<iframe title="Components of population change by state and territory" aria-label="Grouped Column Chart" id="datawrapper-chart-dV3D1" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/dV3D1/2/" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="border: none;" width="100%" height="400" data-external="1"></iframe>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/lets-just-do-it-how-do-e-changers-feel-about-having-left-the-city-now-lockdowns-are-over-188009">'Let's just do it': how do e-changers feel about having left the city now lockdowns are over?</a>
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<h2>So what was going on?</h2>
<p>In reality, the data present a different story to the popular narrative. Pandemic-era <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/regional-internal-migration-estimates-provisional/latest-release">ABS data</a> for 2020 showed increased growth in non-metropolitan areas was due more to retaining residents than attracting new ones. </p>
<p>This is unsurprising. Much of Australia was in lockdown, restricting movement, and case numbers were highest in the capital cities. The historical main reasons for leaving regional areas – education and/or jobs – were no longer viable options. </p>
<p>In 2020, interstate migration fell by 29%. In 2021, it increased on paper by 45% compared with 2020. </p>
<p>However, the ABS advised this large increase was mainly due to people updating their addresses with Medicare during mass vaccination rollouts. The distorting effect of these belated updates prompted the ABS to suspend the release of regional internal migration estimates. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/2021-census-overcount-and-undercount/latest-release">under-counts and over-counts</a> identified from the 2021 census show just how far off estimates of population and migration were for some areas. The ABS has <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/detailed-methodology-information/information-papers/2021-census-update-net-interstate-migration-model">revised its methodology</a>, based on the census findings and updated Medicare data. </p>
<p>Last week, the ABS released details of its new assumptions for modelling interstate migration with the <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/national-state-and-territory-population/dec-2022#states-and-territories">latest population data</a> for the last quarter of 2022. Under this model, total interstate migration for 2022 fell 21%, compared with 2021, to levels similar to those of 2016. </p>
<p>As for movement between capital cities and regional areas within states, we have <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/regional-population/latest-release#key-statistics">data for four quarters</a> since March 2022 when the ABS resumed releases. (“Regional areas” include large centres like the Gold Coast, Geelong and Newcastle.) The numbers moving to greater capital cities have been increasing, and the numbers leaving have been declining. Even so, more people are still leaving capital cities than arriving (excluding overseas arrivals). </p>
<iframe title="Population changes by capital city for year to June 30 2022" aria-label="Grouped Column Chart" id="datawrapper-chart-ByYH4" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/ByYH4/2/" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="border: none;" width="100%" height="400" data-external="1"></iframe>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/has-covid-really-caused-an-exodus-from-our-cities-in-fact-moving-to-the-regions-is-nothing-new-154724">Has COVID really caused an exodus from our cities? In fact, moving to the regions is nothing new</a>
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<h2>What does this mean for state and territory populations?</h2>
<p>The revised data allow us to assess migration flows between states and territories for the last quarter of 2022 as well as back through time, including the pandemic. </p>
<p>In the peak pandemic year of 2020, South Australia recorded a net gain from interstate migration. The then premier <a href="https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/brain-drain-from-south-australia-reverses-again-abs-figures-show/news-story/3c7ebb08c67603a5f050dbcab2368d26">attributed</a> the reversal of the state’s brain drain to its “performance in containing COVID, accelerating industrial transformation and strong jobs growth”. </p>
<p>A closer look at the data shows the upward trend began well before the pandemic. The net loss due to interstate migration had decreased from -7,693 in 2017 to -2,885 in 2019. </p>
<p>The pandemic did accelerate this trend. Early in the pandemic, the net gain of 2,348 people in SA was driven by retention of people. Arrivals fell by 21.7%, but the decrease in departures was larger at 35.4%. In 2021, the net gain of 2,310 people was slightly smaller as arrivals increased by 43.6% and departures by 48.5%. </p>
<p>In 2022, however, the net gain was only 670 people. This suggests a return to net interstate migration losses is possible. </p>
<p>The revised data for the Northern Territory show a consistent net population loss to interstate migration of about 2,100 in the five years leading up to the pandemic. Then, in 2020, interstate arrivals fell considerably but departures fell even more. The result was a small net gain of 110. </p>
<p>When the territory’s borders reopened in 2021, both arrivals and departures surged to 1.5 times the average of the five years to 2020 at 16,992 arrivals and 19,298 departures. But in 2022 both figures wound back to 14% below the five-year pre-COVID average. Departures once again outstripped arrivals, by 2,120, very close to the average net loss of 2,306 for those five years.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/you-cant-boost-australias-north-to-5-million-people-without-a-proper-plan-125063">You can't boost Australia's north to 5 million people without a proper plan</a>
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<p>The Tasmanian government is refreshing its <a href="https://www.stategrowth.tas.gov.au/policies_and_strategies/populationstrategy">2015 Population Growth Strategy</a> and plans to appoint a <a href="https://www.premier.tas.gov.au/speeches/state-of-the-state-address">state demographer</a>. In November 2021, the then premier <a href="https://www.premier.tas.gov.au/speeches/ceda_state_of_the_state_address3">declared</a> people were “knocking on the door, and knocking loudly” to move to the state. This was not the case. </p>
<p>In 2020, interstate arrivals fell by 18% and departures by 28%. The state’s net gain was 2,633. For 2021, at the time of the vaccination rollout, arrivals increased by 39% and departures by 53%, resulting in a smaller net gain. For 2022, arrivals fell by 30% and departures by 16%, for a net loss of 941 people. </p>
<p>This reverses a seven-year period of interstate migration gains for Tasmania. With the lowest growth since 2015, the state has returned to the times before a population growth strategy. The level of natural increase (births minus deaths) is the lowest on record. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/tasmania-cant-only-rely-on-a-growing-population-for-an-economic-boost-91236">Tasmania can't only rely on a growing population for an economic boost</a>
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<h2>Getting the numbers right matters for us all</h2>
<p>Claiming a <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/property/covidinduced-renaissance-for-regional-property-spikes/news-story/2a2dc5295aa0c28decc3a76579668bea">population resurgence</a> may help promote confidence for regions experiencing challenges from population ageing, economic performance and/or remoteness. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-do-small-rural-communities-often-shun-newcomers-even-when-they-need-them-199984">Why do small rural communities often shun newcomers, even when they need them?</a>
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<p>The problem with such populist narratives is they may also jeopardise the development of good policy, programs and infrastructure for key services such as housing, health and education. Funding could end up going to areas with less relative need. </p>
<p>These narratives may also muddy the already <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/andrews-fires-warning-at-albanese-over-sweetheart-gst-deals-20230314-p5cryx.html">contentious distribution</a> of GST revenue to the states and territories. In addition, population numbers affect how many seats each state and territory has in the House of Representatives. </p>
<p>We need reliable and robust data to make informed decisions. This is why we should all take personal responsibility for promptly updating our home addresses with Medicare when we move. Although this might not seem urgent for individuals, not doing so may mean their share of services and infrastructure falls short of what it might otherwise be.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/207312/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lisa Denny has received funding from the Tasmanian Department of State Growth in the past. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Taylor receives funding from the Northern Territory Department of Treasury and Finance. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>George Tan 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>The latest revised data challenge the popular narrative about a population renaissance for regional Australia and for states and territories that were losing residents to other parts of the country.Lisa Denny, Adjunct Associate Professor, Institute for Social Change, University of TasmaniaAndrew Taylor, Associate Professor, Northern Institute, Charles Darwin UniversityGeorge Tan, Lecturer in Population Geography, University of AdelaideLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2058462023-06-08T02:57:52Z2023-06-08T02:57:52ZHow the Tasmanian AFL team turned into a political football<p>Some say we should keep sport out of politics. But that seems to be almost impossible in the case of Tasmania. </p>
<p>The announcement that Tasmania will get its own AFL team has become the centrepiece of one of the fiercest political battles the state has seen – and it’s about a stadium.</p>
<p>As part of the deal to launch the 19th AFL team, the league required Tasmania to build a fresh stadium, which was agreed to be a new precinct on the Hobart waterfront.</p>
<p>Premier Jeremy Rockliff has pledged $375 million from the state government to build the precinct, about half the $715 million price tag. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese also pledged $240 million from the federal government, plus $65 million for an upgrade to Launceston’s York Park. And the AFL has promised $15 million towards the stadium.</p>
<p>But Rockliff has come under fire from all directions for the cost of the new precinct. It has led to him losing his majority in the lower house after <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/may/12/resignations-over-hobart-stadium-plunge-tasmanian-government-into-minority">two Liberals resigned over the stadium</a>, pushing the nation’s only Liberal state government into minority.</p>
<p>Tasmanian Labor has argued the government shouldn’t be committing to the stadium <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-29/pm-announces-funding-for-tas-afl-stadium-at-macquarie-point/102209420">amid a cost-of-living crisis</a>, although the party still supports a Tasmanian AFL team.</p>
<p>The Tasmanian Greens also <a href="https://tasmps.greens.org.au/media-release/greens-withdraw-tripartisan-afl-bid">withdrew their support</a> for the team based on the costs of the stadium, while the disaffected Liberals say they <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-05-12/tasmania-liberal-government-in-minority-mps-defect-over-stadium/102333446">want more transparency</a>.</p>
<p>There have also been <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/thousands-rally-to-denounce-715m-tasmania-afl-stadium-20230513-p5d857.html">public protests</a> on the grounds that Tasmania shouldn’t be building a new stadium precinct when it has a health and housing crisis, with some people being forced to <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-02/hobart-rivulet-homeless-camp/102040248">live in makeshift campsites in Hobart</a>.</p>
<p>While it was hoped that having an AFL team at last would bring Tasmanians together, some believe it has <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-04/tasmania-afl-team-dream-is-now-a-political-nightmare/102396576">split them politically</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/devils-in-the-detail-an-economist-argues-the-case-for-a-tasmanian-afl-team-and-new-stadium-204678">Devils in the detail: an economist argues the case for a Tasmanian AFL team – and new stadium</a>
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<h2>Stadium economics</h2>
<p>Despite the understandable concerns about health and housing, some misconceptions have formed about the economics of the Tasmanian team.</p>
