A personal view of Australian and International Politics : November 2017

Thursday, 30 November 2017

Banks warned of 'regulatory action' as climate change bites global economy

Australian Prudential Regulation Authority says it is quizzing companies about their actions to assess climate risks

Australia’s financial regulator has stepped-up its warning to banks, lenders and insurers, saying climate change is already impacting the global economy, and flagged the possibility of “regulatory action”.
Geoff Summerhayes from the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (Apra) revealed it had begun quizzing companies about their actions to assess climate risks, noting it would be demanding more in the future.
Apra also revealed it has established an internal working group to assess the financial risk from climate change and was coordinating an interagency initiative with the corporate watchdog Asic, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and federal Treasury to examine what risks climate change was posing to Australia’s economy.
In February, Summerhayes put banks, lenders and insurance companies on notice, urging them to start adapting to climate change and warning that the regulator would be “on the front foot on climate risk”.
Now, in the first significant update to Apra’s thinking on the topic since that speech, Summerhayes said Apra’s view was that climate change and society’s response to it “are starting to affect the global economy”.

In an extended version of a speech to the progressive Centre for Policy Development, and circulated to journalists ahead of its delivery, Summerhayes said a shift occurring in the global economy was increasingly being driven by commercial imperatives – investments, innovation and reputational factors – rather than what scientists or policymakers are saying or doing.
“Apra is not a scientific body and I can’t say with 100% conviction to what extent scientists’ predictions of increasing temperatures, rising sea levels, more frequent droughts and more intense storms will impact the Australian economy,” Summerhayes said.
“But what I can tell you with absolute certainty is that the transition to a low-carbon economy is underway and moving quickly.”
Summerhayes reported that a Sustainable Insurance Forum meeting in December was told that “that keeping the planet on track to meet the Paris agreement’s two-degree target could reduce fossil fuel revenues globally by a cumulative $33 trillion by 2040”.
“So while the debate continues about the physical risks, the transition to a low-carbon economy is underway and that means the so-called transition risks are unavoidable,” Summerhayes said.
He noted that Apra would be conducting a survey of entities it regulated over the next few months, to find out what the emerging best practice was, and that there is a global trend towards a requirement for companies to disclose climate-related risks.
Summerhayes said Apra had already begun scrutinising the financial sector in this regard and had begun coordinating with other agencies.
He said the regulator had already been asking questions of companies about what they have done in relation to his comments in February and said over time they will expect “more sophisticated answers, especially from well-resourced and complex entities”.
He said the inter-agency initiative created between Apra, Asic, the RBA and Treasury would investigate whether companies are taking steps to protect themselves and their customers from the physical, transitional and liability risks caused by climate change.
The involvement of Asic in the initiative is interesting following advice from Noel Hutley SC last year finding company directors who do not properly consider the material impacts of climate change on their business risk personal liability for breach of duty.
“So whether due to regulatory action or – more likely – pressure from investors and consumers, Australia’s financial sector can expect to see more emphasis on discourse around climate risk exposure and management,” Summerhayes said.

Impotent outrage from toddlers and trolls is too late. They already lost the argument

Same-sex marriage postal survey

As the Senate crept towards legalising marriage equality, conservatives re-prosecuted the debate – and blamed Turnbull

‘Ian Macdonald really wanted that scarf off. Hinch wasn’t inclined to take it off. And so it went.’

