WHY?• Indigenous mortality • Kids in detention • Treaties ignored

WHY NOT?• A charter for human rights

T R A C I N G T H E FA M I LY S U P E R T R E E A N D W H Y P O W E R P O I N T FA I L S

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Contents4 Meet UNSW Foundation’s

Jennifer Bott

5 Richard Buckland: Factoringin fun

6 Cover story: Human rights round-up.Indigenous Australians:Prisoners of the system

8 Rewriting the language ofhuman rights

9 Why we need a charter ofhuman rights

10 Treaties: Signed but notdelivered

11 Struck off the roll

12 Insects guide unmannedhelicopters

13 Tracing the family‘supertree’

14 The classroom whisperer

16 Splendour and decay

18 Daily life in war time

20 Last Word. The secondinternet revolution

Dr Craig Roberts is a lecturer in the School of Surveyingand Spatial Information Systems and a keen rock climber.What’s the attraction inhanging off a sheer cliffface?Bushwalking got boring. It’s acombination of being in abeautiful place that few can (orwant to) access, the sense offreedom, the beauty of themovement, solving a sequenceof moves presented by a naturalrock face, camaraderie,challenge, repeating ascents ofprevious climbers, aestheticsand being part of a naturalenvironment rather than justobserving it. It’s really such a joy.

The best climbs?The Nose of El Capitan inYosemite Valley, California –1000 m of perfect vertical tooverhanging granite. It took fourdays when we climbed it. TheComici route on the Trei Cimai inthe Dolomites in Northern Italy.A 500 m north wall at 3500 m.

The Verdon Gorge in thesouth of France, the gritstone ofthe Peak district in England, theGrampians in Victoria and nearby Mt Arapiles, Heuco Tanks in Texas, Moonarie in SouthAustralia, Frog Buttress in Queensland ... I need a vacation.

Is your love of the outdoors why you chose Surveying and Spatial?Definitely. I worked for a research organisation in the US and was sent on large projects inNepal, Ethiopia, Argentina and Indonesia to measure plate tectonics using GPS. This wasanything goes, high adventure with the outcome being good GPS data – however you got it. Lotsof logistics, in-country training, equipment maintenance and jiggery pokery to make the projecthappen. A great combination of outdoors and a professional skill.

What do you enjoy most about your discipline?Finding practical solutions to difficult problems. These days I am an educator and get a kick outof finding an innovative way to explain a concept to a student.

What inspires you?Stories of hardship made good. People who overcome difficulties and still manage to achievewhat they set out to do and more. I’m also pretty excited about watching pimple-faced 17-year-olds grow and mature into young professionals and graduate from our school.

If you could leave your students with one legacy what would it be?A sense of ownership of their profession. Rather than just graduating and doing what they’retold, I’d like to think they have the skills to identify new opportunities and grow the professionbased on the exposure they have had in their degree program – and hopefully come back forsome postgrad study later on in their careers. �

Uniken is produced by the UNSW Office of Media and CommunicationsT 02 9385 2873 E uniken@unsw.edu.auwww.unsw.edu.au/news/pad/uniken.html

Editor: Mary O’Malley

Editorial team: Judy Brookman, Victoria Collins,Dan Gaffney, Brad Hall, Susi Hamilton, JaneHunter and Erin Rutherford.

Design and production: Gadfly Media

Proofreading: Pam Dunne

On the cover: Aboriginal hands by Grant Faint,Getty Images.

Australia Post print approved PP224709/00021

UNSW, Sydney NSW 2052CRICOS Provider No 00098G

Five minutes with ...

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Geosequestration cannot be fitted to existing coal power stations, only new ones.Dr Ben McNeil, on why not one gram of today’s carbon dioxideemissions from coal power will bestored underground – Sydney Morning Herald.

The RQF is not a good thing – it’s anexpensive way to measure somethingthat could be measured relativelysimply.Professor Fred Hilmer on thegovernment’s Research QualityFramework which assesses thequality and impact of publicly fundedresearch – Campus Review.

The use of PowerPoint is a disaster. It should be ditched.Professor John Sweller, founder ofCognitive Load Theory, on how popular presentation methods ignore the architecture of the brain. – Sydney Morning Herald.

People now see HIV infection assomething that happens to Africans or someone else.Professor Susan Kippax, National Centre in HIV Social Research, on theneed for another Grim Reaper-style safe sex campaign – Southern Courier.

Species that lack tolerance like some possums and koalas – the cuteones – would not survive.Professor Andy Pitman, Climate Change Research Centre, on theability of Australia’s native species tosurvive the impacts of climate change – Sydney Morning Herald.

The age of innocence has passed, andrather than take a chance and be blindto possibilities, we should be prepared.Professor Leon Trakman, Faculty ofLaw, on the need for universities to balance open access and securityin planning for tragic events such as the Virginia Tech massacre in which 33 students were killed. – The Australian

For the recordAcademy of Science winnersThree UNSW academics havebeen elected as Fellows of theAustralian Academy of Science(right). Professor David Cooper,the Director of the NationalCentre in HIV Epidemiology andClinical Research; Ian Dawes,Professor of Genetics in theSchool of Biotechnology andBiomolecular Sciences; andProfessor Richard Harvey, aUNSW employee on an EndowedChair of Cardiovascular Research at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute, were amongthe leading scientists honoured by the Academy.

All the right signalsUNSW researchers have developed thefirst Australian receiver that can pick upboth the L1 and L2C GPS frequencies, aswell as the signal from the first prototypeGalileo satellite.

“We are the first people in Australia todesign hardware and software that will pickup the Galileo signal,” explains AssociateProfessor Andrew Dempster, Director ofResearch in the School of Surveying andSpatial Information Systems.

User friendly

Tips from our academic expertsBy Professor John Evans, Faculty of Business

In a climate of unpredictable interest rates, how does one decide whether to elect for a “fixed”or a “variable” mortgage?

“Variable” mortgages means that there is no set interest rate in absolute terms, but a ratethat is related usually to some short-term cash rate, i.e. the lender can change the rate up ordown, whereas a “fixed” mortgage usually has a fixed rate of interest for a certain period.

If you have an expectation that interest rates might rise in the next few years, then locking ina fixed interest rate makes sense; but if rates fall instead of going up, then you will be payingmore than you otherwise would be.

Another reason for selecting a fixed-term mortgage would be if you could not withstand anincreased repayment; by locking in the rate you are insulating yourself from unexpected rises.

However, if you want to repay the mortgage early, there can be penalties, as the lender maynot be able to reinvest the money at the same rate and will want to be compensated for theloss. Variable mortgages can also involve early repayment penalties, but these usually onlyreflect fees that might have been paid upfront to the mortgage broker.