<p>Tasmanian government research suggests there will be knock-on benefits from the new precinct in terms of extra economic activity, estimated at <a href="https://www.stategrowth.tas.gov.au/Transport_and_Infrastructure/major_stadiums/Tasmanias_new_Arts,_Entertainment_and_Sports_Precinct,_Macquarie_Point,_Hobart">$2.2 billion over 25 years</a>, including 6,720 new jobs and a potential boost to tourism of around 123,500 international and interstate visitors per year, plus visitors from elsewhere in Tasmania coming to watch the games in Hobart.</p>
<p>Queensland is getting <a href="https://www.afr.com/companies/infrastructure/queensland-confident-canberra-will-share-any-olympic-budget-blowout-20230324-p5cuyb">$3.4 billion from the federal government</a> for stadium upgrades for the Gabba and other facilities for the Brisbane Olympics 2032. So the Commonwealth’s $240 million for Tasmania is relatively cheap. This is especially the case when you consider this sets up the Tasmanian team for the rest of the century, while the Olympics and Paralympics are held across just four weeks.</p>
<p>What’s more, the precinct in Tasmania is cheaper than recent stadiums built in the United States for NFL teams and in Europe for soccer, where price tags routinely <a href="https://www.stadiumsofprofootball.com/stadiums/us-bank-stadium/">top A$1.5 billion</a> and are often partially financed by local and state governments. </p>
<p>In some ways, building a new stadium precinct is like building a new bridge. Because of the huge initial outlay, it can only be done by government, as the returns are public and cannot be totally captured commercially. No private-sector funder could make a return on it, and nor could a sporting organisation. Like the AFL itself, it’s a public good.</p>
<p>Having a team in Tasmania is a significant social investment. In assessing the value of the new precinct, we should look at its creative and community potential in addition to the excitement of the Tasmanian team in the AFL. </p>
<p>Yet the political stakes are undeniably high. If the stadium precinct is blocked by the parliament, Tasmania will lose its AFL team – likely forever. And the stadium’s opponents, whether it be the Greens, the independents or Tasmanian Labor, will likely get the blame.</p>
<p>The death of the Tasmanian team would then be worn like a crown of thorns for at least a generation or two.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205846/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Harcourt 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>While it was hoped that having an AFL team at last would bring Tasmanians together, some believe it has split them politically.Tim Harcourt, Industry Professor and Chief Economist, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2068602023-06-08T02:23:38Z2023-06-08T02:23:38ZHas time been called on the native forest logging deals of the 1990s? Here’s what the Albanese government can do<p>Victoria recently announced an <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/may/23/end-of-native-logging-in-victoria-a-monumental-win-for-forests-say-conservationists">end to native forest logging</a> in December 2023, six years earlier than <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/nov/07/native-forest-logging-to-be-phased-out-by-2030-as-victoria-plans-timber-transition">previously announced</a>. Western Australia is <a href="https://www.wa.gov.au/government/announcements/native-forestry-transition-plan">ending it from January 2024</a>. The Greens and independent federal MPs are now calling on the Albanese government to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/01/pressure-grows-on-albanese-government-to-end-native-forest-logging">end native forest logging nationally</a>.</p>
<p>These developments are already destabilising the federal government’s environmental law reform agenda, and could even derail it.</p>
<p>While the states regulate forestry, the Commonwealth does have constitutional powers to intervene. But it could then face legal claims for compensation, as well as fierce opposition from the logging industry and unions. </p>
<p>Ultimately, though, the government’s hand may be forced.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/after-the-chainsaws-the-quiet-victorias-rapid-exit-from-native-forest-logging-is-welcome-and-long-overdue-206181">After the chainsaws, the quiet: Victoria's rapid exit from native forest logging is welcome – and long overdue</a>
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<h2>Decades of disputes coming to a head</h2>
<p>The disputes over forestry in Australia go back to the early 1970s. That was when environmentalists began fighting the clearing of native forests to make way for federally funded softwood plantations and the exporting of native timber woodchips. </p>
<p>Later forest battles in the 1980s, including over World Heritage nominations, brought forests such as the <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-26/wet-tropics-world-heritage-listing-30-years-on/10634460">Daintree</a> in Queensland and the <a href="https://pmtranscripts.pmc.gov.au/release/transcript-7442">Lemonthyme</a> in Tasmania to public attention.</p>
<p>Prime Minister Paul Keating struck a deal with the premiers in 1992. All governments committed to the <a href="https://www.agriculture.gov.au/agriculture-land/forestry/policies/forest-policy-statement">National Forest Policy Statement</a> and to <a href="https://www.agriculture.gov.au/agriculture-land/forestry/policies/rfa">regional forest agreements</a> (RFAs). They agreed to cooperate to conserve the forest environment while encouraging the forestry industry.</p>
<p>Later that decade the Howard government negotiated ten regional agreements, covering forests in New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia and Tasmania. Queensland negotiated its own RFA-like deal for its south-east region. Logging there is <a href="https://www.daf.qld.gov.au/business-priorities/forestry/native-timber-action-plan/state-owned-native-timber">due to end from 2024</a>.</p>
<p>Each agreement would last 20 years, but be reviewed every five. These agreements were exempt from the Commonwealth’s shiny new Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act. The rationale was that the agreements had already gone through their own environmental approval process. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-should-happen-to-native-forests-when-logging-ends-ask-victorias-first-peoples-206412">What should happen to native forests when logging ends? Ask Victoria's First Peoples</a>
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<h2>Agreements face fresh scrutiny</h2>
<p>Fast-forward to 2023. The regional forest agreements have all been reviewed and rolled over for up to 20 years. </p>
<p>All is not sweetness and light, however. The agreements have been heavily criticised for <a href="https://epbcactreview.environment.gov.au">setting a lower environmental bar than the EPBC Act</a>, made worse by being poorly implemented and enforced. </p>
<p>In 2021, when the WA government <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/sep/08/western-australia-to-ban-native-forest-logging-from-2024-in-move-that-blindsides-industry">announced</a> it would end native forest logging, it cited environmental reasons and declining timber yields. </p>
<p>Then, last November, Victorian environment groups managed to <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-12/endangered-gliders-offered-more-protection-court-orders/101647022">win two Supreme Court cases</a>. Essentially, they won on the ground that the state-owned VicForests was not following ecological protocols put in place for regional forest agreements. </p>
<p>This brought logging to a temporary halt, now made permanent after this year. No doubt the extra cost of complying with the protocols was a major factor in the decision.</p>
<p>Federally, a review in 2020 of the EPBC Act by Professor Graeme Samuel <a href="https://epbcactreview.environment.gov.au">recommended</a> regional forest agreements be subject to <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/BriefingBook47p/ReformAustraliasEnvironmentalLaw">proposed new National Environmental Standards</a>. These standards are now the centrepiece of the Albanese government’s <a href="https://www.dcceew.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/nature-positive-plan.pdf">Nature Positive Plan</a> reforms. </p>
<p>The government committed to “work towards” bringing the forestry agreements under the new standards. But it has yet to spell out the detail. The future of forestry in NSW, Tasmania and Queensland remains unclear.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/native-forest-protections-are-deeply-flawed-yet-may-be-in-place-for-another-20-years-93004">Native forest protections are deeply flawed, yet may be in place for another 20 years</a>
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<h2>What could the feds do?</h2>
<p>What can the Commonwealth actually do? Can it at least raise the environmental bar for native forest logging to the same standard as for everything else, if not more? </p>
<p>The states directly regulate forestry and are in the forestry business themselves. The easiest way to raise environmental standards then would be for the remaining forestry states to take their own action. However, the prospects of that happening are unclear. </p>
<p>A 2022 plan by the then Perrotet government to end native forest logging in NSW was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/25/perrottet-government-plan-to-end-native-logging-in-nsw-was-blocked-by-nationals">blocked</a> by the junior Coalition partner, the Nationals. Queensland’s <a href="https://www.daf.qld.gov.au/business-priorities/forestry/native-timber-action-plan/native-timber-advisory-panel">review</a> of its native timber industry remains ongoing after two years. Tasmania <a href="https://www.stategrowth.tas.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/89631/Forestry.pdf">remains committed</a> to its forest industry.</p>
<p>Even though the Commonwealth has preferred to pull strings from a distance, through national policy and regional forest agreements, it does have constitutional powers up its sleeve. These powers include the capacity to protect biodiversity directly in implementing the international <a href="https://www.cbd.int/convention/text/">Convention on Biological Diversity</a>. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/logged-native-forests-mostly-end-up-in-landfill-not-in-buildings-and-furniture-115054">Logged native forests mostly end up in landfill, not in buildings and furniture</a>
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<h2>Problems are less a matter of powers than politics</h2>
<p>The problems lie more on the policy side. With the non-Victorian forestry agreements renewed for 20 years, the industry will cry foul if new environmental standards take more forest acreage out of play. They also have a card up their sleeves. The agreements provide for the Commonwealth to pay compensation if it passes legislation to increase environmental protection in the forests.</p>
<p>On the other hand, a standard for forests that made little difference to current forestry, or which took effect only after agreements expire, would be unacceptable to environment groups.</p>
<p>Then there is the crossbench push to override regional forest agreements and ban native forest logging across the nation. Given its liking for small-target approaches, it’s hard to see the Albanese government coming at something with such sweeping implications, including for union members, despite <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/the-three-things-stopping-tanya-plibersek-from-protecting-native-forests-20230524-p5davj.html">agitation</a> from Labor’s own environment ginger group, <a href="https://www.lean.net.au">LEAN</a>. </p>
<p>Then again, the government might not have much choice.</p>
<p>In Victoria, the courts forced the state government’s hand. For the Albanese government, it may be the Senate, where the crossbench has the power to hold the government’s entire environmental reform package to ransom.</p>
<p>It seems time is being called on the forest settlement of the 1990s. The government could use the time between now and next year’s Senate debate on its reform package to work up a new approach. It could be built around forest restoration, conservation and Indigenous empowerment, as experts are <a href="https://theconversation.com/we-cant-just-walk-away-after-the-logging-stops-in-victorias-native-forests-heres-what-must-happen-next-206596">proposing</a>.</p>