Katharine Murphy Political editor

The querulousness of the vanquished was perhaps summarised by Ian Macdonald’s fury at Derryn Hinch’s rainbow scarf.
The Queensland Liberal really wanted that scarf off. Hinch wasn’t inclined to take it off. And so it went, as the Senate crept towards legalising marriage equality.
Calm entreaties that the public was watching didn’t disrupt one man on a mission to feel aggrieved and put upon by Derryn in his rainbow scarf, and scorned by the progressive peanut gallery who were collectively underwhelmed with Macdonald’s previous efforts to remove discrimination for gays and lesbians, and by the fact he knew a couple of atheists.
So Macdonald’s impotent outrage grew, a thing in itself, but somehow symptomatic of the impotent outrage that is now prompting a rudderless government to turn on itself in full public view.
As the Senate inched towards doing its job, delivering the outcome on marriage a majority of Australians asked for, Macdonald raged inside and, outside, various conservatives lined up to blame Malcolm Turnbull for failing to “lead” during the marriage equality debate.
By failing to lead, the critics meant Turnbull had failed to engineer a situation where more socially liberal colleagues would meekly cop the conservative position on religious protections.
In the words of the National Andrew Broad, Turnbull had been “sneaky” in the way he had handled the internal debate about religious protections. This view was backed by the still in-house dissident George Christensen, whom colleagues sense is on a mission to martyrdom.
Seriously, the collective numpty in Canberra at this point can be so enormous it is almost noxious.
Voters are treated to a daily spectacle of feelings first, consequences second, as a dangerous, disorienting fog descends. Right now, the key performance indicator for the professional dissidents of the government seems to be bagging someone else on Sky News: the prime minister; someone else who looked sideways at you in the lunch line. Mainly Turnbull though.
If we can take a breath for a minute and just look at the facts, the record shows the alleged failure wasn’t Turnbull’s.
If there was a failure, it was the stunning lack of judgment and tactical smarts by the naysayers, who could have brought a concrete proposal to the Coalition party room ahead of the postal survey result, when their internal bargaining power was at its height.
They could have called out the artful ambiguity of the prime minister’s public position on religious freedom by doing some work and forcing a decision.
They could have brought a finished bill to rival the private member’s bill drafted by the Liberal Dean Smith and demanded a party room debate and some concrete undertakings – or at least produced a list of bullet points outlining the specific undertakings they wanted colleagues to accept.
Yes supporters inside the government were, in fact, bracing for precisely that outcome in the final party room before the postal vote – but the concrete challenge never came.
So, as we move to the settled outcome, a yes vote in both parliamentary chambers, the debate in some quarters is being re-prosecuted – this is not our failure but someone else’s failure, and it may as well be Turnbull’s failure.
By this deeply strange rationale, Turnbull, a long time yes supporter, in a conscience vote process, is supposed to try and undermine the yes cause, to get an “outcome” with no prospect of passing the parliament, because ... you know ... leadership.
This is pathetic. There is no other word for it.
Also pathetic is the ready resort of the reactionary rump of the conservative right to full victimhood every time they lose an argument.
The right foisted the postal survey on the public, some to force a solution on same- sex marriage, some to delay it. This was the right’s process, not some sneaky conspiracy by the prime minister to let progressivism rip.
They determined the rules of the game and they lost. That’s the long and short of it. The end.
Social conservatives in the parliament are entirely justified in sticking up for their values and principles, right until the end. It would be appalling if they didn’t use the parliamentary debate to express their convictions. It would be a betrayal of themselves and their supporters.
But fighting the good fight with dignity and respect seems beyond the capacity of some of the toddlers and trolls who inhabit the chambers of our parliament, whose primary task now is, seemingly, feeding the media ecosphere that encourages their antics and trades in only one zero-sum commodity: outrage.
Fortunately for all of us, for the intrepid politics watchers who these days have to counsel themselves against hopelessness and despair at the unhinging, the Senate chamber on Wednesday pushed past the strange battle of the rainbow scarf, past the churlishness, past the professional victimhood and into a tangible result.
While the minority rumbled and roiled as the world turned, a clear majority of senators came together, constructively, with good will, with deep intellect and sincere emotion – to carry out an act of representative democracy, to turn the aspiration of a majority of Australians into reality.
Even Macdonald was a yes vote, in the end.

Queensland election: Labor likely to win seat of Rockhampton, independent candidate Margaret Strelow says

Extract from ABC News

Updated about 10 hours ago

Video: Independent Margaret Strelow says Labor will win Rockhampton (ABC News)

Labor's chances of gaining a majority in its own right in Queensland Parliament have been boosted, with independent Rockhampton candidate Margaret Strelow saying she now expects Labor to win the seat.

Posting on Facebook this afternoon, Ms Strelow said LNP preferences to One Nation would push her into third place, meaning her preferences would go to Labor candidate Barry O'Rourke.

All you need to know

Take a closer look at the electorates, candidates and key seats.