Another major disadvantage of fixed-term mortgages can be the difficulty of rolling over themortgage when the fixed term expires; if your situation has changed you may have troublegetting a new loan.

Unless you think you can predict interest rates (and the success rate with the professionalfund managers is not good) then go for a variable interest rate mortgage, and keep life simple.

* These tips do not purport to be financial advice for any specific situation.

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Q: What attracted you to UNSW?A: The opportunity to use my skills in a newenvironment. I had come from the AustraliaCouncil where I worked closely with DavidGonski. Universities are one of the greatfrontiers in our society. They’re changingrapidly and I look forward to being able to workagain with David, for whom I have such respect,in tackling what are some very important issuesfor the University. David has agreed to Chairthe Foundation (as well as serving asChancellor) for at least two years.

Q: Do you agree that the universitysector is untapped when it comes to philanthropy?A: Both David and I feel that the Foundation canbe an exciting resource – and a much largerresource than it has been. The focus of ourfundraising would clearly be in the area ofscholarships and research, but also forenhanced partnerships, supporting key UNSWprograms. Governments can’t do it all anymoreand so it’s a way of building partnerships withthe corporate sector but also increasingly inphilanthropy. Philanthropy is the fastest-growing source of income for the not-for-profit sector in all fields.

Q: What would you like to achieve, inbroad terms, with the Foundation?A: Apart from being a catalyst for partnershipsand a way to fund great ideas, I’d like it to

provide an important link to alumni. In Australiawe’re just starting to really see the potential ofthose hundreds of thousands of students whoselives have been changed, and whose careershave been formed by coming to UNSW.

The foundation will be the way UNSWgenerates significantly more funds – working ineach faculty on key projects and alumniprograms as well as their support for the

University’s scholarships, research, key projectsand programs and faculty strategic priorities. A lot of my job is actually making the most ofthe great things that are happening anyway and just haven’t been pulled together in a waythat works for the University.

Q: Your role in building philanthropicculture in Australia?A: The kind of personal engagement in thingsyou care about is one of the healthiest thingshappening in our society. In Australia thenumber of prescribed private foundations(PPFs) that have been established in recentyears is just galloping. An enormous amount ofnew money is coming in to charitable giving andit’s not replacing anything else – it is literallynew money. It’s enabling individuals and theirfamilies, through family trusts and other means,to get involved in projects they care about. InAustralia we have enormously highexpectations of government and in many waysthat has been an inhibitor to giving personally.But that’s rapidly changing because peoplerecognise that companies, government andindividuals need to partner each other to build a better society, be it in education or health, the arts or environmental sustainability.

As David Gonski says, if you look at the Billand Melinda Gates Foundation and fast forward100 years, people will know the name Gates forthe Foundation, they won’t even know whatMicrosoft was. �

Double happiness In what’s believed to be a first, a married couple have graduatedtogether with Doctorates of Medicine from UNSW.

Professor George Murrell and Associate Professor Dédée Murrell,both of whom are UNSW conjoint academics at St George ClinicalSchool, were each awarded their MDs by published thesis in aceremony last month.

Each published thesis represents about 15 years’ worth ofpublications in journals.

George received his MD for work on nitric oxide and tendon healing,while Dédee was conferred with hers for studies on blistering diseases.

The couple’s three children, Oliver, 12, Alexander, 10, and Isabella, 8,also attended the ceremony

The couple have some house rules which keep the family and theircareers on track: they don’t go out during the week, they alternateconferences to ensure one of them is always at home with thechildren, and they take time off during the school holidays to relax as a family. �

Strong FoundationQ&A with Jennifer Bott, CEO, UNSW Foundation

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Some doubt that his computer sciencestudents can learn anything when theyare having so much fun in lectures.

But the man who authored a teaching guidecalled, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Lovethe Job, also has a string of teaching honoursto his credit, including an Australian College ofEducators Quality Teaching Award and a Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Teaching Excellence.

“Every adult learner has a little kid inside who wants to be fascinated and entertained,”says Buckland, who got his introduction toteaching as a year-nine mathematics teacher.

“Children love learning new facts and skills.So, if we bring creativity and a sense of wonderto the way we engage learners – no matter whattheir age – I believe we can meet people’s innatedesire to learn about themselves and the world.

“The trick is to find out what fascinatespeople, and that means asking studentsquestions and listening to their answers. If you can do that, the rest,” he says, “is easy.”

He should know. In addition to 10 yearsteaching at UNSW, Buckland – a senior lecturer inthe School of Computer Science and Engineering– has successfully taught and mentored people ofall ages and abilities. He has taught children withlearning maths and language difficulties, giftedchildren, highly numerate actuarial students, andguest-lectured at Stanford, Oxford and ImperialCollege London.

His ability to reach even the youngest ofstudents is helped by being a father of threeyoung children. His self-created home page listshis hobbies as “being a dad, bush regeneration,geology, being a dad, theatresports, cinema,being a dad, and speaking in the third person”.

Buckland’s policy of engaging learners meansthat his first-year computer science students get entertaining challenges such as creatingrobotic hands from Lego that can manipulateand solve Rubic’s cube problems. His studentsalso get to indulge their childish side whilelearning to program railway networks usingThomas the Tank Engine toys.

These creative learning opportunities have

been extended to outreach learning workshopsthat the School of Computer Science andEngineering offers to schools and teachers.During April and May, the School ran a six-weekprogram of robotics workshops pitched atteachers and school students from years 4 through to 12.

“The workshops were about kids having some serious fun with robots and exposingthem to several programming languages,” says Buckland, who has since handed over therunning of the program.

The workshops featured three robot designs– DanceBot, RescueBot and SoccerBot – and the workshops’ learning outcomes were tied tothe NSW Department of Education’s SoftwareTechnology syllabus. Using Lego MindstormNXT software, children learnt to program theirrobots by “dropping and dragging” computericons that needed no knowledge ofprogramming code.

As an IT expert and former Microsoft ResearchFellow, Buckland is something of an oddity. He doesn’t own a mobile phone and he spurnsemail. “I spend an hour at most responding toemail each day. Unfortunately, spam has becomea major impediment to email traffic but beyondthat, people have become far too reliant on email as a communication tool,” says Buckland,who is an expert in computer security, cyber-crime, cryptography and cyber-terror. �

Factoring in funTeacher, researcher and dad.Richard Buckland draws onall three roles to inform hislively teaching style. By Dan Gaffney

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“It doesn’t matter which subject it is, as long as it’s withRichard,” says Peggy Kuo (second from right), learningcomputer programming through game playing with JoeXie, Martha Winata and Richard Buckland (far right).

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Artists fly the flag at BiennaleThree artists with strong COFA links have

been selected to represent Australia at the

Venice Biennale in July.