<p>If it doesn’t, we are headed for quite a stoush.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/we-cant-just-walk-away-after-the-logging-stops-in-victorias-native-forests-heres-what-must-happen-next-206596">We can't just walk away after the logging stops in Victoria's native forests. Here's what must happen next</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206860/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Burnett 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>Two states will soon end logging of native forests, but what about the other states? The federal government has powers to intervene but also faces obstacles to nationwide protection of these forests.Peter Burnett, Honorary Associate Professor, ANU College of Law, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2068562023-06-01T04:13:48Z2023-06-01T04:13:48ZPolitics with Michelle Grattan: Liberal MP Bridget Archer urges other moderates to speak up as she presses for party change<p>The Coalition’s decision to oppose the Voice to Parliament has put its moderate members in a jam. Some moderates are active yes advocates, while others are trying to keep low profiles.</p>
<p>Bridget Archer, the outspoken Liberal MP for Bass, is a vocal yes campaigner. More generally, she is also taking a lead in urging the Liberal party to undertake root-and-branch reform. </p>
<p>Archer is pushing for extensive change in a party that is electorally on the ropes, out of office everywhere except her home state of Tasmania. </p>
<p>Since entering parliament in 2019, Archer has crossed the floor on 27 occasion to vote against her party. She admits there are those colleagues who avoid her, but says her decisions are always based on what is in the best interest of her community, and argues the strength of the Liberal Party historically has been for members to be able to sometimes disagree and to do so respectfully. </p>
<p>Her independent stance on a range of issues has brought varied feedback from her local community. “It’s mixed, but generally positive. If I get negative feedback, it is sometimes from Liberal Party members or conservative voters that say ‘I think that you should toe the line’ – there’s this idea that if you have a divergent view, that you’re not a team player.”</p>
<p>But Archer believes “it is possible to be part of a team and to have differences of opinion (sometimes), and that it’s my job to represent to the best of my ability everybody in the electorate, even the people who don’t or didn’t vote for you, I guess.”</p>
<p>In a recent Good Weekend profile Archer called for a “revolution” in the Liberal Party, claiming it is currently “unelectable”. She tells the podcast: “I think this was again borne out in the 2022 election with the rise of community independents […] where people, particularly in some of those metropolitan seats, are not feeling that the party is representing their views anymore […] In regional areas that is not necessarily the case. And we’ve seen with the Coalition, of course, the Nationals holding the seats that they had.</p>
<p>"The great challenge for us is to get back to what I think was the strength of the Liberal Party at one stage, which is the ability to speak across the country, to talk to middle Australia.</p>
<p>"And I think that we’ve lost our way in that.”</p>
<p>Archer also argues Liberal Party values need to shift with the times, particularly its ideology on “the family and home ownership”.</p>
<p>“We have historically talked a lot about home ownership, but we don’t focus so much on rental affordability. […] It’s front of mind for many people in those metropolitan areas and for younger people as well, who have also deserted us in droves.”</p>
<p>The moderates in the party were decimated at the 2022 election. It has left the moderate faction in tatters, and Archer often finds herself isolated when she speaks out against the party line. </p>
<p>“I think it’s a bit frustrating for me sometimes that I feel that I know that there are other people who share my views on some things, but they don’t speak up, which I think sometimes does leave me sort of hanging there as this rogue person when I know that that’s not necessarily the case.”</p>
<p>“I also think it really goes to the heart of some of the reasons why those colleagues did lose their seats at the last election and why we have seen a rise of the teals. In those seats, in many cases people were wanting to vote for Liberals, and they were looking around [to] have a reason to vote for Liberals and they were coming up empty handed.”</p>
<p>Asked if she thought the party was “walking off a cliff,” she doesn’t hesitate. </p>
<p>“Oh, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206856/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>Archer is pushing for extensive reform in a party that is electorally on the ropes and out of office everywhere except her home state of Tasmania.Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2049202023-05-05T01:03:55Z2023-05-05T01:03:55ZBus rapid transit can avoid traffic chaos for the AFL’s new stadium and transform Hobart – and other cities too<p>Following a decision to <a href="https://theconversation.com/devils-in-the-detail-an-economist-argues-the-case-for-a-tasmanian-afl-team-and-new-stadium-204678">fund an AFL stadium</a> on Hobart’s waterfront, the <a href="https://www.premier.tas.gov.au/site_resources_2015/additional_releases/ferries-and-rapid-bus-rapid-transit-to-get-people-to-and-from-macquarie-point">Tasmanian premier announced</a> plans for a new bus rapid transit (BRT) system and ferry services to avoid traffic congestion. These plans are linked to Hobart’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/new-name-new-look-for-latest-national-urban-policy-but-same-old-problem-59084">City Deal</a> and promise to reinvigorate the city’s ailing public transport system.</p>
<p>Hobart once led transport innovation. It was the first city in the southern hemisphere with an electric <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-21/curious-what-happened-to-hobart-trams/9150104">tram system</a>. At its peak, these trams handled 40% of journeys in the city. </p>
<p>Since the 1970s, though, following the closure of Hobart’s last passenger rail service, the city’s public transport network has suffered from dwindling investment and patronage (now under 5% of journeys). Could bus rapid transit help combat the city’s notorious <a href="https://theconversation.com/growth-pains-and-gridlock-come-to-hobart-and-building-more-roads-is-not-the-best-way-out-92258">car dependence</a>?</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/growth-pains-and-gridlock-come-to-hobart-and-building-more-roads-is-not-the-best-way-out-92258">Growth pains and gridlock come to Hobart, and building more roads is not the best way out</a>
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<h2>What is bus rapid transit?</h2>
<p>Bus rapid transit systems typically run buses along dedicated corridors, taking the bus out of traffic. They can be highly effective people-movers. Many such systems have achieved passenger capacities comparable to light rail. </p>
<p>For example, bus rapid transit systems move more than <a href="https://use.metropolis.org/case-studies/transmilenio-bus-rapid-transit-system">40,000 passengers per hour</a> in Bogota, Colombia, and around 20,000 in Brisbane. The vehicles are no ordinary bus – they can carry nearly 200 passengers in comfort. </p>
<p>Modern <a href="https://www.urban-transport-magazine.com/en/56-ordered-electric-bi-articulated-buses-for-greater-paris/">articulated electric BRT vehicles</a> provide a similar ride experience to light rail. And bus rapid transit stations have the look and feel of rail stations.</p>
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<img alt="A rapid bus transit station next to lanes of traffic in Bogota, Colombia" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524306/original/file-20230504-22-8hro6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524306/original/file-20230504-22-8hro6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524306/original/file-20230504-22-8hro6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524306/original/file-20230504-22-8hro6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524306/original/file-20230504-22-8hro6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524306/original/file-20230504-22-8hro6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524306/original/file-20230504-22-8hro6g.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">The rapid bus transit system in Bogota, Colombia, can carry 40,000 passengers an hour.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
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<h2>Is this system a better choice than light rail?</h2>
<p>A key question some Hobart residents are asking is why the Tasmanian government has chosen bus over light rail. A major reason is the cost-effectiveness of this sort of bus system. A state government-funded <a href="https://www.hobartcitydeal.com.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/271707/Northern_Suburbs_Transit_Corridor_Transport_Mode_Study_Final_Summary_Report.PDF">report</a> estimated the construction cost of Hobart’s rapid bus transit system at A$445 million, versus $596 million for light rail. </p>
<p>Recognising that these are pre-COVID numbers, costs will now be much higher. For example, while Canberra’s light rail cost $675 million, the cost of stage 3 of the Gold Coast light rail has blown out from around $600 million to $1.2 billion. </p>
<p>Bus rapid transit vehicles also cost less, but their passenger capacities are comparable to light rail vehicles. The Canberra light rail vehicle can carry 207 passengers. Brisbane’s Metro rapid transit bus will have a capacity of 150-180 people.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-cities-planning-to-spend-billions-on-light-rail-should-look-again-at-what-buses-can-do-156844">Why cities planning to spend billions on light rail should look again at what buses can do</a>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The benefits of bus rapid transit for fighting congestion.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>How do we ensure it works in Hobart?</h2>
<p>Research has identified <a href="https://www.infrastructureaustralia.gov.au/publications/report-research-perspectives-merits-light-rail-vs-bus-prof-graham-currie">several important principles</a> that need to be met if the new Hobart bus system is to be effective. These include reliable, high-frequency services, effective station design, quality station amenities, ride quality and passenger experience.</p>
<p>Investing in quality infrastructure will be essential. As Brisbane’s busway has shown, it is vital that buses coming into a station don’t clog up the corridor when passengers alight. Station designs must allow room for multiple vehicles, with by-pass lanes around stations to allow express services to continue unimpeded. </p>
<p>The vehicles must have multiple doors so passengers can get on and off quickly.</p>
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<p>As <a href="https://australasiantransportresearchforum.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/2013_currie_burke.pdf">research on Melbourne’s tram system shows</a>, if public transport gets stuck in traffic, patronage will suffer. That’s because the system is then slower (average 15 kilometres per hour) than taking a car and much more unreliable. </p>
<p>For this reason, the new bus rapid transit system must have its own dedicated corridor and not share intersections with other traffic – or else traffic lights must give priority to the buses. <a href="https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1282&context=jpt">Research shows</a> this will enable the vehicle to increase its average speed to more than 50km/h (maximum 80km/h). Because the Gold Coast light rail does not have a dedicated corridor for parts of its route, its average operating speed is only 27km/h.</p>
<p>The passenger experience will also be crucial for the system’s success. <a href="https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1286&context=mti_publications">Research shows</a> passengers have a low tolerance for waiting around and having to transfer between routes and to other transit modes (such as ferries). </p>
<p>Experience elsewhere also <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.retrec.2014.09.012">shows</a> it is important that passengers get tickets at the station, not on the bus. A ticketing system that allows seamless transfer between bus rapid transit, regular buses and ferries will be vital to maximise efficient travel. It’s also important to design stations and vehicles to provide universal access, so everyone can use the new system.</p>
<h2>Rapid bus transit has broader impacts too</h2>
<p>The impacts of bus rapid transit on a city are broader than transport. It has important <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1077291X22003393">land-use planning benefits</a>. A well-designed system can increase housing densities and thus improve housing options, including affordable housing, along the corridor. </p>
