Wombats not worth saving

By Kate Lunau - Wednesday, May 4, 2011 at 12:10 PM - 5 Comments

R. van Nostrand/Photo Researchers

The northern hairy-nosed wombat, a burrowing marsupial native to Australia, is a critically endangered species—but according to Australian researchers, it may not be worth saving. A team from the University of Adelaide and James Cook University has developed a new index, called Species Ability to Forestall Extinction (SAFE), that takes current and minimum viable population sizes into account to determine if it’s just too expensive to save a particular animal. “SAFE is the best predictor yet of the vulnerability of mammal species to extinction,” says Corey Bradshaw, director of ecological modelling at Adelaide’s Environment Institute. Not all critically endangered species “are equal,” he says.

The northern hairy-nosed wombat might be a loser in this equation, but other species win. Based on this formula, conservationists should prioritize the Sumatran instead of the Javan rhinoceros, Bradshaw suggests: “The Sumatran rhino is more likely to be brought back from the brink of extinction based on its SAFE index.” Efforts to save endangered species are a bit like triage on the battlefield, these researchers argue, in which doctors have to make tough choices about who can, and can’t, be saved.

No logo. We mean it.

By Julia Belluz - Wednesday, April 27, 2011 at 9:40 AM - 0 Comments

Daniel Munoz/Reuters

In Italy and France, it’s Marlboro. Norwegians puff on Prince and Bangladeshis favour John Player. But by next year, Australians won’t be able to easily tell one brand of cigarette from another. The world leader in the war against smoking will now become the first to enforce plain packaging for cigarettes. “The only thing to distinguish one brand from another,” said Health Minister Nicola Roxon, “will be the brand and product name in a standard colour, standard position and standard font size and style.” That means logos are gone, and all cigarette packs will be a standardized olive green (the least attractive colour, according to research) with health warnings. The industry won’t go brand-free without a fight, though. Tobacco companies claim the measures infringe on trademark and intellectual property laws, and that they will not curb smoking. For Roxon, though, “the glamour is gone.”

This navy is hardly shipshape

By Jane Switzer - Monday, April 4, 2011 at 9:58 AM - 0 Comments

Rob Griffith/AFP/Getty Images

Following revelations of a “predatory culture” full of drunken misconduct, the head of Australia’s navy has orders for his troops: shape up or ship out. Addressing the entire navy by video link last week, Vice-Admiral Russ Crane threatened to ban alcohol consumption during overseas port visits following the release of a report detailing bad behaviour on board the HMAS Success in 2009. The report accuses sailors of preying on young female recruits and betting on how many colleagues they could sleep with as part of a “sex ledger.” At the end of a tour, mariners would also receive a cash prize for outlandish sexual conquests.

But alcohol and sex aren’t the only problems in the Australian military—it was revealed last year that nearly 600 military personnel had been caught taking illegal drugs and steroids in the past five years. While he threatened mandatory breath tests, drug testing and curfews, Crane said the recent report raises more serious issues about the treatment of women in the navy: “I cannot accept a situation where women feel threatened by their male counterparts,” he said. “This type of behaviour must and will be eradicated.”

Too many elections? Please.

By Brian Bethune - Thursday, March 31, 2011 at 3:36 PM - 35 Comments

Which is more annoying?

(1) Politicians in a democracy moaning about the inconvenience of having to audition for their jobs (that is, run for election); or

(2) The innumerate mantra, “four elections in seven years.”

Since No. 1 is merely par for the course among our grumbling political class, perhaps we should strive to erase the second from polite discourse. When Barack Obama runs for re-election next year, not a single American will complain, “two presidential elections in four years, that’s too many; as for two Congressional campaigns in two years… well!”

Yet that’s exactly the way the 4-in-7ers calculate, counting only elections and not the periods in between them. This is actually Canada’s fourth election in 11 years, since the campaign of 2000. That’s one vote every 2.75 years, not too far off the historical average of one every 3.6 years.