"It will be very difficult for me to win after the distribution of LNP preferences today," Ms Strelow said.
But a short time later, she stressed her comments did not constitute a formal admission of defeat.
"Looking at the numbers as LNP preferences are being distributed (remembering the LNP and One Nation did a preference swap here in Rockhampton), it looks like at least half of the LNP voters are taking their preferences to One Nation," Ms Strelow told the ABC.
"I'm not formally conceding yet. I'm saying it will be incredibly difficult on the vote as it is for me to get there.

"I'm admitting that it's incredibly unlikely that I'll win the seat. Most likely it will go to Labor and I'll return to my job as mayor."

However, Mr O'Rourke said it was still too early to make a call.
"Preferences are now being distributed between One Nation and Labor from Margaret Strelow's vote," he said.

"I'd prefer to wait until that's been finalised to make a call on whether I've claimed the seat."

A week into the election campaign, Ms Strelow chose to run as an independent after being rejected in a Labor pre-selection stoush that ended in Mr O'Rourke's favour.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk had backed Ms Strelow to replace retiring minister Bill Byrne in the central Queensland Labor stronghold.
If Ms Strelow is right and Rockhampton goes to Labor, it would be a boost to Ms Palaszczuk's chances of getting the 47 seats she needs to govern in her own right.
Latest counting has the ALP on 45 seats and leading in two others, which would already be just enough for a majority.
Adding Rockhampton would potentially put Labor on track for 48 seats and give Ms Palaszczuk more breathing room, after she vowed during the election campaign not to govern in minority.

LNP's Ian Walker concedes Mansfield to Labor

Former shadow attorney-general Ian Walker has conceded defeat in the Brisbane seat of Mansfield, phoning Labor's Corrine McMillan to congratulate her.
"I thank the people of Mansfield for giving me the opportunity to serve them in Parliament — six fulfilling years I will never forget," Mr Walker said via Twitter.
Earlier, for the second day in a row LNP leader Tim Nicholls pointed out Ms Palaszczuk did not yet have the 47 seats needed for a parliamentary majority.

"The people of Queensland need to know whether Annastacia Palaszczuk will keep her word," he said.

"She broke her word last time, she said she wouldn't govern with minor parties or independents and she did."

Monday, 27 November 2017

Great Barrier Reef coral-breeding program offers 'glimmer of hope'

Great Barrier Reef

Project, which could help restore damaged coral populations, has seen success in the Philippines

Australian Associated Press

Scientists have stepped in as environmental matchmakers by breeding baby coral on the Great Barrier Reef in a move that could have worldwide significance.
Coral eggs and sperm were collected from Heron Island’s reef during last November’s coral spawning to produce more than a million larvae.
The larvae were returned to the wild and placed on to reef patches in underwater mesh tents, with 100 surviving and growing successfully.
The lead project researcher and Southern Cross University professor Peter Harrison, who discovered mass coral spawning in the 1980s, says the “results are very promising”.
“The success of this new research not only applies to the Great Barrier Reef, but has potential global significance,” Harrison said.
“It may [also] be one of the answers to some of the problems in the Great Barrier Reef. It’s a glimmer of hope.”
The project has the ability to restore damaged coral populations and has seen similar success in the Philippines where blast fishing using explosives to kill schools of fish has destroyed coral.
The Great Barrier Reef Foundation managing director, Anna Marsden, said the research is an important step for the reef, but one that should not lessen the strong action needed against climate change.
“There is much more to be done, but this is definitely a great leap forward for the reef, and for the restoration and repair of reefs worldwide,” she said.
“It’s time to be bold and take some calculated risks because that’s the way we’ll make a change in how we can help restore our coral reefs.”
The team returned to Heron Island in November to collect further coral eggs and sperm for the next step in the project.

Queensland election offers Turnbull no respite as right-leaning voters show their anger

Queensland election 2017

Katharine Murphy

The state election lays bare the challenges the political right in Australia faces: unless the Coalition can connect with the disaffected, they will continue looking elsewhere for answers

One Nation leader Senator Pauline Hanson at a polling booth in the Sunshine Coast on Saturday.