<p>A bus rapid transit network can also connect people with jobs, education, healthcare, childcare and recreation opportunities. Councils along the new transit corridor in Hobart will need to protect adjoining land from speculative investment to <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01441647.2019.1649316">manage gentrification</a>. They will also have to develop sound design guidelines to steer desirable types of development, such as medium-density neighbourhoods – the “<a href="https://theconversation.com/becoming-more-urban-attitudes-to-medium-density-living-are-changing-in-sydney-and-melbourne-84693">missing middle</a>”.</p>
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<p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/people-want-and-need-more-housing-choice-its-about-time-governments-stood-up-to-deliver-it-122390">People want and need more housing choice. It's about time governments stood up to deliver it</a>
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<p>Bus rapid transit is <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01441647.2017.1301594">emerging as a very viable way</a> to deliver quality transport solutions for cities. It’s especially suitable for those with limited resources, such as smaller cities and those in the developing world. While Hobart’s bus rapid transit is explicitly linked to the new stadium, cities like <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9906.2012.00626.x">Barcelona</a> have shown such urban revitalisation investment can have transformative benefits for cities.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204920/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jason Byrne receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is an ARC Future Fellow, working on green-space and thermal inequity. Jason is also a recipient of a Natural Disaster Risk Reduction Grant, assessing exposure to extreme heat events in Launceston and Hobart, Tasmania.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Graham Currie receives funding from the Australian Research Council. The chair of public transport is funded by Government and transport authorities in Victoria to provide independent advice on improving public transport systems. He is also a researcher and advisor on transport systems development in every State and Territory of Australia and many overseas authorities.</span></em></p>Bus rapid transit is more than a way to get thousands of people to the game. Used in cities globally as an alternative to light rail, it can be a cost-effective way to transform cities for the better.Jason Byrne, Professor of Human Geography and Planning, University of TasmaniaGraham Currie, Professor of Public Transport, Director Public Transport Research Group, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2048062023-05-03T06:10:27Z2023-05-03T06:10:27ZJob creation isn’t always a good thing. Hobart’s new stadium can only make Tasmania’s housing crisis worse<p>The Albanese government’s announcement it will provide $240 million for a new stadium in Hobart has not had the favourable reception it might have hoped. </p>
<p>Those concerned with the proper operation of the federal system can point out that this kind of funding is the concern of state and local governments.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524029/original/file-20230503-16-c6ozsh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Anthony Albanese's Twitter account spruiks the federal funding for Tasmania." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524029/original/file-20230503-16-c6ozsh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524029/original/file-20230503-16-c6ozsh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1027&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524029/original/file-20230503-16-c6ozsh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1027&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524029/original/file-20230503-16-c6ozsh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1027&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524029/original/file-20230503-16-c6ozsh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1291&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524029/original/file-20230503-16-c6ozsh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1291&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524029/original/file-20230503-16-c6ozsh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1291&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"><span class="source">Twitter</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>Concerns about process are reinforced by the sorry history of “<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-sports-rorts-affair-shows-the-need-for-a-proper-federal-icac-with-teeth-122800">sports rorts</a>”. Both Labor and Liberal federal governments have funded sports facilities to curry political favour. </p>
<p>To be fair, it is hard to see this project as targeted at a particular seat, but presumably the aim was to win support in Tasmania as a whole. Even compared with the dubious economics of sporting events such as the Formula 1 Grand Prix and the Olympic Games, stadium developments stand out as boondoggles. </p>
<p>Extensive research in the US is <a href="https://econreview.berkeley.edu/the-economics-of-sports-stadiums-does-public-financing-of-sports-stadiums-create-local-economic-growth-or-just-help-billionaires-improve-their-profit-margin/">summarised by the conclusion</a> that over the past 30 years, building sports stadiums has been a profitable undertaking for large sports teams, at the expense of the general public. </p>
<p>While there are some short-term benefits, the inescapable truth is the economic benefit of these projects for local communities is minimal. Indeed, they can be an obstacle to real development.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/devils-in-the-detail-an-economist-argues-the-case-for-a-tasmanian-afl-team-and-new-stadium-204678">Devils in the detail: an economist argues the case for a Tasmanian AFL team – and new stadium</a>
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<h2>Making the business case</h2>
<p>The economic case for the Hobart Stadium is startlingly thin. The only clear-cut benefit attributable to the project is that the new Tasmanian AFL team will play its home games there, replacing the small number of AFL rounds played at Hobart’s existing stadium, Bellerive Oval. </p>
<p>In 2022, <a href="https://www.afltas.com.au/2021/12/09/2022-afl-fixture-announced-with-eight-games-in-tasmania/">eight AFL men’s games</a> were played in Tasmania – four at Bellerive, four at UTAS Stadium in Launceston. A local AFL team will play 11 home games.</p>
<p>The state government’s business case estimates that 5,000 interstate visitors will attend seven matches a year. It seems safe to assume some will fly in and out on the same day, and that few will stay more than two nights. </p>
<p>If we allow an average of one night per visitor, that’s 35,000 bed nights, or an increase of about 0.3% in current visitor nights for Tasmania (about <a href="https://www.tourismtasmania.com.au/research/visitors/">11 million a year</a> in 2022). </p>
<p>Against that must be offset the Tasmanians who will travel to Melbourne and elsewhere for away games.</p>
<h2>What about housing?</h2>
<p>All of this is par for the course for projects of this kind. The big problem for both state and federal governments is that it comes at a time of a housing crisis.</p>
<p>The federal government’s <a href="https://www.pm.gov.au/media/macquarie-point-be-revitalised-government-co-investments">press release</a> contains some vague references to housing developments associated with the project. But this is little more than the sort of PR spin we’d expect from, for example, the proponents of a new coal mine.</p>
<p>The numbers here are quite startling. The centrepiece of federal Labor’s election platform was a <a href="https://theconversation.com/labors-proposed-10-billion-social-housing-fund-isnt-big-as-it-seems-but-it-could-work-174406">$10 billion fund for housing</a>, providing $500 million year to support social housing. (Labor’s bill is currently held up in the Senate, with the Coalition opposed, and the Greens demanding stronger action.)</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/labors-proposed-10-billion-social-housing-fund-isnt-big-as-it-seems-but-it-could-work-174406">Labor's proposed $10 billion social housing fund isn't big as it seems, but it could work</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>If this $500 million were allocated proportionally by population, Tasmania would get about $10 million a year. The Commonwealth’s $240 million contribution to the stadium would cover this expenditure until nearly 2050. The total public outlay on the Hobart stadium (with $375 million from the Tasmanian government) would cover most of this century. </p>
<p>At a time of extreme fiscal stringency, such a massive outlay on a luxury project is very hard to justify.</p>
<h2>What about job creation?</h2>
<p>No serious benefit-cost analysis of this project has been made. Instead, supporters have relied on announcing the number of jobs it will create – <a href="https://theconversation.com/devils-in-the-detail-an-economist-argues-the-case-for-a-tasmanian-afl-team-and-new-stadium-204678">4,200 jobs during construction</a> and 950 jobs when operational.</p>
<p>Such numbers are questionable. To make them bigger, governments typically count on the “multiplier effect” of work created for suppliers of various kinds. This is a long-standing tradition taken to new heights by the Albanese government. The announcement of the AUKUS submarine project, for example, was <a href="https://theconversation.com/18-million-a-job-the-aukus-subs-plan-will-cost-australia-way-more-than-that-202026">all about the jobs</a> it would create. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/18-million-a-job-the-aukus-subs-plan-will-cost-australia-way-more-than-that-202026">$18 million a job? The AUKUS subs plan will cost Australia way more than that</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>But wait a moment. At the same time as trumpeting the creation of jobs for construction workers, the government is seeking to solve Australia’s “skills shortage” arising from historically low unemployment.</p>
<p>Tasmania’s unemployment rate is 3.8%, marginally above the average for Australia, but lower than at any time since the economic crisis of the 1970s. This low rate represents a situation of full employment, where numbers of unemployed workers and job vacancies are roughly equal.</p>
<p>In such circumstances, creating a job means luring a worker away from another. If the new job is on a major construction project, that means one less worker available to build housing. </p>
<p>As I argue in my book, <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691154947/economics-in-two-lessons">Economics in Two Lessons</a> (Princeton University Press, 2019), the true costs of wasteful public expenditure are opportunity costs – the alternatives that are foregone. </p>
<p>Multiplier effects make opportunity costs even larger. The project diverts the workers employed directly, and takes all kinds of resources that could otherwise be used for socially useful purposes. This diversion of necessary resources is the truly pernicious aspect of publicly subsidising projects like the AFL stadium. </p>
<p>Tasmania, like the rest of Australia, does not need government action to create any more jobs, particularly in construction. It needs to ensure skilled workers are employed where they can be most valuable.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204806/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Quiggin 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>Most publicly funded stadium projects are boondoggles. The Hobart AFL stadium is worse than that.John Quiggin, Professor, School of Economics, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2046782023-05-01T05:53:21Z2023-05-01T05:53:21ZDevils in the detail: an economist argues the case for a Tasmanian AFL team – and new stadium<p>The Australian Football League’s announcement of a Tasmanian football club – likely to be called the Tassie Devils – is now a formality, after the federal goverment’s pledge of A$240 million to a new stadium and precinct in Hobart. </p>
<p>A new stadium is the last of <a href="https://www.afl.com.au/news/913838/afl-welcomes-federal-government-funding-announcement-for-macquarie-point">11 AFL requirements</a> for a Tasmanian club to become the league’s 19th team, joining ten Victorian clubs and two each from the other four states.</p>
<p>The view was that UTAS stadium in Launceston could be upgraded but that upgrading Hobart’s Bellerive Oval (known as Blundstone Arena) made less sense than a new facility in Hobart’s CBD, on Macquarie Point, north of Hobart’s Constitution Dock. </p>
<p>The Tasmanian government wants the stadium, which it will own, to anchor a new “arts and sports” precinct. It will contribute $375 million of the estimated cost <a href="https://www.premier.tas.gov.au/site_resources_2015/additional_releases/macquarie-point-to-be-revitalised-with-government-co-investments">of $715 million</a>. Another $85 million will come from loans against future land sales and leases in the revitalised area. The AFL will contribute the final $15 million. There will also be $10 million to build a headquarters for the new club. </p>