As for other parliamentary democracies, Continue…

Australia's haves and have-nots

By Josh Dehaas - Tuesday, March 15, 2011 at 10:06 AM - 0 Comments

New South Wales (NSW), with a third of Australia’s population and its largest financial centre, Sydney, was once the economic engine of the country. But next year, the state will receive $1 billion more in funding as part of national equalization—increasingly, NSW is a “have-not” state.

The rapid rise of resource revenues in the frontier territories, along with slower growth in the country’s southeast, have contributed to the imbalance. It’s a familiar story for Canadians: Ontario, with 38 per cent of the population and the country’s main financial centre, tipped into “have-not” status in late 2008. And much like some politicians in Western Canada, leaders in Queensland and Western Australia aren’t pleased about the increasing burden of NSW and Victoria (the latter, with a quarter of the country’s population, has long been the country’s greatest recipient).

Upon hearing his state will only receive 93 cents of every GST dollar it collects next year, Queensland Treasurer Andrew Fraser accused the southeast of “burglary.” Western Australia, meanwhile, is getting only 72 cents per dollar, because it produces 36 per cent of the nation’s exports and is booming. It can afford to share, said the Commonwealth Grants Commission in its annual report.

This week: Newsmakers

By Charlie Gillis, Chris Sorensen and Nicholas Köhler - Friday, February 4, 2011 at 12:00 PM - 0 Comments

A breath of fresh Canadian air
The usual right vs. left political jabber of American talk TV was punctuated this week by a few clear-eyed statements courtesy of Canada’s first female prime minister. On Real Time With Bill Maher, former Progressive Conservative leader Kim Campbell called Republican Jack Kingston‘s views on global warming “absolute rubbish,” pointing out to the Georgia congressman that scientists didn’t set out looking for a non-existent problem just to torture right-leaning politicians. When the conversation shifted toward the evolution vs. creation debate, Campbell asked if Kingston was concerned about the alarming rise of antibiotic-resistant microorganisms in hospitals. He squirmed. “That’s evolution,” she said to applause. Does 132 days as PM preclude Campbell from a future in politics?

Lolita’s lepidopterist
In addition to writing great novels, Vladimir Nabokov was a self-taught expert on the evolutionary biology of butterflies—though, like any amateur, the Lolita author faced skepticism from the scientific establishment. Now one of his most audacious theories has been proven right. A paper published by the Royal Society has endorsed Nabokov’s hypothesis that butterflies are not indigenous to North America, but rather arrived in a series of “waves” from Asia. The new research was made possible by gene-sequencing technology Nabokov never had. Said Naomi Pierce, a Harvard expert who co-authored the study: “It’s really quite a marvel.”

Single White Premier seeks less idiotic press
With three female premiers and a female prime minister, Julia Gillard, Australian voters seem fairly accustomed to the idea of women in politics. The media? Not so much. The country’s biggest national newspaper, the Australian, ran a front-page story about Tasmanian premier Lara Giddings‘s first day in office that zeroed in on her comments (in response to a reporter’s question) about the challenges of snaring a husband when you’re a busy politician. The headline read: “Leftist Lara still looking for Mr. Right.” Critics shook their heads. “Why on Earth was this suddenly relevant the day Giddings became Tasmania’s first female premier?” asked one Sydney Morning Herald columnist, noting Giddings was previously an unmarried treasurer and an unmarried attorney general. “It was not as if she had landed from Mars.”

Continue…

No beer, please—we’re Ozzies

By Jane Switzer - Thursday, February 3, 2011 at 12:20 PM - 1 Comment

Daniel Munoz/Reuters

Aussie lager lovers are a dying breed, according to the latest statistics on alcohol and wine consumption. The report by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, titled “No Longer a Nation of Beer Drinkers,” shows beer consumption recently dropped by almost half to its lowest level in 50 years. Beer accounted for just 44 per cent of all alcohol consumed by Australians in the 2008-’09 financial year, compared to 76 per cent in its 1960-’61 heyday. Statistics show Australians drank 107 litres of beer per adult—an average of 3.6 pints a week—down from 190 litres (6.4 pints a week) on average 50 years ago. Over the same time, wine consumption has tripled from 12 to 36 per cent, attributed to evolving palates, the availability of more affordable domestic wines, and an increase in women drinkers who generally prefer wine to beer. But while wine sales are set to overtake beer in the next decade, the country’s beloved brew is far from hearing its death knell—because wastage and alcohol used in cooking are factored into the numbers, the report admits to slightly overestimating the consumption of wine and spirits.