COFA graduates Rosemary Laing and

Shaun Gladwell and PhD student Susan

Norrie are three of six Australian artists

appearing at the prestigious event.

Rosemary Laing and Shaun Gladwell

have been chosen by Venice Biennale

artistic director Robert Storr for his

curated section of the prestigious

international event. Laing will exhibit three

works from her 2004 photographic series

To walk on a sea of salt. Gladwell will

exhibit a new video installation influenced

by the Australian desert landscape.

Susan Norrie’s PhD work – an immersive

video installation – will form part of the

Australian official representation within

the Australian Pavilion and at external

sites in Venice.

The news comes following the recent

successes of other COFA artists.

John Beard, visiting professor at COFA,

was awarded the 2007 Archibald Prize for

his monochrome portrait of fellow artist

Janet Laurence. �

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The over-representation of Indigenouspeople in gaol points to a major humanrights issue in Australia, says NSG

Professor of Criminology Chris Cuneen.On a per capita basis, Indigenous people

are 13 times more likely to be in prison inAustralia than non-Indigenous people. Insome states, like Western Australia, thefigures on over-representation are evenworse.

“These statistics are reflective of a muchdeeper problem,” Professor Cuneen says.“Our legal system does not work to protectIndigenous people’s rights in the same way itdoes for other Australians.

“Problems arise because of two mainissues: the failure to ensure the human rightsprinciple of equality before the law, and thefailure to adequately recognise specificIndigenous rights.

“Major areas of inequality include servicesfor victims of crime, particularly of familyviolence and sexual abuse, non-custodialsentencing options, offender programs, andprograms and counselling for substanceabuse.

“Fairness for Indigenous people in thecriminal justice system arises as an issuecontinually. For example, the failure toprovide interpreters for all Indigenous people

means that there are very real questions asto whether Indigenous people understand thelegal proceedings against them, or thesentences that are imposed.

“Finally there is the question of recognitionof Indigenous rights, particularly rights tomaintain and develop culture, and to self-determination. For much of the colonial

period, government policy was aimed atdestroying Indigenous culture. Today themassive criminalisation of Indigenous peoplecontinues to disrupt family and communitylife, and to limit what educational andeconomic opportunities might exist.”

Professor Cuneen is currently working withthe Department of Communities inQueensland to find better ways of supporting

“ “One of the reasons thatAboriginal women don’t go tothe police is because they arescared that their children willbe taken away, as they have

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Prisonersof the systemThe country’s legal system doesnot work to protect Indigenouspeople’s rights in the same wayit does for other Australians. By Victoria Collins

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When laws fail usWhy we need a national charter of rights. By George Williams

Aboriginal women who are victims ofdomestic violence.

He says women aren’t using theprotection systems to the level that onewould expect, given the number ofpeople affected. The problem is causedby a combination of historical andcontemporary policy issues andproblems with how the system workswithin remote communities.

“One of the reasons that Aboriginalwomen don’t go to the police is becausethey are scared that their children willbe taken away, as they have been in thepast,” says Professor Cuneen. “If awoman who has children goes to thepolice about domestic violence, thepolice are obligated to notify the childprotection authorities.”

Support systems, legal and otherwise,for victims of domestic violence alsohave been developed around modelsthat are more likely to work effectivelyin urban centres.

In isolated Aboriginal communitieseveryone knows the location of thewomen’s shelter. Women can’t go therefor help without the whole communityknowing. It can also be difficult toenforce separation orders between ex-partners in small isolatedcommunities often comprising fewerthan 1000 people.

These problems, Professor Cuneenbelieves, require a rethinking of thesystem.

“We are looking at possible lawreform, as well as non-legal alternativessuch as a bigger role for communityjustice groups,” he says.

Professor Cuneen was also a memberof the recent NSW Aboriginal ChildSexual Assault Task Force, and hasworked on the NSW Department ofJuvenile Justice’s plan to reducecontact of Aboriginal children with thejuvenile justice system.

“Many of the young Indigenouspeople in custody have also beenvictims of child abuse. The distinctionbetween offenders and victims is notalways as clear-cut as governmentswould like to make out. Unfortunatelythe more punitive approaches currentlytaken by the government in areas suchas bail and sentencing has had anegative effect for Aboriginal kids.

“The problems of over-criminalisationof Indigenous people in Australiacertainly haven’t improved in recentyears, in fact they’ve got worse,” hesays. �

Over the past fewyears Australia haslocked up children in

conditions that have causedmany of them to becomementally ill. It seemsunthinkable that this couldhave occurred, yet it has.The problem was the law,which said that thedetention of people seekingasylum in Australia wasmandatory. That law wasapplied without exception,even to unaccompaniedchildren who were alreadysuffering trauma.

One of these children was five-year-old Shayan,who arrived in Australia in March 2000. Alongwith other members of his family he was taken tothe Woomera detention centre, a facility ringedby desert in South Australia. While in detention,Shayan witnessed hunger strikes and riots, sawauthorities responding with tear gas and watercannons, and watched as adult detainees harmedthemselves. By December that year, the detentioncentre’s medical records reveal that Shayan wasexperiencing nightmares, sleep disturbance, bedwetting and anxiety. He would wake in the night,gripping his chest and saying, “They are going tokill us.” He also drew pictures of fencescontaining himself and his family.

Three times during that year the detentioncentre managers strongly recommended to thegovernment that Shayan be moved fromWoomera. Despite further recommendations andpsychological assessments reporting high levelsof anxiety and distress, it was several monthsbefore he and his family were moved to Villawooddetention centre in Sydney.

At this time, Shayan was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. During the next fewmonths he was admitted to hospital eight timesfor acute trauma and, because he refused todrink, dehydration. He also became morewithdrawn. Medical staff consistentlyrecommended that he should be removed fromdetention and drew a direct link betweenShayan’s trauma and his experiences indetention. It wasn’t until August 2001 that thegovernment transferred him into foster care. Hewas separated from his parents and sister untilthey were released in January 2002.

Shayan was one child among many. Thestatistics make for grim reading. According to theHuman Rights and Equal OpportunityCommission, the number of children in

immigration detention peaked at 1923 in 2000–01.Some of these children had arrived in Australiaunaccompanied by family members or friends.Between 1 January 1999 and 20 June 2002, forexample, 285 unaccompanied children arrived inAustralia seeking asylum; all of them weredetained. By the end of 2003, a child placed indetention was kept there for an average of oneyear, eight months and 11 days. Some childrenwere detained for more than three years. Most of the detained children were found to berefugees and so were eventually released into the community: over the four-year period fromJuly 1999 during which most of them arrived, 92 per cent of the 2184 detained children werefound to be refugees.