<p>This is part of <a href="https://www.afltas.com.au/2023/02/28/open-letter-to-tasmanian-football-community/">$360 million the AFL will spend</a> on AFL in Tasmania over the next ten years, with $209 million to subsidise the new club and $120 million to support grassroots participation and the development of talented players. </p>
<p>Compared with the <a href="https://inqld.com.au/news/2023/02/17/gold-medal-deal-starting-gun-fires-on-7-billion-olympic-building-bonanza/">$3.4 billion</a> the federal government has committed to buildings for the 2032 Brisbane Olympics, its contribution to the Hobart arena is relatively minor. </p>
<p>But critics say the stadiums in Hobart and Launceston are adequate, and that the money would be better spent on public housing – with rents having <a href="https://wwos.nine.com.au/afl/news-2023-anthony-albanese-hit-with-protests-over-240-million-tasmania-stadium-package/d5dc833b-3f2c-472f-8136-8ac6ce0abd6a?">risen 45%</a> in the past five years. As novelist Richard Flanagan <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/sport/afl/as-albanese-backs-an-afl-stadium-for-hobart-tasmanians-are-living-in-tents-20230428-p5d3yo.html">put it</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Tasmania doesn’t have a stadium problem. It has a housing and homelessness problem. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The problem with this argument is that economies are dynamic, not static. Was it also wrong to have built the Sydney Opera House because of housing issues in the late 1960s? </p>
<p>Without an AFL team and new stadium, Tasmania is likely to still have a homeless problem. In fact, the problem may even be worse without economic activity the new team and stadium will bring. </p>
<h2>Economic rationale</h2>
<p>The rationale for the federal and state governments is that a new stadium is a precondition for a Tasmanian AFL, and that both together will generate $2.2 billion in economic activity over 25 years <a href="https://www.stategrowth.tas.gov.au/Transport_and_Infrastructure/major_stadiums/Tasmanias_new_Arts,_Entertainment_and_Sports_Precinct,_Macquarie_Point,_Hobart">according to Tasmanian government</a>.</p>
<p>Governments favour infrastructure projects because construction has a high “<a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/abs@.nsf/94713ad445ff1425ca25682000192af2/ed6220072793785eca256b360003228f!OpenDocument">multiplier effect</a>” – generating flow-on benefits. The Tasmanian government estimates construction will generate $300 million in economic activity and 4,200 jobs. It expects the stadium when operational to sustain 950 jobs and generate $85 million in economic activity a year.</p>
<p>This will depend on hosting major events along with AFL fixtures. The Tasmanian government’s <a href="https://www.stategrowth.tas.gov.au/Transport_and_Infrastructure/major_stadiums/Tasmanias_new_Arts,_Entertainment_and_Sports_Precinct,_Macquarie_Point,_Hobart">business case</a> anticipates the venue hosting at least 44 events a year, attracting 123,500 overseas and interstate visitors.</p>
<p>These expectations will be buoyed by the success of the AFL’s “<a href="https://www.afl.com.au/news/906620/-unbelievable-success-sa-secures-gather-round-until-2026">Gather Round</a>” in mid-April, in which all AFL games were played in South Australia. A reported $15 million state government contribution generated an estimated $85 million in economic benefit from <a href="https://www.afl.com.au/news/906620/-unbelievable-success-sa-secures-gather-round-until-2026">60,000 interstate fans</a>. </p>
<h2>The case for a Tassie team</h2>
<p>In assessing this decision, we can’t just consider the business case for the stadium. It’s about the case for a Tasmanian AFL club.</p>
<p>Tasmania may only have a total population of <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/snapshot-tas-2021">558,000</a> (with <a href="https://abs.gov.au/census/find-census-data/quickstats/2021/601">247,000 in Hobart</a>) but its claim to have an AFL team is as good as the Gold Coast (home of the Suns, population <a href="https://abs.gov.au/census/find-census-data/quickstats/2021/309">640,000</a>) or even Geelong (home of the Cats, population <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/census/find-census-data/quickstats/2016/203">about 280,000</a>). Townsville, where the North Queensland Cowboys play in the NRL, has <a href="https://abs.gov.au/census/find-census-data/quickstats/2021/318">235,000</a> people.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/loud-obnoxious-and-at-times-racist-the-sordid-history-of-afl-barracking-119080">Loud, obnoxious and at times racist: the sordid history of AFL barracking</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>According to James Coventry’s 2018 book <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9780733338441/footballistics/">Footballistics: How the Data Analytics Revolution is Uncovering Footy’s Hidden Truths</a>, no other state has a higher percentage of AFL fans. In WA it’s 62.3%, in South Australia
75.7%. In Victoria, 70.2%. In Tasmania it’s 79%.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Google Trends result for 'AFL', 12 months to April 2023." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523378/original/file-20230428-20-8aoaty.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523378/original/file-20230428-20-8aoaty.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=231&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523378/original/file-20230428-20-8aoaty.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=231&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523378/original/file-20230428-20-8aoaty.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=231&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523378/original/file-20230428-20-8aoaty.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=290&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523378/original/file-20230428-20-8aoaty.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=290&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523378/original/file-20230428-20-8aoaty.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=290&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Google Trends result for ‘AFL’, 12 months to April 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>Aussie Rules is really the only game in town on the Apple Isle, writes Hunter Fujak his 2021 book <a href="https://www.fairplaypublishing.com.au/products/code-wars-the-battle-for-fans-dollars-and-survival">Code Wars</a>, which explores the nation’s “<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-barassi-line-a-globally-unique-divider-splitting-australias-footy-fans-185132">Barassi Line</a>”
split between AFL and National Rugby League. The percentage of Tasmanians that only follow the AFL is 35%, compared to the national average of 19%. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-barassi-line-a-globally-unique-divider-splitting-australias-footy-fans-185132">The Barassi Line: a globally unique divider splitting Australia's footy fans</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>More than the bottom line</h2>
<p>Yes, the AFL is a multimillion-dollar business, but it’s also a community organisation, managing a public good. As the Richmond president Peggy O’Neal put it in Coventry’s book:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s sort of a blend of strict financial business and not for profit […] If we wanted just to make money, our model would be quite different.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This explain the AFL’s preparedness to commit $345 million over the next decade to support the new club, as well as grassroots football across Tasmania, to ensure local community footy doesn’t lose out from the resources and energy being put into the AFL team. This will include building 70 new ovals across the state, and funding football academies in Hobart, Launceston and Penguin (west of Devonport on the north coast). </p>
<p>The AFL has subsidised the AFLW for similar reasons. It’s about more than just the bottom line. </p>
<p>Tasmania has waited far too long for a team of its own. The entry of the Tassie Devils into the AFL can be justified on economic, social and (most of all) footy grounds.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204678/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Harcourt 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>The cost of a Tasmanian team joining the AFL can be justified on economic and social grounds.Tim Harcourt, Industry Professor and Chief Economist, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2027222023-03-28T03:47:08Z2023-03-28T03:47:08ZPolitics with Michelle Grattan: Lambie urges return of former employment program for Indigenous communities<p>Senator Lidia Thorpe’s defection from the Greens changed the power dynamic in the Senate. Now the government needs two crossbenchers (and the Greens) to pass legislation opposed by the Coalition. Tasmanian Senator Jacqui Lambie and her colleague Tammy Tyrrell can provide those two votes, which puts them in a potentially strong bargaining position.</p>
<p>Lambie has never been afraid to call things how she see’s them. She recently visited Alice Springs and urged the situation needed some “tough love”.</p>
<p>In this podcast Lambie urges a return to the old Community Development Employment Projects program for Indigenous communities. Under the CDEP people exchanged unemployment benefits for work and training managed by a local Indigenous community organisations. “I don’t know how many of these places I’ve visited in the Indigenous communities over the last nine years where they just so much praise that old jobs program.”</p>
<p>“This is where the Indigenous [people were] taught to build their own communities. [Where] we have young Indigenous kids out there that are getting apprenticeships and therefore they’re staying in their communities and they start looking after their communities.” </p>
<p>Lambie says the government wants to say the Voice is going to make a difference. “Well, here’s the voice of the people for nine years. Start moving on these sort of programs. They work and they work really well. You’re talking about you want to build all these thousands of new Indigenous homes. This is the perfect time to grab the bull by the horns and run with this old CDE program. It needs to be restarted. You get those skill sets and they stay in the communities”.</p>
<p>Lambie is taking a cautious approach to the Voice, with her view to be driven by her Tasmanian constituency.</p>
<p>“I have to say to you, Michelle, no, I don’t [have a view]”, although she has no problem with the wording Anthony Albanese has announced. </p>
<p>Lambie has found this government better to deal with than the Morrison one, and noticed a much improved atmosphere in Canberra. </p>
<p>“Compared to them [the former government] it’s actually been quite delightful. So as long as they stay honest and the trust remains – hopefully that will remain. </p>
<p>You know, towards that last election walking into this building nearly made me feel sick to the stomach. And if there’d been any more people in dark clothes, I would have thought in those last half a dozen sitting weeks I was attending a funeral up here. That is what it was like – it was god awful.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202722/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>Michelle Grattan sits down with Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie to chat about Alice Springs, The Voice to Parliament, Indigenous employment and the Stage 3 tax cutsMichelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1998742023-03-22T03:22:13Z2023-03-22T03:22:13ZDetermined survival, desperate poverty and fractured families: the stories of Australia’s convict orphans<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516263/original/file-20230320-24-l028ak.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=92%2C79%2C1607%2C947&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Boys outside a store in the central highlands town of Bothwell, c. 1870. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tasmanian Archives, PH30/1/767</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/65638033-convict-orphans">Convict Orphans</a> has a long but apt sub-title: “the heartbreaking stories of the colony’s forgotten children, and those who succeeded against all odds”. And this is exactly what this beautifully written book is about.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: Convict Orphans – Lucy Frost (Allen & Unwin)</em> </p>
<hr>
<p>The history of the children convicts were permitted to bring with them, or who they gave birth to while under sentence, is one of the many recently discovered troves of human experience in our archives. </p>