Baby, it’s awful outside

By Jason Kirby - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 2:54 PM - 4 Comments

Daniel Munoz/Reuters

Being a billionaire mayor in a city like New York means never having to say you’re sorry. That is, until your snow plows leave millions of residents stranded and they have to strap on skis to navigate the streets of Manhattan. And so it was that three days after a raging, thundering snowstorm dumped half a metre on the Big Apple over Christmas—the heaviest snowfall in decades—Mayor Michael Bloomberg fessed up that the city had botched the cleanup job.

It didn’t help that this was the second December in a row the city, along with the U.S. Northeast, has been hammered by wild weather. But the region was far from alone. The same massive storm system plunged 50,000 homes in Atlantic Canada into darkness as snow, wind and floods devastated beaches, parks and tourist sites. The deluge followed a series of brutal storms and Atlantic hurricanes over the past few months that have already heaped misery on residents in the region.

Mother Nature’s fury was felt everywhere. The United Kingdom is suffering the coldest winter since 1683, which along with snowstorms in New York and Moscow forced the cancellation of 6,000 flights. In California a barrage of winter storms caused flash floods and mudslides, while Los Angeles has been buffeted by hurricane-strength winds. Queensland, Australia, is drowning beneath the worst floods in half a century. Continue…

Brisbane spared worst-case scenario flood

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, January 12, 2011 at 5:26 PM - 0 Comments

Brisbane River has spared its namesake the worst case scenario flood, capping at 4.46 metres at around 5:15 on Wednesday. That’s more than a metre below the level many feared—at 5.4 metres, the river devastated the city in 1974. However, forecaster Brett Harrison said, “We still expect it to be above major flood levels until sometime during Friday and remain high over the weekend.” Brisbane is reeling from damage caused by a huge concrete walkway that broke off and was carried away with the river, “smashing everything in its path,” according to an eyewitness. Mayor Campbell Newman has announced revised predictions of the flood’s damage—modeling showed that at a peak of 4.6 metres, roughly 11,9000 properties would be fully flooded and 14,7000 partially flooded.The death toll from the floods thus far is 13, with many people still unaccounted for.

AFP

Northeastern Australia under water

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, January 5, 2011 at 5:20 PM - 3 Comments

The flooding that has submerged an area of Queensland, Australia bigger than the size of British Columbia seems to have peaked at around nine metres, but Australian officials say it could be a at least a week before the Fitzroy River recedes. So far, the flood has affected about 200,000 people, and Queensland Premier Anna Bligh estimates the cost of recovery to be more than $5 billion. Another unexpected factor complicating resettlement plans: many regions are now awash with venomous snakes.

CBC News

Newsmakers

By macleans.ca - Friday, November 12, 2010 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

Doggone it
Cesar Millan, TV’s “Dog Whisperer,” was a hit with the crowd at sold-out Scotiabank Place in Ottawa last week, even though Ontario law deprived him of a key cast mate—Junior, the two-year-old American pit bull that recently took over from the dearly departed Daddy as Millan’s “right-hand man.” Millan, halfway through a tour of Canada, demonstrated training techniques on local dogs and expounded on his philosophy of calm assertiveness, but took time to criticize Ontario’s 2005 ban on pit bulls. “In the ’70s, the breed that people were afraid of was the Doberman,” he told the audience. “In the 2000s, it’s the pit bull. It’s not the breed, it’s the human behind the dog.”