The detention of children like Shayan occurredunder an Australian law introduced in 1992 by theKeating government and continued after JohnHoward became prime minister. In other nations,it would have been counter-balanced by anotherlaw, called by names such as a bill of rights,charter of rights or human rights act, setting outand protecting people’s fundamental humanrights. In Shayan’s case, this might have includedthe rights of children and more general rightssuch as freedom from arbitrary detention. Bycontrast, the Australian immigration law wasunchecked. In fact, when it was challenged in thecourts it was held to be legally unobjectionable.Shayan’s case is just one more example of whatcan happen when there is inadequate legalprotection for basic human rights. �

George Williams is the Anthony Mason Professorand Director of the Gilbert + Tobin Centre ofPublic Law at the Faculty of Law, University ofNew South Wales. This is an extract from hislatest book, A Charter of Rights for Australia,published by UNSW Press.

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Andrea Durbach wants to rearticulate thelanguage of human rights. She believesthe importance of rights has been

largely lost in a society assured of its ownprosperity.

“I’d like to see a language that resonates withpeople across society, reminding them of thecritical importance of rights for the effectivefunctioning of life within a democracy,” says theassociate professor, who is director of UNSW’sAustralian Human Rights Centre (AHRC).

“I think when society is immersed in periodsof conservatism, economic pressures and self-interest — as Australia has been for over adecade — these forces combine to erode ordiminish rights in the name of national securityor economic interests,” she says.

“Often this is achieved fairly insidiously whenleaders co-opt the traditional language of rightsor more deliberately, when governments pitrights against one another, arguing, forexample, that the protection of jobs and theright to work has primacy over the right toprotect the environment. Or that the right to befree from cruel and inhuman punishment hasno application when the threat of terrorism –often only perceived – exhorts the denigrationof rights.”

Professor Durbach believes a cavalierapproach to rights comes from a society’s beliefin its increasing and sustained prosperity andpower. “With complacency comes aforgetfulness, a failure to remember theimportance and fragility of institutions whichprotect and enhance rights – of the rule of law,of rights legislation, of the independence of thejudiciary, of government accountability.”

It was this trend that prompted ProfessorDurbach to invite author David Malouf topresent the inaugural Annual AHRC Publiclecture on “Challenging Indifference.” Shebelieves one of the greatest barriers to theprotection of rights and to change isindifference.

As the AHRC celebrates its 21st anniversarythis year, it has been developing strategicinterdisciplinary projects focusing on economic,social and cultural rights . “This creates a broad,more integrated approach to human rights,highlighting their interdependence,” saysProfessor Durbach. ”It allows the Centre toengage in research and teaching initiativesacross disciplines, such as health and humanrights, trade and corporate accountability andenvironmental justice.”

AHRC researchers are working closely with other UNSW scholars on such areas ashuman rights and public health (also with the UNSW Initiative for Health and HumanRights) and climate change. To celebrate its anniversary, the AHRC hosted a majorsymposium on the impact of climate change

on human rights. The symposium broughttogether a climate change scientist, anepidemiologist and a refugee lawyer whoseresearch demonstrated climate change andenvironmental degradation present criticalchallenges to the protection of human rightsand national security. �

8 U N I K E N

Words of honour The importance and fragility of human rights requires a new form of expression, says a leading UNSW lawyer. By Mary O’Malley

Brave heart

When asked how much her SouthAfrican upbringing informed hercommitment to human rights,

Andrea Durbach gasps. “In just about everyway,” she answers quietly.

Andrea had been practising law for onlyfour years when she found herself embroiledin one of South Africa’s most notorioushuman rights cases: The Upington 25.

On November 13, 1988, 25 black men andwomen were found guilty of the murder ofa black policeman on the outskirts of theall-white town of Upington. Fourteen ofthem were sentenced to death.

Andrea was brought into the case afterthe convictions to try and save the 14 fromthe mandatory imposition of the deathpenalty. The trial ultimately claimed the lifeof her friend, colleague and barrister to the25, Anton Lubowski, who was assassinated.

Such was the trauma, the dreadfulimpact of that trial on Andrea’s life, thatshe emigrated to Australia and wrote acathartic book about those times.

Called simply Upington (available from Amazon.com), it is a passionate and profound account of an extraordinarylegal battle in the last days of apartheid — and Andrea’s private agonies.

In May 1991, after commuting betweenSydney and South Africa to fight the case, Andrea finally stood with journalists,news crews and human rights activists infront of Pretoria’s prison to watch therelease of the 14 from Death Row.

It was a bitter-sweet victory. As GeoffreyRobertson QC wrote of the book, “AndreaDurbach is one of a small band of trulybrave lawyers who saved black lives at theperil of messing up their own.”

Andrea had once vowed she would never leave South Africa. “It has shapedme, it’s who I am,” she said. Fate had other plans but Andrea believes Australiahas given her an important opportunity to apply and adapt the lessons from South Africa. �

— Mary O’Malley

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DoublediscriminationInequalities persist in people’senjoyment of their right to health.By Susi Hamilton

The Cambodian government is rightly proud ofthe inroads it has made in tackling HIV/AIDSbut there are still glaring inequities.

“Discrimination is supposed to have plummeted,but there are still people living with HIV and AIDSwho don’t get treatment at all,” says DanielTarantola, the NewSouth Global Professor of Healthand Human Rights.

Cambodia has been able to offer antiretroviraltreatment to more than 80 percent of the estimated25,000 adults and children requiring suchtreatment in the country.

But HIV leaders are not complacent about thisremarkable achievement. Just last month theyconsensually agreed to a list of HIV-related researchpriorities to address discrimination in the healthcaresetting and within communities.

“If you are a wealthy businessman in thesecountries, you have access to treatment, but if youare seen as a drug user or sex worker and live withHIV, the story is quite different,” says theFrenchman, who has seen the crisis emerge first-hand, as a senior staff member of the World HealthOrganization Global Programme on AIDS in the1980s. “Your access to treatment is minimal, sothere is a double discrimination.”

This presents not only a horrendous personalburden but a threat to the wider communitythrough the possibility of further infection.

The Cambodian example is just one of many areasin which UNSW sees an opportunity for health andhuman rights research to further improve publichealth and human development.

Leading health workers and policy makers fromAsia and Australia will converge on UNSW in July fora short course, which is believed to be the first of itstype in the world. People are coming from suchcountries as Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos and China. Thecourse is also open to UNSW postgraduate students.

“Participants in the course will have had very littleexposure to all three concepts of health,development and human rights. All of these interactwith each other. They might be aware of one or twoof the areas, but not all three.”

While HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C remain strongresearch areas at UNSW, there are also projects inEast Timor focusing on the country’s resilienceduring instability, and a project in the SolomonIslands focusing on mental health during conflict. �

Like so many East Timorese living abroad, Dr Nelson Martins returned to his

homeland to help fight for independence there. Ironically, it is the strength of his

ties with home which have now taken him further away for another two years.The 36-year-old is the inaugural Dean’s International Post-Doctoral Fellow in the

Faculty of Medicine. He ultimately hopes to improve the health of East Timorese, bydeveloping health-related research activities in Timor Leste.

An AusAID-funded project starting by mid-year will allow Dr Nelson – as he prefers tobe known – and his colleagues to train emerging research leaders in Timor-Leste and tofacilitate the establishment of a national health research centre or institute in thecountry. The project is a partnership between UNSW, led by Professor Anthony Zwi,and Dili’s Ministry of Health.

“I’d like to commit my time and energy to research to guide health policydevelopment in my country, and to establish linkages with other Asian and Pacificcountries, especially those where health and development is poor,” he says.

While Dr Nelson is thinking of the big picture he has also helped at a grassroots level.Providing medical care in his bedroom while in hiding in Dili, or in the mountains, was

part of his role as the medical coordinator for the Falintil freedom fighters, in the lead-up to the referendum in 1999. It was dangerous work, which at times forced him to fleeoverseas for his own safety.

The fresh-faced doctor was also the founding director of East Timor’s NationalTuberculosis Control Program (NTP).

Since he started the program seven years ago, TB treatment success rates haveincreased dramatically – from only 50 percent to 82 percent now (World HealthOrganisation target is 85 percent). The recent political crisis has adversely affected theperformance of the program but Dr Nelson hopes to boost that through hispostdoctoral fellowship program.

Dr Nelson has earned a Masters of Health Management and PhD and sees the currentpostdoctoral position as a way to further strengthen the existing TB control programand other health systems.

“I’m interested in health system development and the important role that healthplays in peace-building,” he says. �

— Susi Hamilton

Dr Nelson Martins

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10 U N I K E N

Signed but not deliveredThough a signatory to many international humanrights treaties, Australia is not honouring itscommitments. By Victoria Collins

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Refugees and how to respond to them isan increasingly pressing human rightsissue for Australia, and one in which we

are lagging behind the rest of the world. As the changing climate impacts on low-lying

Pacific Islands and with an increasing number ofpeople arriving by official and unofficialchannels, the political and moral challenges ofdealing with displaced people are significant.

According to Dr Jane McAdam, from theFaculty of Law, two important issues facingAustralia’s refugee policy are complementaryprotection and “climate change refugees”.

“The legal definition of a ‘refugee’ wasestablished by the United Nations in the 1951Refugee Convention,” says Dr McAdam. “It is avery specific definition which requires refugeesto demonstrate a well-founded fear ofpersecution on account of their race, religion,nationality, political opinion, or membership of aparticular social group.

“However, since the 1950s, countries haveadopted numerous human rights treaties whichhave expanded their obligations not to sendpeople back to serious forms of harm. Theseadditional treaties, such as the Conventionagainst Torture, are complementary to theRefugee Convention, giving rise to the notion of ‘complementary protection’,” she says.

She says every Western country, exceptAustralia, has implemented thesecomplementary human rights obligations intodomestic law, so that people at risk of torture or

inhuman or degrading treatment or punishmentmust not be deported.

“In Australia, unless you can meet the verytechnical refugee definition, you cannot obtain aprotection visa. This is despite the fact thatAustralia has signed up to human rights treatiesguaranteeing that it will not send people back toother forms of serious harm. It also means thatwe aren’t carrying our fair share of the refugeeburden under international law.”

Dr McAdam believes Australia’s policydemonstrates the government’s confusionabout complementary protection.

“The Immigration Minister’s discretion togrant people a visa on humanitarian grounds isnot the same thing as a codified system ofcomplementary protection,” she says. “The verynature of a discretionary power means that itdoes not have to be exercised, and even when itis, there is no appeal mechanism. By contrast,Australia’s international treaty obligationsrequire it to ensure that no person is ever sentback to any place where he or she is at risk oftorture or inhuman or degrading treatment orpunishment. Under international law we havealready agreed to these obligations; we justaren’t enforcing them under national law. “

Dr McAdam has two related books on thetopic — Complementary Protection inInternational Refugee Law and The Refugee inInternational Law. Her research has steered hertowards looking at other displaced people whoare caught in a protection “gap”.

On Christmas Eve 2006, the world’s firstinhabited island disappeared underwater as aresult of global warming. The residents ofLohachara Island in the Bay of Bengal hadalready fled to nearby Sagar, an island that has itself already lost 7500 acres of land to thesea and risks the displacement of 30,000people by 2020.

Dr McAdam is starting work on a majorresearch project which will investigate whetherpeople fleeing habitat destruction should beconsidered using traditional refugee lawapproaches to displacement, or as a newchallenge requiring new solutions. �

Protecting the voicelessThe legal rights of animals and how theycan best be protected were discussed atthe first annual Voiceless Animal LawLecture, hosted by UNSW in early May.

The public lecture was presented byProfessor Steven M Wise, a legal expertdescribed by USA Today as “America’sbest-known animal lawyer”. Accompanyingpanellists were Emeritus Professor DavidWeisbrot, President of the Australian LawReform Commission (ALRC), GeoffreyBloom, a lecturer in animal law at UNSWand Southern Cross University, and KatrinaSharman, corporate counsel for Voiceless(www.voiceless.org.au).

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U N I K E N 11

In June 2006, Australia passedlegislation disenfranchising allprisoners serving full-time

sentences from voting in federalelections. This was the result of asuccession of changes dating from1983 which alternately extended andrestricted the prisoner franchise.

Professor David Brown from theFaculty of Law says this latest changeraises a number of troubling questionsabout prisoners’ rights, including whydisenfranchisement is happening inAustralia when developments in similarnations are moving in the oppositedirection.

Professor Brown says the HowardGovernment’s 2006 changes to theElectoral Act were contrary to theInternational Covenant on Civil andPolitical Rights (ICCPR), whichAustralia ratified in 1981.

“Although our government regularlyinvokes international treaties in thearea of trade negotiation and regionalagreements they have shown openhostility to human rights andinternational standards promotedthrough treaties, and this hostility hasincreased under the HowardGovernment,” he says.

“Also notable for its absence fromgovernment contributions to thedebate on the changes to the Act wasany reference to the importance of thefranchise as a manifestation ofcitizenship, a basic human right, and amechanism of participation in ademocratic polity.”

Another issue ignored in the government’scontributions to the debate was the goal ofprisoner rehabilitation. The UN’s StandardMinimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisonersstate that “The treatment of prisoners shouldemphasise not their exclusion from thecommunity but their continuing part in it.”