<p>This history is possible first because of the astonishing detail of the government administration of the penal system; second because of the world-leading digitisation of historical archives and of the nation’s newspapers (known as Trove), which has opened our past to citizens as well as professionals; and third, because of a powerful grassroots army of researchers that Lucy Frost herself helped lead.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/troves-funding-runs-out-in-july-2023-and-the-national-library-is-threatening-to-pull-the-plug-its-time-for-a-radical-overhaul-197025">Trove's funding runs out in July 2023 – and the National Library is threatening to pull the plug. It's time for a radical overhaul</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Together with the doyenne of Tasmanian local history, Dr Alison Alexander, Frost – then a professor of English at the University of Tasmania – founded the Convict Women’s Press in 2010, a not-for-profit publishing company run entirely by volunteers.</p>
<p>Not only have they published seven monographs, with an eighth coming out this year, but they started the Female Convicts Research Centre, which has led research into every woman transported to Van Diemen’s Land. An army of local volunteers has researched shiploads of women, and researchers from all over the United Kingdom have daily sent snippets to Hobart gleaned from local court records, county archives and prison registers. These snippets build ever-growing life stories of people once hidden from history.</p>
<p>Writing about them, however, brings problems lest one be accused (as a now-deceased publisher said many years ago of my PhD thesis) of writing a mess of biographical droppings.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516269/original/file-20230320-20-ebffq4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516269/original/file-20230320-20-ebffq4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516269/original/file-20230320-20-ebffq4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516269/original/file-20230320-20-ebffq4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516269/original/file-20230320-20-ebffq4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516269/original/file-20230320-20-ebffq4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1151&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516269/original/file-20230320-20-ebffq4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1151&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516269/original/file-20230320-20-ebffq4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1151&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The stories of boys and girls in Convict Orphans are moving, but there is not enough historical context and argument. Frost has organised her book with considerable artistry around scenes and locales that collect a handful of shared experiences among the lives she has researched. But while she alludes to more complex stories and explanations, there could be more of them.</p>
<p>Convict Orphans tells the story of the 6,000 children who entered the <a href="https://www.femaleconvicts.org.au/convict-institutions/children/the-orphan-schools#:%7E:text=From%201837%2C%20when%20Queen%20Victoria,orphan%20institutional%20buildings%20in%20Tasmania.">Queen’s Orphan Schools</a> in Tasmania between 1828 and 1879, yet few were actual orphans. Most were the children of convicts or, after transportation ceased in 1853, of parents unable to care for them because of imprisonment or mental illness or incapacity. </p>
<p>Many children arrived on convict ships with their parents, either a mother or a father, because the local parish would not care for them. Others were born to women under sentence and removed to the orphanage on weaning, whence they died in scandalous numbers from failure to thrive and gastroenteritis.</p>
<p>They remained in care and under instruction until the age of 12, when they were apprenticed out, and it is from these indentures that Frost has gleaned her stories. Thus the state remained ostensibly responsible for them until they matured as independent workers.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516264/original/file-20230320-18-djw31z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516264/original/file-20230320-18-djw31z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516264/original/file-20230320-18-djw31z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516264/original/file-20230320-18-djw31z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516264/original/file-20230320-18-djw31z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516264/original/file-20230320-18-djw31z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516264/original/file-20230320-18-djw31z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516264/original/file-20230320-18-djw31z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Queen’s Orphan Asylum, New Town, 1863.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">WL Crowther Library, State Library of Tasmania, AUTAS001124075235W800</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Gruelling work</h2>
<p>Poignant moments bring alive the desperate struggle to survive for the genteel poor, in particular the widows who inherited debts and took to taking in lodgers. They saved paying wages for domestic help by using apprentices from the Queen’s Orphanage as domestic help. The work was gruelling for mere slips of girls. Likewise, boys were snapped up by dairymen and small farmers to provide free labour. Their living conditions could be gross.</p>
<p>The stories are not all grim, however. Some orphans were welcomed into households and a good relationship with a mistress or master could provide the first step into adult independence, marriage and a family.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516267/original/file-20230320-14-5ppdzm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A photo of male farm workers gathered in front of a building." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516267/original/file-20230320-14-5ppdzm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516267/original/file-20230320-14-5ppdzm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516267/original/file-20230320-14-5ppdzm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516267/original/file-20230320-14-5ppdzm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516267/original/file-20230320-14-5ppdzm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516267/original/file-20230320-14-5ppdzm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516267/original/file-20230320-14-5ppdzm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Farm workers gathered for the shearing (young boy on the left).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tasmanian Archives, PH30/1/1971.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One fascinating locale is the Huon Valley – remote, utterly primitive, living from the forest and its timber, and a place to hide for those with secrets and nasty habits. </p>
<p>As each child is followed into indentured service and beyond, we glimpse the desperate poverty, the cultural isolation, the emotional wounds and the burdens of shame that blocked so many of the children and grandchildren of those who arrived “bonded” from taking their place in the Australian mainstream.</p>
<p>But the stories of determined survival were of both the children and their masters and mistresses, themselves often former convicts. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516555/original/file-20230321-16-qxwl07.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A river running through forest." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516555/original/file-20230321-16-qxwl07.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516555/original/file-20230321-16-qxwl07.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516555/original/file-20230321-16-qxwl07.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516555/original/file-20230321-16-qxwl07.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516555/original/file-20230321-16-qxwl07.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516555/original/file-20230321-16-qxwl07.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516555/original/file-20230321-16-qxwl07.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"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Huon river. People lived from the forest and its timber in this remote, impoverished region.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the Huon Valley, James McDonald was apprenticed to a Mrs Catherine Halton as a gardener. Mrs Halton was a survivor: transported from Edinburgh on the testimony of her own mother who had left her without means to care for her younger siblings, while mother and her paramour cooled off in gaol. Catherine had pawned their clothes and paid the rent. She was an angry prisoner and much punished.</p>
<p>By 1875, she was a deserted wife and mother on a tiny farm on the Huon. James finished his indentures with her, so we can assume she fed and did not abuse him.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/hidden-women-of-history-how-lady-swindler-alexandrina-askew-triumphed-over-the-convict-stain-169023">Hidden women of history: how 'lady swindler' Alexandrina Askew triumphed over the convict stain</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Fortified and trained</h2>
<p>Australian historians tend to underplay the back story of colonisation and its institutions. This is particularly so when it comes to social welfare or charity for those without families or the means to be self-sufficient. It was the late Patricia Crawford, a professor at the University of Western Australia and a distinguished historian of early modern England, who first pointed to the continuities between the English Poor Laws and colonial welfare institutions, in particular for First Nations people.</p>
<p>Crawford called it “civic fatherhood”, where the state (the civil parish or the colonial government) took upon itself the responsibilities to protect and educate those without capable parents by indenturing them as apprentices.</p>
<p>This was not reserved for orphans and bastards: all children, apart from those of “gentle birth” were traditionally expected to leave home at 12 and take up residence as an indentured apprentice for future training. </p>
<p>There were cruelties – and Frost opens her book with a brilliant narrative of a scandal at the Queen’s Orphanage where the rations were stolen for sale and children cruelly treated by the Matron, Harriet Smyth. But sadism and abuse have never been eradicated in care homes.</p>
<p>We get glimpses of a better life in the orphanage with brief references to the children’s band – music was often a major part of the care of the blind, for instance, as was handwork such as basket weaving. </p>
<p>Children had to be fortified and trained so they could avoid a life on the streets as beggars, or street sellers, or prostitutes. The prospects for orphan girls were dire unless they quickly found a decent husband or were enfolded in a caring household. (One suspects that being an attractive child or winning baby mattered.)</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516268/original/file-20230320-26-6cvwor.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Hobart seen from above in 1873." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516268/original/file-20230320-26-6cvwor.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516268/original/file-20230320-26-6cvwor.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516268/original/file-20230320-26-6cvwor.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516268/original/file-20230320-26-6cvwor.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516268/original/file-20230320-26-6cvwor.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516268/original/file-20230320-26-6cvwor.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516268/original/file-20230320-26-6cvwor.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A bird’s-eye view of Hobart Town, c. 1873.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">WL Crowther Library, State Library of Tasmania, AUTAS001124074972.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As researchers burrow away at court records, more and more ex-convicts are being found: in and out of gaol, hospital and institutions. Half crazy, angry, and alone except for their drinking mates. For all the success stories, the failures who could not put a stable life together after doing their time are legion.</p>
<p>Too many fell victim to the demon drink – and the start of their painful life journey through poverty, hunger, violence, alcohol and gaol goes back to their childhoods. </p>