Absolute powers of persuasion
Chinese authorities may not have much success persuading European governments to boycott the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony honouring jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo, but they’re having better luck at home. Author Yu Jie, a friend of Liu’s, said he and his wife have been stopped from leaving their Beijing home by security officers, for fear they plan to go to Oslo. Meanwhile, Guo Xianliang, an engineer from Yunnan province, disappeared while on a business trip in Guangzhou. He’d been detained for distributing flyers about Liu, according to fellow activist Ye Du. Police have also reportedly detained a young woman, Mou Yanxi, who tweeted her support for Liu. “If such behaviour goes on,” her friend Zhang Shijie tweeted last week, “it will eventually happen to all of us.”

Continue…

The Commons: Who loves ya, baby?

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, October 21, 2010 at 6:58 PM - 0 Comments

The Scene. As he made his first intervention, Michael Ignatieff insisted on staring down Stephen Harper’s empty chair. Perhaps it’s to the point now that the Liberal leader sees Mr. Harper’s dismissive mug wherever he looks. Perhaps he simply found the green felt of the House seats a soothing sight to gaze upon.

His question this day had to do with the potential sale of Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan Incorporated to BHP Billiton Limited and all of the national, economic and social implications within and around that transaction. “Mr. Speaker,” he said, “yesterday when the Prime Minister was asked about the possible sale of Potash Corp he basically shrugged his shoulders and said ‘Australia, America, who cares?’”

In full, the Prime Minister had said, “This is a proposal for an American-controlled company to be taken over by an Australian-controlled company.” Whether Mr. Harper was shrugging at the time, I do not remember. But given that he is given to shrugging reflexively at almost all propositions, it is certainly a distinct possibility. Continue…

The Taser debate, Down Under

By Patricia Treble - Monday, October 18, 2010 at 11:40 AM - 0 Comments

After the images of Spratt were released, the premier called the incident ‘excessive’; Corruption and Crime Commission/ Richard Hatherly/Newspix

The video is chilling. Police in Western Australia surround a man writhing and screaming on the floor of a police station after being repeatedly tasered for refusing to comply with a strip search. “Do you want to go again?” one asks. Moments later the Aboriginal man, Kevin Spratt, is tasered again. And again. In total, two officers tasered him 13 times, while nine cops watched. The 2008 incident is only coming to attention after video of it was released last week by the state’s Corruption and Crime Commission (CCC) as part of a report into the use of Tasers by police. The reaction was horror. “That particular incident was wrong,” said Western Australia’s acting police commissioner, Chris Dawson. “Clearly, in my view, the officers overreacted.” Premier Colin Barnett echoed the sentiment: “It was excessive use of a Taser that could not be justified.”

Continue…

The upside down us

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, October 12, 2010 at 6:56 PM - 0 Comments

Emboldened by Canada’s defeat, Australia now seems well-placed to win a seat on the UN security council. Alas, their bid is almost certainly doomed by a disloyal opposition.

Tony Abbott—leader of a conservative coalition—delivered a speech on the matter last April. Two years ahead of the vote, the government has preemptively accused Mr. Abbott of harming their campaign for a seat.

Australian algebra

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, August 23, 2010 at 5:24 PM - 0 Comments

However loopy matters were here in the early winter of December 2008, we can now look with some pity upon the Australians, they now embarking on their own version of the 2000 U.S. presidential election.

At the moment, with the final count of last weekend’s election still being tallied, the incumbent Labour government has been declared the winner of 72 seats, one short of a majority. The Liberal-National coalition has been declared winners in 70 seats. Of the four seats that remain in doubt, three are leaning toward the coalition, the other to Labour, meaning the two sides could end up tied.

The coalition leads the Labour side on the primary popular vote by a count of 44% to 38%. But Australia’s electoral system also has a two-party preferred ballot and on that count Labour leads the coalition by a count of 50.7% to 49.3%. Continue…

That's a bit personal

By Julia Belluz - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 1:20 PM - 0 Comments

Andrew Taylor/Reuters

For Australia’s first female prime minister, the decision not to have children was a political one. Julia Gillard, also the first unmarried leader of the world’s smallest continent, recently cited Baroness Margaret Thatcher’s son Mark—once convicted of taking part in an attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea—when she argued that children can detract from a life in politics, and may even become a political liability. But now this decision to be childless, and Gillard’s gender, are becoming themes in the run-up to the country’s Aug. 21 election, which Gillard called after only three weeks in office.