Professor Brown acknowledges that access tothe franchise is perhaps not among prisoners’most pressing concerns. Most prisonercomplaints concerned access to health services,contact with family and friends, and disciplinaryand segregation practices. However, he doesnote that the symbolic importance of the issueis neither lost on prisoners nor insignificant.

“The Howard Government’s totaldisenfranchisement of Australian prisoners in federal elections is a regressive andbackward step,” he says.

“Inasmuch as it made any specific argumentat all, the government contended that it wassimply self-evident that prisoners should forfeitthe vote while they are in prison serving sentences, as a form ofpunishment. Counter-arguments based on the international treaties; on decisions bycourts in Canada, Europe and South Africa; or on our understanding that suffrage is afundamental human right, all were missing or ignored.” �

Struck off the roll Changes to the Electoral Act are serving to disenfranchise Australians at a timewhen other countries are moving in the opposite direction. By Victoria Collins

Changes made to the Electoral Act willmake it more difficult for IndigenousAustralians to cast their vote at this year’sFederal election, according to the Faculty ofLaw’s Sean Brennan.

The changes mean new voters must enrolbefore the rolls close. For some this is thesame day the election is called. For others itis three days later. On top of this, they mustprovide proof of identity. Previously a formwitnessed by another eligible voter wasenough.

This will disadvantage Indigenous voters,particularly those in remote communitieswhere there are limited postal services.

“I think that kind of requirement doesn’tlook so imposing for people in the city, but ifyou live in a remote area you may not havea driver’s licence, your first language maynot be English and your literacy levels maybe low,” Mr Brennan says.

“Every one of these additional bits ofpaperwork that are put between you andthat fundamental democratic right are abarrier to your participation in the politicalsystem. I think we should be takingmeasures to encourage people toparticipate in the electoral system, notfinding ways to exclude them.”

The government made these changes inresponse to cases of electoral fraud and tomaintain the integrity of the roll but SeanBrennan believes the changes were notnecessary.

“There’s really no case made for the earlyclosure of the rolls. The ElectoralCommission – our independent expert bodyon elections – has consistently said, ‘Don’tdo this. This is a backward step.’”

“It’s a bad sign, to see our system startingto turn back again in the direction ofexcluding people from the franchise, ratherthan looking at alternatives that willpromote people’s participation whileensuring the integrity of the roll.”

— Jane Hunter

Vote of noconfidence

“ “The treatment of prisonersshould emphasise not their

exclusion from the communitybut their continuing part in it.

� C O V E R S T O R Y

12 U N I K E N

Pilot-free flight Australian scientists are applying insectnavigation systems to guide unmanned mini-helicopters for defence. By Dan Gaffney

The Hollywood movie Black Hawk Down,which depicts real historical events,revealed the cost of putting military

personnel and helicopters in harm’s way. By thefilm’s end, 18 US special operations soldiers aredead because several choppers were shot downin a hostile part of the Somalian capital,Mogadishu.

Manned military helicopters will always betargeted in warfare because commanders needto deploy troops and attack military targets.

However, the prospect of using self-guidedunmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for surveillancein counter-terrorism purposes has militaryplanners talking. For example, the AustralianDefence Force’s Director General of aerospacedevelopment, Air Commodore John Oddie,recently said the ADF should accelerate its plansto trial and adopt promising unmanned systems.

Not far from the ADF’s Canberraheadquarters, UNSW scientists at the AustralianDefence Force Academy are teaching a small80 kg unmanned mini-helicopter to launchitself, hover and land in wind gusts of up to 80 m/h. They hope to develop the technologyto a point where the mini chopper can doreconnaissance missions from land or sea.

“The Americans have got quite large remote-control helicopters to land on ships, but theyhave been on aircraft carriers or ships that

have been in a harbour where it is completelycalm,” says UNSW aeronautical engineerMatthew Garratt, one of the key researchersbehind the project. “No-one has really done alot with landing things on small ships in roughweather and that is what we are working on.”

“One of the most difficult requirements ofsea operations is the need to restrain ahelicopter so that from the moment oftouchdown and just prior to launch, thehelicopter is prevented from toppling andsliding due to ship motion. For this purpose, wehave designed and flight-tested a series of fourspring-loaded probes to engage with a deck gridto positively lock the helicopter to the deckupon touchdown and immediately prior tolaunch,” says Mr Garratt, who is a former Navyengineer. “This system requires no movingparts on the ship and has been shown topositively secure the helicopter up to a rollangle of 39 degrees.”

Garratt’s team is using a “hotted-up” versionof a stock standard Yamaha L-15 R-MAX mini-helicopter in the experiments. They have added computers, GPS, gyroscopes,magnetometers, accelerometers, cameras andlaser systems that enable it to “observe” itssurroundings and navigate independently.

This ability exploits “optic flow”, a navigationsystem used by insects that allows them to fly

in novel surroundings without crashing intohazards. “Optic flow refers to the apparentmotion that objects have as we move about inthe world,” says Garratt. “Objects that are closeto us appear to move by rapidly, whereas thosethat are further away move more slowly. Bycombining optic flow and acceleration data, themini-helicopter can determine its distance fromthe ground and make adjustments accordingly.”

Garratt says the helicopter could be aninexpensive asset on board a small ship or boaton a surveillance exercise, operating at about$50 an hour compared with a large helicopterat $25,000 an hour.

An autonomous mini-helicopter that carriesradar, infrared sensors and cameras could beused for short-range surveillance — toreconnoitre a bay which is concealed from theship by a headland or to fly past or hover at awindow in a terrorist situation or siege.

“You can send this thing off with a camera todo exploration of an inlet if you are looking forsmugglers and it allows you to listen to radiosignals that would not otherwise be picked up,”says Garratt.

“The mini-helicopter would be useful forcounter-terrorism situations, especially, in anurban environment where it could fly through astreet or hover near a window and take aphoto.” �

U N I K E N 13

It’s a natural history tale that every thirdgrader knows: the dinosaurs ruled theEarth for hundreds of millions of years.

Then, 65 million years ago an asteroid struckEarth and triggered a mass extinction thatallowed the ancestors of today’s mammals tothrive.

The asteroid part of the story may still betrue, but a recent study published in Naturesays it took 10 to 15 million years after thedinosaurs were wiped out before modernmammals – including our ancient humanancestors – were able to diversify and rise totheir present-day prominence across the globe.

An international research team includingRobin Beck, a PhD student in the UNSWSchool of Biological, Earth and EnvironmentalScience, reached that conclusion afteranalysing the evolutionary links of some 4500mammals, creating for the first time a“supertree” of family relationships betweenalmost all species of mammal alive today.

Armed with the information about thoserelationships, the researchers used DNA data and the fossil record to estimatediversification rates and work backward toestablish when specific groups of mammalsfirst appeared on Earth.