Contact author

Let’s be clear up front. Unless the Liberal National party was able to pull off a major upset on Saturday night, storming to government in its own right, there really was no good result for Malcolm Turnbull from the Queensland election.
You see that when you work through the various hypothetical scenarios.
A Labor win would be confirmation of the national repudiation of the Coalition, underscoring that hard-baked negative trend in the major opinion polls. A Labor win in Queensland would be particularly bad news, because Queensland is a state which determines national elections, because of the large number of marginal seats.
If the LNP was able to just scrape across the line, forming a minority government with the support of One Nation or the Katter boys – the focus of the punditry would not be on Queensland going from red to blue. The focus would be on the protest vote, and the implications of that fracture for the Coalition federally, because that’s the inflection point.
So let’s move now from the hypothetical to the actual.

The ABC’s election analyst Antony Green has now called the contest for Labor, predicting the ALP will secure 48 seats and majority government.
It’s clear that two elections happened in Queensland on Saturday night.
There was an election in the south-east in the state, where Labor got the upper hand, and the progressive vote was boosted by a solid result from the Greens, and then an election in regional Queensland, where the LNP fared better, but not decisively so, with corrosive competition from One Nation and the Katter operation.
There was a solid protest vote for One Nation, broadly in line with the opinion polls going into the contest, but Pauline Hanson’s party struggled to convert community support to seats.
Despite that problem, that dimension of Hanson’s underperformance, the outlook for mainstream rightwing politics is grim.
The biggest loser from the One Nation insurgency is clearly the LNP, haemorrhaging a chunk of its primary vote, and those preferences don’t flow back uniformly.
So assuming this protest sentiment holds, and there is no reason for it to evaporate, the Coalition federally is in an invidious position.
If it is not inclined to take One Nation on, to have the principled fight, to confront the vacancy of the economic populism and the crass xenophobia, then does the Coalition seek a preference deal to try and get some of those preferences flowing back its way?
But if it goes down that path, does it then invite opprobrium from Liberal voters, the denizens of cosmopolitan Australia, who want the mainstream political parties of Australia to lock One Nation out of parliaments around the country?

Is Malcolm Turnbull game to take to confront the economic populism and crass xenophobia of One Nation?

Is Malcolm Turnbull’s party game to confront the economic populism and crass xenophobia of One Nation? Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

So, in summary, the Queensland election offers Turnbull no respite – it just lays bare the complex challenges the political right in Australia faces, which are not exactly abstract at the federal level, given the ongoing instability in Canberra is forcing all political parties to ready themselves for a possible election sooner than anyone planned.
Queensland will doubtless embolden the professional Turnbull knockers, the internal enemies, and the caustic little coterie on Sky and Sydney radio, to argue the prime minister is not the leader with the capacity to woo back the voters who have peeled off to One Nation.
What can a man like Turnbull possibly have to say to a regional voter who has lost their job and has little prospect finding another one? What is the basic connection point?
The bitching and the backbiting will continue as parliament resumes, and the government holds it breath, waiting on the voters’ verdict in Bennelong.
But while Turnbull will be a focal point, the truth is the right’s problems go far deeper than a prime minister who hasn’t lived up to expectations.
The truth is the Liberal party does not have an obvious prime minister in the wings who can connect with both inner-city Brisbane and with Townsville.
But it’s bigger than that problem.
A big chunk of right-leaning Queenslanders have, in this election, turned their back on a political system which they think is rigged against them and doesn’t connect with them, and they are angry enough not to care about the practical consequences of their protest.
Until the mainstream right in this country has something meaningful to say about that, voters will be looking for answers elsewhere.

Queensland election: how Adani helped undo the LNP's push to regain power

Queensland election 2017

Exit polls in the state’s south-east found up to 70% of respondents were against the billion-dollar rail line loan for Adani

Amy Remeikis

It was the sleeper issue that ended up dominating the Queensland election campaign – and, in the end, activists believed, may have saved government for Labor.
Labor sits the closest to the majority needed to take government in Queensland, 47 seats, after receiving gains in the south-east, largely helped by a drop in support for the Liberal National party.
Among those were Maiwar, the electorate held by the shadow treasurer, Scott Emerson, who looks to have lost largely due to Greens preferences, along with other LNP-held inner-city seats such as Mount Ommaney and Mansfield, which both look to have fallen to Labor.
Exit polls commissioned by GetUp in those electorates found up to 70% of respondents were against the billion-dollar rail line loan for Adani, while another 30% said Labor’s decision to veto the loan helped decide how they would vote.
“We already know the majority of voters from every single party at play opposed the Naif loan, including LNP and One Nation voters,” the GetUp environmental justice director, Sam Regester, told Guardian Australia. “Taking a stronger position against Adani clearly contributed to the swing in south-east Queensland. Just as tellingly, Labor held on to the regional seats that folks like conservative analysts predicted would fall because of the veto.”