The campaign is pitting the 48-year-old Gillard and her Labour government against the Conservative leader of the opposition, Tony Abbott, 52. So far, Abbott, who needs to win only an extra nine seats to form a government, has attempted to use his wife and three daughters to differentiate himself from Gillard, and improve his ratings with female voters. When asked whether he is playing the family card to win the election, he said: “I think families are important, I take them seriously.”

Continue…

A devastating critique of the nation's political journalism

By Paul Wells - Monday, August 2, 2010 at 12:20 AM - 0 Comments

Fortunately the nation is Australia, so nobody over here needs to feel bad. I’ve never heard of any of my colleagues mentioned in this piece or this partial and tentative defence, but the professional maladies being diagnosed are awfully familiar.

So I waited for some questions from the journalists. They came and guess what, they were all about politics. They were about Mark Latham’s comments about his believing Kevin Rudd leaked to Laurie Oakes. They were about foreigners owning our farms and whether he disagreed with a National’s senator. They were about nothing to do with the press conference. Did they test the policy? Did they ask who will qualify and why? Nope. Not at all.

Like so much that happens in Australia, coverage of their election is a funhouse-mirror reflection of the way things work here, with many parallels and just enough differences to discourage cheap comparisons. (The election is going poorly for pinch-hitting Labor PM-come-lately Julia Gillard, but there I go, focusing on the horse race instead of the issues.) I learned about the two blog posts I link above, incidentally, from this piece in Crikey, an independent, well-funded political website closer to Politico than to anything anyone has put together in Canada.

Down under, upside down; or, names that rhyme with Mudd

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, June 23, 2010 at 10:42 AM - 36 Comments

So the Labor caucus in Canberra will vote at 9 a.m. — soon — on whether Kevin Rudd should remain as the party’s leader and therefore as Australia’s prime minister. The betting is, he’s toast — vegemite toast, mate — and his lieutenant Julia Gillard, who had of course denied any such ambition, will replace him. Australia news front pages here, here and here. A very basic blog post to help you get up to speed is here.

The heart of the problem is shown here — national polls show the right-of-centre opposition coalition (cue coalition geek schadenfreude) gaining on Rudd and that the pain is most acute in swing ridings Labor needs for victory.

Gee, if only someone would explain What It All Means for Canada. Way ahead of you. Here’s a column I wrote before Christmas about Tony Abbott, the Stock Day/Stephen Harper-ish leader of the opposition, whose brash social conservatism seemed merely novel only six months ago but has now pushed a sitting prime minister to the brink.

A democracy bonus

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, May 19, 2010 at 11:21 AM - 69 Comments

Eight years ago, in an essay for Policy Options, professor Bruce Hicks made the case—with reference to Athens—for the sort of tax credit now being floated by the Alberta Liberals as a response to declining voter turnout.

The Australian Electoral Commission, meanwhile, has a useful guide to their system of compulsory voting—Eric Weiner wrote a good overview of it for Slate some years ago. The idea of a tax credit has been floated before by politicians and observers in Canada, but it doesn’t seem that any jurisdiction, here or elsewhere, has ever followed through.

Professors Hicks, Peter Loewen and Henry Milner conducted an experiment in 2007 to test whether financially compelled voting necessarily led to greater political engagement. Their results didn’t demonstrate the increased awareness that is supposed to follow from compulsory voting, but there is too the argument that increased voting is a good thing in and of itself. Conversely, there is a case to be made that low turnout isn’t necessarily a problem—that those who vote accurately reflect the views of the general populace, that low turnout is a sign of general satisfaction, that high turnout is often seen in moments of crisis (and nations with dictators) and so forth.

And speaking of Australia

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, March 3, 2010 at 12:26 PM - 15 Comments

The Liberals made note this morning of the similarity between the title of today’s Throne Speech and the title of former Australian prime minister John Howard’s election platform in 2004. That similarity perhaps being noteworthy because of this. And this.