“The research tells us that most mammalorders appeared between 85 and 100 millionyears ago, surviving in their original form for10 to 15 million years after the demise of thedinosaurs,” says Robin Beck. “Then theydiversified into groups such as primates,rodents, carnivores and hoofed animals.”

These two separate spikes in mammalianevolution indicate that the rise of present-daymammals was delayed for a long time.

“The previous evidence showed that we didsee a die-off of the dinosaurs and an increasein the rise of the mammals roughly 65 millionyears ago,” says John Gittleman, a study co-author from the University of GeorgiaInstitute of Ecology.

“But the fossil record, by its very nature, ispatchy. We found that when you fuse all ofthe molecular trees with the fossil evidence,the timing does not work. The preponderanceof mammals really didn’t take off until 10 to 15 million years after the demise of thedinosaurs.”

“For many years, molecular biologists andpalaeontologists shared different views aboutthe rise of present-day mammals,” saysresearch team member, Ross MacPhee, acurator in the Division of Vertebrate Zoologyat the American Museum of Natural History.

“Extensive molecular data indicate that ourcommon mammalian roots have to go back90 to 100 million years, if not more, but many

palaeontologists have been dubious of thisclaim given the lack of ancestral-lookingfossils until about 50 to 55 million years ago.This new work helps reconcile thosedifferences. Now we know the ancestors ofliving mammal groups were there, but in verylow numbers.”

Molecular evolutionary supertrees are akind of summary of evolutionary history for alarge group of organisms constructed frommany, smaller studies for separate groupsbased on genetic or physical analysis or both.

They are constructed by comparing theDNA of species. Because genetic changesoccur at a relatively constant rate, like theticking of a clock, scientists can estimate thetime the species diverged from their commonancestor by counting the number ofmutations. Using radiocarbon dating,scientists can also estimate divergence timesfrom the fossil record.

“The supertree itself is really just the firststage”, says Mr Beck. “The information itprovides allows us to look at the overallpattern of mammalian evolution in far greaterdetail than before. It has applications inecology, conservation, physiology,palaeontology, amongst other fields, and itwill also shed new light on the evolution ofour own species – it’s a big step forward.”

The aim is to better understand what mighthappen to mammals in the future, and whichones are particularly vulnerable to climatechange or other threats to survival, such aslow fertility. �

Tracing the family supertreeMammals have been around longer than we thought. By Dan Gaffney

“ “The research tells us thatmost mammal orders

appeared between 85 and 100 million years ago.

14 U N I K E N

� T E A C H I N G

Aclassroom of 12-year-old students arewithout their teacher. He dashes in,preoccupied.

“Kids could you please rearrange the furnitureand if I don’t get back, just start,” he says.

Such is the enthusiasm for philosophy atBuranda Primary School, in Brisbane, that theclass began without a hitch, according toAssociate Professor Philip Cam, who happenedto be sitting in on the lesson.

Professor Cam, from UNSW’s School ofPhilosophy, came up with this part of theschool’s curriculum over ten years ago. It is adedicated part of the students’ learning – justlike English or maths – during which they discussscenarios, which typically involve a problem or adilemma. Typical questions include “What is itfor someone to be a friend?” or “What is a workof art?”

As the students have engaged with ideas, ithas fundamentally changed them – and theirschool.

“It was a small, inner-city school, going outbackwards that had been earmarked for closureby the state government,” he says. “The newprincipal was looking for ideas and approachedme.”

Since the curriculum for the upper primarystudents changed to incorporate philosophy, theschool has become so popular, it is full tocapacity.

There’s good reason. Not only are theremarked improvements in children’s academicachievements, but school bullying is a thing ofthe past.

“If you look at objective measures such asstate-wide testing, you get improved resultsacross the board – and they are quite a long wayabove the average.”

“Because this work has a social focus, kidsgrow up rather differently – there’s no bullying,abuse or violence,” says Professor Cam. “Theyare a lot nicer to one another and they learn to deal with problems on the basis of beingreasonable.”

The program is currently being introduced toa primary school in Sydney’s inner west.

Stanmore Primary School has received FederalGovernment funding to help kids think morecritically and communicate more effectively.

“You don’t have to look very far to see thatthe world we are living in is rapidly changing.You can’t just teach information for students torecord and memorise,” said Professor Cam.“Information is cheap. What students need is toknow how to interpret the information, how totell if it’s reliable and how to apply it to problem-solving. Philosophy is all about dealing withissues and problems for which there is not asingle answer, so it prepares the students wellfor the real world.”

A former career as a teacher, current positionas a philosopher and the ongoing role of being aparent have all led Professor Cam down thispath. He has written six books on the subject –mostly aimed at teachers – and has mostrecently become interested in the very youngestof primary students.

“I want to see philosophy as having a moreformative influence,” he said. “You can’t have

that by putting it into the last year or two ofhigh school. You wouldn’t think of puttingliterature in for the final two years of highschool, so why would you think that about theriches of philosophy?”

Many people think about the greats such asPlato, Socrates, Aristotle and Descartes whenphilosophy is mentioned, but Professor Camsees their influence in a different way.

“There is a world of difference between doing philosophy and learning about it,” he says.“In European secondary schools or inundergraduate philosophy, students learn aboutphilosophers’ main ideas and leading works.What I do is quite the reverse.”

“I encourage students to engage with theideas philosophically. I’m trying to encouragekids to think for themselves, to be excited aboutideas, to be inquiring and thoughtful,” he said.“Thinking deals with the problematic, not just inthe classroom but in everyday life. So learning tothink well is not merely of academic interest, it’seducation for life.” �

The classroomwhispererHow philosophy istransforming schools andteaching children to deal withlife. By Susi Hamilton.

Cor

bis

U N I K E N 15

We’re being taught the wrong way, from primary school through touniversity level, according to a UNSW

expert in education.John Sweller, from the School of Education,

is the founding father of Cognitive Load Theory,the subject of a recent international conferenceat UNSW. It is based on the notion that one caneither solve a problem or learn a solution but

not both simultaneously.“Much teaching doesn’t take into account the

way we think and learn, and so it fails,” saysProfessor Sweller, who, with his researchstudents, began developing the theory at UNSWin the 1980s.

The theory relates to “working memory”,which refers to part of the brain that providestemporary storage and manipulation ofinformation necessary for complex cognitivetasks such as comprehension, learning andreasoning.

The key, according to Professor Sweller, is toget information out of our severely limitedworking memory and into our effectively limitlesslong-term memory as quickly as possible withoutoverloading our working memory.

“Everything we are aware of goes throughworking memory, which has a limited capacity ofonly three to four items of information that canbe held for only three to four seconds withoutrehearsal,” he says. “Almost all information goesafter 20 seconds, unless there is rehearsal.”