As of Sunday evening, the rural Labor seat of Mirani looked like falling to One Nation, while Townsville, which had been considered to have been saved for Labor, was slipping back to the LNP on postal and pre-votes.
Both were areas where voters support the Adani mine but, on Sunday, Labor strategists were putting the probable losses down to support for One Nation.
“I don’t think the Adani veto was a big deal to our campaign because, if it was, I think it would have shown up in Thuringowa [in north Queensland]. For us, it was an issue which distracted our campaign from day one and it meant we got no clear air, we were asked about it every single day.
“Then the veto happened and we were still asked about it, because it was the most interesting thing happening. Then Pauline Hanson entered the campaign and she became the most interesting issue.
“I think it stopped us from being able to talk about our issues at first and then, with the veto, we eventually managed to move on.”
Regester said that was because voters in the south-east, particularly, saw a point of difference.
“The strong showing of the Greens, particularly in south Brisbane and Maiwar, showed more than anything the value of having the clearest, strongest policy on Adani,” he said. “ For most of the last term of government, the two major parties were equally bad on this key issue, so it’s no wonder they picked up a swag of votes.
“Labor was able to offset this somewhat with the Naif veto but this election made it clear that the Greens can be a threat to both major parties when they’re not up to scratch, particularly on Adani.”
Galaxy’s exit poll, based on 1760 voters across 18 electorates across Queensland, had jobs, health and stable government as the top issues for most voters, with the Adani mining development being named as the most important issue by just 16 per cent of voters.
Other campaigners weren’t quite so sure the veto issue could be dismissed.
“I think it is hard to say,” another Labor strategist said. “It was certainly a dominant issue during the campaign. It was always a feature of internal party polls – with mixed results.”
Those mixed results came from a south-east vote, which was either pleased, or apathetic, about the loan veto, contrasting with a desire in central and north Queensland to see the mine begin work as soon as possible.
The veto proved an issue against Labor in Rockhampton, where the independent candidate, former mayor Margaret Strelow, who failed in her bid for Labor preselection despite Annastacia Palaszczuk’s support, strongly spoke out against the decision to bypass the loan.
Strelow’s preferences are now looking instrumental in deciding the seat. In Townsville, the mayor, Jenny Hill, a known friend of Palaszczuk, was also critical of the decision and did not appear with Labor during Palaszczuk’s campaign visits. Townsville is another seat going down to the wire for the incumbent government.
But some within the LNP, who are facing what has become known as “teal” seats, particularly in the inner-suburbs of cities, where voters may be socially conscious but economically conservative, believe the veto was enough to drive votes to the Greens.
It was those preferences that look like handing seats to Labor.
“It was a significant emotional issue for Greens voters which motivated them,” one LNP strategist said in the wash up. “In my view, the loan is dead.”
Others were a little more pragmatic.
“Do I think anyone wants to see a billion of taxpayer dollars go to a mining company? No, I don’t think anyone is overly in support of that,” an LNP campaigner said. “But what could we do? It’s not like we could veto something our own federal government set up.”
Palaszczuk announced she would veto the loan at the end of her first week of campaigning. Up until then, she was followed by anti-Adani protesters, who ambushed her at events, with the gatecrashing dominating the news cycle.
Announcing that she had learnt of a “smear campaign” by political opponents, to reveal her partner’s role at Price WaterhouseCoopers in helping Adani put together its loan application for the rail line, presenting a conflict of interest, Palaszczuk said if she won government, she would veto the loan.
Under the Naif rules, the states need to give approval for the loan. On Sunday, Palaszczuk confirmed she would stand by the veto decision. She also committed Labor to not allowing any taxpayer funds to flow to the mine, or its associated infrastructure, although has refused to give details of the royalty holiday granted to Adani, worth about $350m, which she said would be paid back with interest.
“We will veto the loan, they said on the 6th of June that they had the green light that they would build the mine and the rail line and we expect them to get on with it,” a Palaszczuk spokesman said.
The future of Adani now rests on whether it can receive financing to begin construction in the Galilee Basin, with some reports it may be close to securing Chinese money to open the mine. That has the potential to create another issue for the Queensland government, be it the LNP or Labor, as both have said they remain in support of the mine for the jobs it will create, with the Chinese funds potentially coming with Chinese labourer and steel strings attached.
GetUp have not finished fighting the project and Regester said Labor’s position was “still nowhere good enough” and a potential issue for the next federal election.
“After watching Adani dominate the state election, there will be folks in federal Labor keen to not see the next federal election nearly de-railed in the same way,” Regester said. “It’s in their interest to get on the right side of this extraordinary movement and oppose the entire Adani [mine] outright.

