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Editor's note
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Since the Tampa affair in 2001, successive Australian governments have tried to be hard-line on asylum seekers. In our next instalment in our pre-election series Advancing Australia: ideas for a better country, Alex Reilly says our policy responses have been inhumane and untenable. Here, he charts a way forward for the next government, one he says won’t trigger large numbers of boat arrivals. If you’re in Adelaide and want to know what the
government should actually be talking about this election, grab tickets to see Alex Reilly and Carol Johnson chat to The
Conversation’s editor, Misha Ketchell, about what’s missing from the debate.
And a decision on a $12.7 million claim for damages arising from the 2014 Lacrosse building fire has put architects, certifiers and engineers who work as consultants to builders on notice about their potential liability for the use of flammable cladding. But, writes Geoff Hanmer, governments are also culpable for a deregulatory approach that has created huge problems for the construction industry.
New research has examined the world’s oldest tattoo kit from the island of Tongatapu, Tonga. The researchers found that the 2,700-year-old artefacts contained implements made of human bone.
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Alexandra Hansen
Chief of Staff
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Top story
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Crossbenchers Kerryn Phelps, Julia Banks and Rebekah Sharkie celebrate the passing of the “Medivac” law through the House of Representatives.
AAP/Lukas Coch
Alex Reilly, University of Adelaide
Since the Tampa affair in 2001, successive governments have been anxious to be seen as "hard-line" on asylum seekers, but the cost – to people and the country – has been too high.
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Flames spread rapidly up the external wall cladding at the Lacrosse building in Melbourne in November 2014. More than four years on, the combustible panels are still in use.
MFB
Geoff Hanmer, UNSW
Architects, certifiers and engineers who work as consultants to builders are on notice about potential liability for the use of flammable cladding, but governments are also culpable for their actions.
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The tattoo tools from Tonga (left to right) made from bird, human, bird and human bone respectively.
Author provided
Michelle Langley, Griffith University; Geoffrey Clark, Australian National University
Tattooing tools made and used 2,700 years ago include two blades made on human bone.
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Arts + Culture
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Camilla Nelson, University of Notre Dame Australia
Margaret Atwood's classic novel imagined a society where women had almost no power. Hundreds of people gathered in Sydney yesterday to hear Atwood speak about dystopias – fictional and otherwise.
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Stephen Chinna, University of Western Australia
Speechless is an opera written in response to the Australian Human Rights Commission's 2014 report into children in immigration detention.
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Environment + Energy
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Shaun Brooks, University of Tasmania; Julia Jabour, University of Tasmania
Buildings and human disturbance in Antartica is clustered in an ice-free zone that is essential to most of the continent's biodiversity.
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Dan Smale, Marine Biological Association; Thomas Wernberg, University of Western Australia
Marine heatwaves, like their land counterparts, are growing hotter and longer. Sea species in southeastern Australia, southeast Asia, northwestern Africa, Europe and eastern Canada are most at risk.
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Business + Economy
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Steve Hatfield-Dodds, Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES)
Australia's farming industry will need to take full account of its obligations to its workers, its customers, society and the environment if it is to prosper in the years to 2030.
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Politics + Society
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Eddie Synot, Griffith University
Instead of paying lip service to promoting Indigenous Australians' rights as First Nations, the next federal government should be guided by the Uluru Statement from the Heart to make real progress.
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Michelle Grattan, University of Canberra
In an address to the AFR's business summit, Morrison says: “The need to
restore trust with customers, employees, suppliers and the wider
community is preoccupying boardrooms across Australia."
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Michelle Grattan, University of Canberra
The Australian Election Study Director Ian McAllister says one thing voters will want at this poll is stability.
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Judith Brett, La Trobe University
With world-first compulsory and preferential voting, Australia was born not on the battlefield but at the ballot box.
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Mark Kenny, Australian National University
Bill Shorten is committed to an Australian head of state, but it will likely take lost priority to constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians.
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Health + Medicine
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Sebastian Rosenberg, Australian National University; Ian Hickie, University of Sydney
Online therapies for mental health can be as effective as talking therapies. If we want to expand access to mental health care, it's important we embrace digital approaches.
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Allen Cheng, Monash University
There’s little evidence that longer courses of antibiotics benefit patients so why are they prescribed?
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Science + Technology
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Erik Malcolm Champion, Curtin University
Virtual reality can be more than a mirror that gives you a realistic simulation of the current world: it can bring the past into the present.
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Education
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Timothy McKenry, Australian Catholic University
The Suzuki method can work, but requires a high level of parental involvement.
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Featured jobs
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Griffith University — Nathan, Queensland
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University of Melbourne — Parkville, Victoria
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RMIT University — Melbourne, Victoria
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Monash University — Clayton, Victoria
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Featured events
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UNSW Sydney, Kensington, New South Wales, 2052, Australia — UNSW
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900 Dandenong Road, Caulfied East, Victoria, Victoria, 3800, Australia — Monash University
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Reps Alcove, Australian Parliament House, Parliament Drive, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, 2600, Australia — Monash University
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Swinburne University of Technology, AGSE Building, Lecture Theatre AGSE202, 50 Wakefield Street, Hawthorn, Victoria, 3122, Australia — Swinburne University of Technology
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