<p>For we now know that what distinguished our convicts as a population, was that most came from fractured families in the first place. Dickens was not exaggerating.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>CORRECTION: This review originally stated that Frost’s book does not contain references or an index. However, the final published version of the book does contain these, so we have removed the relevant paragraph from this article.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199874/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Janet McCalman AC 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>Until recently, little was known of the history of the children convicts brought with them to Australia, or gave birth to while under sentence. Their stories are moving.Janet McCalman AC, Emeritus Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2014682023-03-15T03:22:02Z2023-03-15T03:22:02ZTasmanian devil whiskers hold the key to protecting these super-scavengers<p>Despite the damage humans cause to the planet, in some cases wildlife can benefit from the presence of people. The Tasmanian devil, for example, frequently feeds on roadkill left by humans.</p>
<p>But our <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-30490-6">new research</a> suggests this apparent benefit can come at a cost.</p>
<p>We compared the diets of Tasmanian devil populations living in three types of habitat, by examining their whiskers. We found in many cases, Tasmanian devils may be mostly eating foods inadvertently provided by humans. Accessing this food changed the behaviours of Tasmanian devils – and potentially put them in harm’s way. </p>
<p>Our findings are especially important given the risks to Tasmanian devils posed by an aggressive facial tumour disease. If we’re to protect this endangered species, we must conserve environments untouched by humans.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="a woman releases a Tasmanian devil from a bag" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514848/original/file-20230313-22-lo0j4y.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514848/original/file-20230313-22-lo0j4y.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514848/original/file-20230313-22-lo0j4y.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514848/original/file-20230313-22-lo0j4y.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514848/original/file-20230313-22-lo0j4y.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514848/original/file-20230313-22-lo0j4y.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514848/original/file-20230313-22-lo0j4y.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">The author releases a Tasmanian devil into the wild after sampling for diet analysis.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ariana Ananda</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What are Tasmanian devils eating?</h2>
<p>The Tasmanian devil is the biggest carnivorous marsupial in the world. It used to be found on mainland Australia but now wild populations are only found in Tasmania. </p>
<p>Tasmanian devils <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0230216">rarely hunt prey</a>. But they’re highly effective scavengers, thanks to their sharp sense of smell, bone-crushing jaws and energy-efficient movement.</p>
<p>Animals that scavenge for food are “opportunistic feeders” – in other words, they eat whatever they happen to find. This usually means scavengers have a varied diet. </p>
<p>But our previous research found Tasmanian devils have remarkably <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ece3.8338">restricted diets</a>. To find out why, we examined Tasmanian devil whiskers. A single whisker can provide a window into the animal’s past.</p>
<p>We used a technique called “<a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/how-bones-record-where-grew-up-ate">stable isotope analysis</a>”, which enabled us to measure nitrogen and carbon incorporated into the devil’s whiskers as it grows. We matched the chemical composition of the whiskers with potential food items, to determine what the devil ate weeks or months ago. Then we looked at how this varied between individuals living in different habitats.</p>
<p>The technique has been used to describe the diets of <a href="https://theconversation.com/neanderthals-how-a-carnivore-diet-may-have-led-to-their-demise-193764">early humans</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/extinct-elephant-birds-were-3-metres-tall-and-weighed-700kg-now-dna-from-fossil-eggshells-reveals-how-they-lived-200628">extinct species</a>. It’s also been used to study the migration patterns of wide-ranging <a href="https://theconversation.com/sights-are-set-on-understanding-bird-movements-across-africa-58943">birds</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/australias-right-whales-are-recovering-after-whaling-bans-but-there-are-still-worrying-signs-50379">marine mammals</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/if-wildlife-vigilantes-smuggle-tassie-devils-to-the-australian-mainland-the-animals-could-live-in-secret-for-20-years-160274">If wildlife vigilantes smuggle Tassie devils to the Australian mainland, the animals could live in secret for 20 years</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A whisker is collected from a Tasmanian devil" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514841/original/file-20230313-19-991dmh.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514841/original/file-20230313-19-991dmh.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514841/original/file-20230313-19-991dmh.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514841/original/file-20230313-19-991dmh.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514841/original/file-20230313-19-991dmh.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514841/original/file-20230313-19-991dmh.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514841/original/file-20230313-19-991dmh.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">A whisker is collected from a Tasmanian devil for stable isotope analysis, a technique used to analyse diet over time.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Caitlin Newton</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>And the results?</h2>
<p>We found devil populations in highly disturbed landscapes, such as cleared farmland, fed on just one type of food - medium-sized mammals such as the Tasmanian pademelon. </p>
<p>This is perhaps unsurprising. Pademelons are very common in farming areas, and often end up as roadkill. So Tasmanian devils have little reason to scavenge for any other types of food.</p>
<p>We also examined the diets of devils in eucalypt forest which had been logged and regenerated. These animals also had relatively restricted diets. The result suggests these forests may not have had time to develop mature features such as tree hollows to shelter bird life, a process which can take <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378112708002594">up to 140 years</a>. </p>
<p>However, the results were different for devil populations in old-growth rainforest habitats which have never been logged. There, devil diets were diverse. Larger devils tended to eat mammals such as Tasmanian pademelons and brushtail possums, and smaller devils consumed birds such as green rosellas.</p>
<p>These populations may offer insight into what devil foraging behaviour was like before European settlement.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/meet-moss-the-detection-dog-helping-tassie-devils-find-love-142909">Meet Moss, the detection dog helping Tassie devils find love</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Saving wild landscapes</h2>
<p>You might think reliable access to food inadvertently provided by humans would benefit Tasmanian devils. But in fact, it can come with hidden dangers.</p>
<p>The presence of roadkill poses risks to devils; they can be attracted to roads and become roadkill themselves. In 2021, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-03/tasmanian-devils-killed-on-woolnorth-road/100875670">more than 100</a> devils were reportedly killed by motorists on just one stretch of road in north-west Tasmania. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="sign warning of the dangers vehicles pose to Tasmanian devils" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515360/original/file-20230315-28-c915gj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515360/original/file-20230315-28-c915gj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515360/original/file-20230315-28-c915gj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515360/original/file-20230315-28-c915gj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515360/original/file-20230315-28-c915gj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515360/original/file-20230315-28-c915gj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515360/original/file-20230315-28-c915gj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tasmanian devils eating roadkill can be killed by vehicles.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Barbara Walton/EPA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And if members of the same species are interacting around a smaller number of carcasses – or in the case of roadkill, the largest and most desirable carcasses – this could encourage the spread of devil facial tumour disease. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514852/original/file-20230313-18-9ml77s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514852/original/file-20230313-18-9ml77s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514852/original/file-20230313-18-9ml77s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514852/original/file-20230313-18-9ml77s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514852/original/file-20230313-18-9ml77s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514852/original/file-20230313-18-9ml77s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514852/original/file-20230313-18-9ml77s.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">Tasmanian devils are endangered. Pictured, an individual with devil facial tumour disease.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Blake Nisbet</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Over the <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ele.13703">past 25 years</a> the disease – an aggressive, transmittable parasitic cancer is – has caused Tasmania’s devil population to fall by 68%. And this year the disease was <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-02/tasmanian-devil-facial-tumour-found-in-disease-free-population/102040992">detected</a> for the first time in Tasmania’s north-west, from the same population as many devils in our study.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://theconversation.com/thousands-of-tasmanian-devils-are-dying-from-cancer-but-a-new-vaccine-approach-could-help-us-save-them-194536">vaccine</a> distributed by edible baits is being developed. But in the meantime, a more diverse diet could reduce a devil’s risk of transmitting the disease to others, or catching it.</p>
<p>Only in old-growth rainforests did devils have a diverse diet that lived up to their reputation as opportunists. The results suggest conserving these wild landscapes is vital to protecting Tasmanian devils.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/thousands-of-tasmanian-devils-are-dying-from-cancer-but-a-new-vaccine-approach-could-help-us-save-them-194536">Thousands of Tasmanian devils are dying from cancer – but a new vaccine approach could help us save them</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201468/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anna C. Lewis receives funding from The Winifred Violet Scott Charitable Trust and The Carnivore Conservancy. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tracey Rogers receives funding from Australian Research Council and The Winifred Violet Scott Charitable Foundation</span></em></p>The diets of Tasmanian devil are narrowing in areas where humans have changed the landscape. This has big implications for conserving the species.Anna C. Lewis, PhD Candidate, UNSW SydneyTracey Rogers, Professor Evolution & Ecology, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1970292023-01-24T03:55:09Z2023-01-24T03:55:09ZThey’re on our coat of arms but extinct in Tasmania. Rewilding with emus will be good for the island state’s ecosystems<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505779/original/file-20230123-59990-bdkood.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3655%2C2432&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The emu is iconically Australian, appearing on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emu_%28beer%29">cans</a>, <a href="https://www.ramint.gov.au/sites/default/files/About%20our%20coins.pdf">coins</a>, <a href="https://victoriancollections.net.au/items/62203abd086ec294974d3950">cricket bats</a> and our <a href="https://www.pmc.gov.au/honours-and-symbols/commonwealth-coat-arms">national coat of arms</a>, as well as that of the Tasmanian capital, <a href="https://www.hobartcity.com.au/Council/About-Council/Hobart-Coat-of-Arms">Hobart</a>. However, most people don’t realise emus once also roamed Tasmania but are now extinct there.</p>
<p>Where did these Tasmanian emus live? Why did they go extinct? And should we reintroduce them? </p>