US tobacco companies forced to run ads admitting cigarettes are addictive and smoking kills

Extract from ABC News

By James Carmody

Updated about 3 hours ago

Video: Cancer Council WA wants US-style big tobacco advertisements shown here (ABC News)

Millions of Americans have opened their Sunday morning newspapers to find full page advertisements from tobacco companies with statements saying that smoking kills and cigarettes are intentionally designed to get people addicted.

Key points:

The ads will feature in 50 major newspapers, as well as on TV
They contain messages about the adverse health effects of smoking
Cancer Council WA has taken out its own ads in hopes it will help people quit

The companies will also pay for television ads running between 30 and 45 seconds with the same message to air on major television networks at prime time, five nights a week for a year.
The "corrective statements" have been ordered by the US Federal Court and come after a 19-year legal battle with the US Department of Justice.
The newspaper advertisements will be published in 50 major US papers on five Sundays between now and March and will also feature in prime locations on the websites of these publications.

An image of one of the anti-smoking advertisements in a US newspaper.

Photo: The Washington Post was one of 50 major newspapers canvasing the entire country that ran the first of five full page advertisements on Sunday. (ABC News: Eliza Borrello)

The television advertisements will air on CBS, NBC and ABC between 7:00pm and 10:00pm on weeknights.
They will be attributed to and paid for by the tobacco companies Altria, R.J. Reynolds, Lorillard and Philip Morris USA.
In 2006 a US District Court Judge found these companies had violated civil racketeering laws and defrauded the American people.
After 10 years of litigation, the precise wording, font, format and locations of the corrective statements was agreed on last month.
The statements contain messages about the adverse health effects of smoking that include:

"More people die every year from smoking than from murder, AIDS, suicide, drugs, car crashes, and alcohol combined."

YouTube: An example of one of the ads

They also explain that smoking is addictive and hard to quit and state that the companies intentionally designed cigarettes to be more addictive.
"Smoking is highly addictive. Nicotine is the addictive drug in tobacco," the ads say.
"Cigarette companies control the impact and delivery of nicotine in many ways, including designing filters and selecting cigarette paper to maximise the ingestion of nicotine, adding ammonia to make the cigarette taste less harsh, and controlling the physical and chemical make-up of the tobacco blend.
"When you smoke, the nicotine actually changes the brain — that's why quitting is so hard."

'Deceiving the public for decades': Cancer Council WA

There are no legal requirements for the international divisions of these companies to run the statements in other countries, so Cancer Council WA has taken out its own television and newspaper advertisements featuring the statements.
Spokeswoman Kelly Kennington said it was important these messages direct from big tobacco were heard by Western Australians.
"Finally tobacco companies in the US are being forced to admit that they've been deceiving the public for decades," she said.
"Companies across the world are engaging in the same behaviour so the statements that they're required to make in the US are very, very relevant to smokers here in Australia.
"Any messages that the tobacco companies make about their own product being honest, and informing their consumers about the dangers of the product need to be heard."

Fact check: Do e-cigarettes help you quit?

It's too soon to know, according to ABC Fact Check.