All of which might make it worth actually reading Howard’s 2004 platform, then comparing and contrasting with what we hear these next two days. So here that is. Continue…

Miniature Canadian flags for everyone (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, March 3, 2010 at 12:04 PM - 17 Comments

During the Olympics, the CEO of the Canadian Olympic Committee told an Australian reporter that we owed a great debt to Australia and what it has been doing for some years now to fund its Olympians. In that regard, it is probably worth reviewing the Crawford Report, an extensive study of Australian sport that raised all sorts of questions about pursuing Olympic success and has, subsequently, attracted all sorts of controversy. Among the problematic paragraphs contained therein, this.

A commonly held view is that success in international sport creates increased interest which translates into higher levels of participation at the grassroots. However, while Australia has been very successful at the last four olympics, there has also been a ‘blowout’ of adult and child obesity and little change in participation numbers in sport. According to survey data33 only 50 per cent of Australians participate ‘regularly’ in sport and physical activity. Nor does hosting major sporting events such as the olympic or commonwealth Games guarantee sustained increases in participation.

The Bilodeaus: an inspiration

By Ken MacQueen - Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 8:52 PM - 16 Comments

Often over the past four years, during the hard times and during the quiet moments after training, Alexandre Bilodeau would ask his “big sister” Jennifer Heil what a gold medal feels like. And the woman who won Canada’s first Olympic gold medal at the 2006 Turin Olympics would say this to her friend and training partner: “Alex, you’ll know. There are no words for that.” And she was right, as 22-year-old Bilodeau, from the leafy Montreal suburb of Rosemère, now knows. In either official language there are no words appropriate for those rapturous early hours, just a jumble of feelings tinged with a sense of unreality, he would later reflect.

The answer came to him, appropriately enough for a revelation, from a mountaintop on the second night of competition. It came after he scorched down the Cypress Mountain moguls course in 23.17 seconds, bumping to second place Dale Begg-Smith, another Canadian, if an indifferent one, who races for his adopted country of Australia. It came after waiting to see if one last competitor, the formidable Frenchman Guilbaut Colas, could take his gold away.

When Colas’s marks were announced and the run fell short, Bilodeau leapt to his ski boots, pumped his fists and picked up a Canadian flag. He saluted the screaming crowd, their emotions jacked by patriotism, cans of Canadian beer and the realization they’d witnessed history: the first Olympic gold medal won by a Canadian on home soil. Almost literally home soil, for the surrounding weather-battered ski hills were pockmarked with patches of dirt and studded with exposed rocks. Michael Chambers, outgoing president of the Canadian Olympic Committee, would later liken it to Paul Henderson’s goal that sealed Canada’s victory at the 1972 hockey summit with Russia. “Where were you when Alex Bilodeau won the first gold medal on Canadian soil?” Chambers said.

Continue…

The hidden message in fried chicken

By Cameron Ainsworth-Vincze - Wednesday, February 3, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 40 Comments

UPDATE: Since the publication of this story, Australian authorities have charged Jaspreet Singh with lodging a false report for financial gain. Police allege that Singh was not set on fire in a racially motivated attack, but that he instead accidentally burned himself while torching his car for an insurance claim.

*****

When it was reported last spring that dozens of Indian students attending university in Melbourne and Sydney had been attacked, Australian authorities dismissed racism as a motivating factor. Instead, they suggested the students were “soft targets” because they often travelled alone and carried valuable items, such as laptops. That response sparked Indian-led rallies in Melbourne and Sydney to raise awareness and promote greater safety measures, yet the attacks continue and India is now accusing Australia of sitting idly by as they occur.

Continue…

Compromise or confrontation

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, December 14, 2009 at 2:58 PM - 8 Comments

Last week, Susan Delacourt suggested some sort of compromise might get us past Parliament’s demand for Afghan detainee documentation and the government’s subsequent refusal to comply. Alas, it’s unclear if the privy council offers a satisfactory option.

Conversely, the CBC’s Neil Morrison looks to New South Wales, where a similar standoff resulted in the cabinet minister in question being tossed out of Parliament and a ruling from the court.