<p>Our newly published <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2351989422003602">research</a> combined historical records with population models to find out. We found emus lived across most of eastern Tasmania, including near Hobart, Launceston, Devonport, the Midlands and the east coast. However, in the early days of British occupation, colonists hunting with purpose-bred dogs slaughtered so many emus that the population crashed.</p>
<p>It’s not all bad news, though. Those areas still provide enough good, safe emu habitat to make reintroducing emus from the Australian mainland to Tasmania a realistic option.</p>
<p>Large animals, such as bison, wolves and giant tortoises are already part of global efforts to repair and maintain ecosystems and prevent more extinctions, through the conservation movement known as “<a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1502556112">rewilding</a>”. </p>
<p>In Tasmania, rewilding with emus might help native plants to cope with a changing climate. As our world warms, the places where conditions are just right for particular plant species are shifting. Those plants must disperse far and fast to keep up. Introducing emus, which disperse many plant seeds in their droppings, could help.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/we-can-rewild-swathes-of-australia-by-focusing-on-what-makes-it-unique-111749">We can 'rewild' swathes of Australia by focusing on what makes it unique</a>
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<h2>Emus were Tasmania’s biggest herbivores</h2>
<p>Emus are the biggest birds in Australia. The females weigh up to a whopping 37 kilograms. But when European sealers and explorers arrived on Australia’s southern islands, they found smaller, shorter emus. According to <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsbl.2021.0012">one estimate</a>, Kangaroo Island emus averaged 24-27kg and King Island emus a mere 20-23kg.</p>
<p>Contrary to local folklore, Tasmanian emus were actually more similar to their mainland cousins. They weighed about 30-34kg (but sometimes up to 40kg). </p>
<p>Along with eastern grey kangaroos, known locally as “foresters”, emus were the biggest herbivores in Tasmania.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505770/original/file-20230123-38008-9ne9pk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Map showing distribution of emus" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505770/original/file-20230123-38008-9ne9pk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505770/original/file-20230123-38008-9ne9pk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505770/original/file-20230123-38008-9ne9pk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505770/original/file-20230123-38008-9ne9pk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505770/original/file-20230123-38008-9ne9pk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505770/original/file-20230123-38008-9ne9pk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505770/original/file-20230123-38008-9ne9pk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Emus are found throughout mainland Australia but were driven to extinction on Tasmania, Kangaroo Island and King Island.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0018728">Source: Ancient DNA Suggests Dwarf and ‘Giant’ Emu Are Conspecific, Heupink et al (2011)</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<h2>What are the likely impacts on ecosystems?</h2>
<p>Large herbivores play <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-020-00788-5">important roles</a> in ecosystems around the world. By chewing on plants, pushing through vegetation and churning up soil, large animals can create a mosaic of habitat types for other, smaller creatures. They move seeds and <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1502549112">nutrients</a> across the landscape and shape the frequency and intensity of fires.</p>
<p>Exactly how emus help ecosystems is a bit of a mystery because so few researchers have looked into it. But we do know emus are very good at <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1472-4642.2007.00402.x">seed dispersal</a>. Emus live anywhere, eat anything and swallow their food whole. They walk miles and miles while seeds slowly pass through their gut, to be ejected in a ready-made batch of compost. </p>
<p>Without emus, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1071/9780643104839">some plant populations</a> won’t be able to disperse quickly enough to escape the local effects of global warming.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Seeds germinating in a pile of emu poo" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505990/original/file-20230123-16-abepin.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505990/original/file-20230123-16-abepin.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505990/original/file-20230123-16-abepin.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505990/original/file-20230123-16-abepin.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505990/original/file-20230123-16-abepin.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505990/original/file-20230123-16-abepin.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505990/original/file-20230123-16-abepin.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">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Many plant species benefit from being dispersed by emus that swallow their seeds whole and deposit them some distance away in a nutritious pile of ‘poo compost’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/with-fewer-animals-to-spread-their-seeds-plants-could-have-trouble-adapting-to-climate-change-174516">With fewer animals to spread their seeds, plants could have trouble adapting to climate change</a>
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<h2>How did Tasmania lose its emus?</h2>
<p>We know <a href="https://www.blackincbooks.com.au/books/van-diemen%E2%80%99s-land">colonists hunted emus and kangaroos</a> in Tasmania. Emus were rarely seen on the island after 1845. But was hunting by a few hungry settlers enough to take out the whole population?</p>
<p>To find out, we recreated the emu population using computer simulations. Then we turned up the hunting pressure.</p>
<p>The signal was clear. Tasmania’s emu population could not sustain a harvest of more than about 1,500 adults per year. This limit was probably exceeded within a decade or two, which makes over-hunting the most likely cause of extinction.</p>
<p>Interestingly, the results of the simulation imply the island’s Indigenous people hunted adult emus at very low rates, less than one per person per year.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505767/original/file-20230123-52981-elj9q1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=222%2C7%2C3705%2C2450&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Landscape painting showing sheep and emus in the foreground" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505767/original/file-20230123-52981-elj9q1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=222%2C7%2C3705%2C2450&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505767/original/file-20230123-52981-elj9q1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=298&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505767/original/file-20230123-52981-elj9q1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=298&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505767/original/file-20230123-52981-elj9q1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=298&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505767/original/file-20230123-52981-elj9q1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505767/original/file-20230123-52981-elj9q1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505767/original/file-20230123-52981-elj9q1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Emus at Stanley, Tasmania, during the 1840s, in a painting by William Porden Kay. They were rare by the middle of that decade.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Emus_at_Stanley_during_the_1840s.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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</figure>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/more-than-200-australian-birds-are-now-threatened-with-extinction-and-climate-change-is-the-biggest-danger-172751">More than 200 Australian birds are now threatened with extinction – and climate change is the biggest danger</a>
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<h2>Where can we reintroduce emus?</h2>
<p>To find safe places for reintroductions, we overlapped emu habitat with current land use. We found large parts of the state that have both good emu habitat and a healthy distance from areas with higher risk of human-emu conflict.</p>
<p>Small-scale, trial introductions could be done in fenced enclosures to learn more about the emus’ needs and their ecological roles. </p>
<p>Indigenous voices are particularly important in conversations about reintroductions, because of the roles such animals play in living traditional cultures. For example, emus have featured in Tasmanian Aboriginal story, dance, song and art for generations. Pakana and Palawa still <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch?ref=search&v=311808362745980&external_log_id=6d8c1fb2-30e0-42e7-883d-b86eb66e09be&q=nita%20education%20%22emu%20dance%22">perform emu dances</a> today. </p>
<p>Such conversations must be had with care, because many Indigenous people are <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2022218118">wary</a> of terms such as “rewilding” and “wilderness”. These terms can carry the implication of a land without people, when in fact Australian landscapes have a long and rich history of Indigenous people caring for Country. Even the concept of “wildness” can imply too strong a separation between humans and our non-human kin, and a lack of reciprocity and responsibility.</p>
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<h2>Australia has just begun rewilding</h2>
<p>Landscapes all over the world have lost large animals that would otherwise be keeping ecosystems healthy and dynamic. European and American conservationists have responded by reintroducing large animals for their ecological and cultural functions.</p>
<p>Rewilding Europe, for example, has reintroduced <a href="https://rewildingeurope.com/rewilding-in-action/wildlife-comeback/bison/">bison</a> to the Carpathian mountains and primitive <a href="https://rewildingeurope.com/rewilding-in-action/wildlife-comeback/wild-horses/">horses</a> to Portugal, Spain, Bulgaria and Ukraine. These efforts are placing prehistoric grazing regimes back into a rich cultural landscape. </p>
<p>On islands in the Indian Ocean, <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2017.0442">giant tortoises</a> have been introduced to replace their extinct cousins. Those tortoises graze down weeds and give native plants a better chance of recovery.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/rewilding-as-farmland-and-villages-are-abandoned-forests-wolves-and-bears-are-returning-to-europe-119316">Rewilding: as farmland and villages are abandoned, forests, wolves and bears are returning to Europe</a>
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<p>In Siberia, the <a href="https://pleistocenepark.ru/animals/">Pleistocene Park</a> project aims to re-create a rich steppe ecosystem by reintroducing bactrian camels, musk oxen and American plains bison. One benefit is this will increase the amount of carbon stored in that landscape.</p>
<p>In Australia, most of our animal reintroduction programs are focused on conserving individual species. In a few cases, like the <a href="https://marnabanggara.com.au/">Marna Banggara</a> project, ecological engineers like <a href="https://theconversation.com/so-you-want-to-cat-proof-a-bettong-how-living-with-predators-could-help-native-species-survive-170450">bettongs are being introduced</a> to kick-start ecosystem restoration, but this is happening behind fences and on islands.</p>
<p>We need solutions like rewilding for our open landscapes. Reintroducing emus to Tasmania would be a good first step.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197029/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Johnson receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Fielding and Tristan Derham 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>Tasmania’s emus were hunted to extinction in the mid-1800s but we could have them back – and their return could help other species survive climate change.Tristan Derham, Research Associate, ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage (CABAH) Policy Hub – Training and Education, University of TasmaniaChristopher Johnson, Professor of Wildlife Conservation, University of TasmaniaMatthew Fielding, Research Associate / Teaching Fellow, ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage (CABAH), University of TasmaniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.