Ms Kennington said there had been good progress in reducing smoking prevalence in WA but with 12 per cent of the adult population still smoking this was too high.
She said smokers are always needing new reasons to quit and Cancer Council WA believed it would help if smokers heard admissions from tobacco companies that they had been manipulated.
"Today 180,000 West Australians woke up and the first thing they did was have a cigarette," she said.
"We've showed this ad already to a collection of smokers and the majority of them have been really alarmed and angry that the tobacco industry has been able to behave like this over the years.
"Particularly the fact that they're admitting they intentionally design cigarettes to be more addictive.

"They were quite shocked by these admissions and we're hoping that this gives West Australian smokers another reason to quit."

Out-of-this-world space careers you can have without leaving Earth

ABC Science

By Anna Salleh

Posted about 2 hours ago

Becoming a NASA astronaut or going to Mars is often the first thing people think about when it comes to having a space career.
But, while there are more astronaut training opportunities than ever, actual openings for space travel are still limited.
The truth is there's so much more on offer when it comes to space jobs.
And it's worth considering some of the Earth-based space jobs now available, many of which are here because of cheaper satellite technology and a boom in private space industry funding.

Space flight controller

Imagine watching 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets every day and chatting with astronauts orbiting Earth. That's what Andrea Boyd does.
She's the only Australian working in mission control for the International Space Station (ISS).

YouTube: Watch Andrea talk about her job and her tips on how to get into a space career

Based at the European Space Agency, she works with teams in Europe, Japan, Russia and the US to keep the ISS on track and to support the onboard astronauts as they carry out scientific experiments and other activities.
Andrea is a Eurocom specialist, which means she has a broad overview of the experiments and acts as a communication channel between the crew, flight director, and various specialists on the ground.
"A Eurocom is the person that talks to the astronauts on a day-to-day basis," says Andrea.
She adds that the astronauts like to know who they're talking to back on Earth.
Every three months there's a different combination of crew and every six months a new set of experiments ranging from medical to materials science.
"We're above politics," Andrea told ABC Canberra.

"It's full-on science all day with a break for lunch and they have to do their exercise during the day … There's never a dull day at work."

More from mission control

Listen to audio of Andrea on the job in this Life Matters interview.

And it gets particularly interesting when the astronauts have a problem and mission control has to solve it on the spot.
"Given astronauts are smart people, the problem is likely to be quite difficult," she says.
Andrea says she learnt the word "engineer" at age 10 watching Star Trek Voyager's Chief Engineer Belanna Torres making things in space work.
Andrea studied mechatronic engineering at university, did volunteer space work, gained experience in robotics and automation engineering, and then worked for many years in mining engineering before landing her job at the ISS six years ago.

Satellite engineer

There are a growing number of jobs in designing and building rockets, satellites and spacecraft.
Chris Willshire has one of these jobs — he works at a start-up company called Fleet where he designs components for satellite systems.
Like Andrea, he also studied mechatronics at university, and for his honours degree he invented a new type of autonomous drone that could fly in turbulent wind gusts.
He was literally walking home after handing in his thesis when he got a phone call with an offer for a job in the space industry.

"Space comes with a whole new set of challenges," he says.
Anything that is sent up into space has to survive a rocket launch, for a start. Then there's the harsh extremes of temperature, the lack of gravity, and the fact that you have to control everything remotely.
Chris is currently working on cubesats — shoebox-sized satellites — that will allow remote sensing of the environment anywhere in the world.
He manages a team that is building ground-based 'portals' to collect customised wireless signals from nearby sensors and beams the signal up to the satellite 600 kilometres overhead in Low Earth Orbit (LEO).
Such a system could be useful, for example, on large remote farms where sensors measure soil moisture levels over large distances and send data via the portal to a satellite.
The data can then be zapped back down to Earth and via internet to a farmer's computer to help them decide whether to water crops or not.
The sensor systems could also be used for monitoring water pollution on the Great Barrier Reef or the temperature of perishables travelling over long distances.

Satellite controller

Far beyond the orbit of the International Space Station are satellites in Geosynchronous (GEO) orbit — they stay in the same spot above Earth.
Tim Broadbent controls a number of GEO communication satellites in his job at Optus.
He works 12-hour shifts on a 24/7 roster with 10 others and among other things has to make sure the satellites stay in their allotted 70-kilometre cubed bit of space.
"It's like being an air traffic controller except instead of the plane being flown by a pilot, it's flown by a computer, and it's just a lot further away and it never lands."
A typical day for Tim involves running routine checks, but being on standby for any emergencies.
Once he had to dodge a Russian rocket and another time he was involved in the nail-biting process of putting a failing satellite out of action — by shooting it out into the so-called "Graveyard Orbit".

As a kid, Tim wanted to be a NASA astronaut but he was put off by the barriers in place. He did a degree in aerospace engineering and just finished a masters in satellite systems engineering.
Even though he feels very lucky to land what he calls a "real" space job without having to go overseas, Tim now wishes he'd studied mechatronics — a classic degree for people wanting to work in automation and robotics.
But, he says, his aerospace degree could still prove useful.
"It could come in handy if I ever go and work for someone who launches rockets!"

Space entrepreneur

Self-confessed "space evangelist" Solange Cunin grew up in a "very low-tech" environment on a farm in northern NSW but has been interested in space since she was a child.
She got her first telescope from Santa Claus when she was just eight years old, and quickly decided she wanted to be an astrophysicist, although this soon changed to engineer.
"I was always making, fixing and breaking things," she says.

In 2015, while part-way through an aerospace engineering degree. Solange started a company called Cuberider.
It gets high-school students to design and carry out experiments on the International Space Station.
The students are responsible for coding that controls sensors used in experiments on the ISS.
Student projects have included using microgravity data to create a virtual reality simulation for astronaut or space tourist training; using humidity measurements to develop moisturising cream for astronauts; and using pressure measurements to test the effectiveness of ISS pressurisation system.
"These are kids aged 11-16, so it's pretty amazing," says Solange.
She says the aim is to educate and inspire.
"I don't think there's anything that can trump being involved in a project that has significance to our species and our planet"
"Even just talking about there being billions of stars in our Galaxy … that's an unfathomable number. And there are a thousand things like that in space."
As far as space careers, Solange is excited in particular about occupations in space medicine and space psychology.
"They have to think about humans trapped in a small space for a long time a long way from the rest of humanity," she says.
"As humans become more interplanetary the number of jobs in space is going to grow. You'll have things like an Earth specialisation or a Mars specialisation."

Space lawyer

With the upsurge in activity in space there is an increasing need for space lawyers.
"The growing number of space start-up companies in Australia do not have access to specialised space lawyers and are struggling to find commercial lawyers with significant experience in space-related transactions," says Donna Lawler.
She works as assistant general counsel at Optus, advising on regulations and negotiating contracts that determine things like who is responsible when things go wrong with satellite launches.

And accidents in space tends to be a lot more serious than those on the ground, says Donna — so much so they are called "space calamaties".
They include rockets or satellites crashing into things on the earth or in space, or becoming dangerous space junk.
And beyond these issues, space lawyers may also find themselves on the cutting edge. For example, while the 1967 Outer Space Treaty only allows for space to be used for "peaceful purposes", Donna says there is hot debate about whether this means the military can use weapons in space.
And while no one is supposed to be able to have ownership of space, she says there is a lack of clarity around exploitation of resources in space, for example asteroid mining.
Donna recommends anyone interested in becoming a space lawyer should study commercial law, international law and space law. And it's helpful to have a background in science too, she says.

Donna happens to be married to Steven Freeland, who lectures in space law and is Dean of Western Sydney University's law school. Steven says while some claim that space begins above 100 kilometres up, there is actually no international agreement on where space starts.
And a lot of activities actually occur at high altitude levels below 100 kilometres.
So, if a space tourist flight took people up 80 kilometres could they still legally claim they had taken them into space?
Australia is currently rewriting its space law and an expert panel, which Steven is involved in, is drawing up a charter for the country's newly-proposed space agency.

And more...

While space engineering and data analysis may dominate the Australian space jobs market, being a space lawyer is just one space career that doesn't focus on the physical sciences.
Others include space medicine or space psychology — which involves studying such things as the effects on astronauts of weightlessness, radiation or long periods away from home in a confined environment.
And then there are even space archaeologists and space anthropologists who study different aspects of the interface between space activities and humanity.