Professor Sweller first tested his theory onuniversity students solving numerical problems.The problems were of the type: “Convert 31 into3 by multiplying by 3 and subtracting 69 asmany times and in whatever order you need.”

lf only problems could be solved byalternating multiplying and subtracting. Theintention was to study problem-solvers learningthis rule. But they didn’t learn it, even thoughthey had solved many such problems in the past.

“At first, I didn’t believe it,” he says. “Then Ithought that the people involved in the trialwere not so bright. Then I realised thateveryone’s brain works in that way.

“If you told people the solution rather thanhave them solve the problem, they could learn itinstantly and solve all the problems of that sort,even extremely long and difficult ones,” he says.

The theory goes against the trend of widelyused problem-based learning, which accordingto Professor Sweller is lacking evidence of itseffectiveness.

“Problem-solving places a great demand onworking memory, so teachers are better offgiving students solved problems to study andstore in long-term memory for future use,” he says. “Once stored in long-term memory,whenever students see a similar problem, in an exam, in the workplace or during everydayliving, they can bring the solution from long-term to working memory and easily solve theproblem. It’s what experts in a field do.

“The hitch with problem-based learning isthat it goes against the architecture of thebrain. The cognitive processes involved inlearning and solving problems are different, sowe need to cater to the way the brain works.”

Professor Sweller says that in addition,teachers often give us the wrong type ofinformation, which places too great a demandon working memory. He says the sameinformation can be reorganised to make it much easier to understand.

“A classic example of something whichoverloads the brain is the way some peoplepresent PowerPoint presentations,” he says.“They can backfire if the information on thescreen is the same as that which is spoken,because the audience’s attention will be splitbetween the two. You are using two differentprocesses.”

In Australia, Cognitive Load Theory is taughtto those studying teaching at UNSW but otherinstitutions have been slow to take it on.“My primary goal has been to influence theresearch community and for it then to be taken up by the wider community,” saysProfessor Sweller.

It is used in Europe and the US, even in thecorporate sector. Professor Sweller said he hadheard about a French company whose pressurecookers were being returned with complaintsthey did not work. “The company hiredsomeone to re-write the instructions, usingCognitive Load Theory, and the cookers stoppedcoming back! It was a resounding success!” �

What’s that

again?Modern teaching methodscould be doomed to failbecause they ignore the brain’sarchitecture. By Susi Hamilton

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Tucked down the dark and shadowy lanes ofOld Calcutta are splendid ruins. Rareexemplars of Indian architectural history,

they are European in their grand use of

colonnades and parapets yet distinctly Indian withtheir friezes and plaques of painted Hindu gods.

These are the former palaces of the city’snoble households. Heavily influenced by theclassic buildings the British were constructing,indigenous elites began to build their ownenormous palaces, combining Indian, Moghuland British features and resulting in anexuberant architectural style.

These buildings might have remained largelyforgotten in the whirl of the modern-day cityhad it not been for a UNSW Masters studentand her passion for Indian architecture.

Joanne Taylor, from the Faculty of the BuiltEnvironment, had a long-time interest in Indiathrough travel and an undergraduate degree inIndian history. In her many visits, researchingand photographing monuments such as the TajMahal, she found several examples of British

architecture and lifestyle but little on theirindigenous equivalent.

“I came across the existence of these housesby chance,” Joanne explains. “I had first visitedIndia in my early twenties, but like mostWesterners I travelled to the northern states,and had no interest in Kolkata, or Calcutta as it was then called.”

Then one day, she was invited to theancestral home of an Indian friend who knew ofher passion for heritage architecture. Nearbywas the Marble Palace, one of many old Indian-built mansions she eventually discovered downlanes and by-lanes.

“It looked like a film set, all dusty with fadedmirrors, statues and paintings everywhere,”recalls Joanne. “I was entranced, and the imageof majestic decay stayed with me when I camehome to Australia.”

Splendour and decayThe faded mansions ofIndian’s indigenous elite are the subject of a thesis and new book.

U N I K E N 17

Intrigued by their strange architectural styles and varying stages of decline, Joanneundertook a series of month-long research trips to Kolkata, focussing on the old historicprecinct where the majority of the city’s rajbaris are located.

The result is an architectural thesis and a bookwritten and photographed by Joanne, called TheForgotten Palaces of Calcutta (Niyogi Books).

Many families still live in their ancestralhomes, some of which are 250 years old. Theirenormous size and opulent style make adramatic contrast with the slums and smalldwellings of the old city. Some have been takenover by squatters, others have huge numbersof the extended family in residence and othershave been divided into apartments or rentedout to businesses. “These houses areimpossibly expensive to maintain,” Joanne

says. “Sometimes owners sadly walk away and leave their home as it is cheaper thankeeping it.”

Most mansions were difficult to find andoften an address was just the beginning. “Even locals had no idea or were oblivious tothe enormous mansion or palace at the end of a nearby lane,” says Joanne. “The suddendiscovery of a line of massive columns looming up from the urban chaos was excitingand rewarding.”

Along with the rewards there were manydisappointments, time-consuming footwork and “a lot of wild goose chases”. But Joannegradually began to build up a network ofsupporters, among them scholars of history or architecture who were infected by herenthusiasm.

“It is tragic to see these houses falling into

disrepair, as each one is unique. Through theirarchitecture they tell of a fascinating time inIndia’s history when the British needed Indiancontacts to trade with, to act as their bankersand interpreters. British patronisation createda new wealthy, powerful merchant class“.

The British have begun working withheritage authorities in Kolkata to restore thecolonial British-built buildings. It seems unlikelythat their indigenous equivalents will be giventhe same funding, which makes Joanne’s workall the more important. �

L-R: Ornate window in north Calcutta; the Marble Palace (top) Barsu palace,Basubari Palace, Jorosanko Palace (top)and two generations of the Laha palace,with the newer building on the left.

18 U N I K E N

If we portrayed the history of war as adramatic production then we would expectto see clashing armies, bloodied soldiers,

imperious generals and flint-eyed heads ofstate.

This way of telling the history of war downthrough the ages is understandable. After all,the deeds of military heroes and villains arethe subject of great storytelling, and successand defeat on the battlefield have governedhistory-changing events.

By comparison, war historians have shownlittle interest in the common lives of citizensduring wartime unless they have beensystematically targeted for acts of aggressionby governments or armed forces.

Of course, war histories frequently cite themiseries that war imposes on society, such aswidespread disease and starvation but in theend, these tend to be seen as the corollariesof war, not the stuff of history itself.

Stewart Lone holds a counterview. Anassociate professor of North-East Asian socialhistory at UNSW’s Australian Defence ForceAcademy, he values ordinary people’s lives inwartime precisely because they often are apositive and constructive contrast to theextraordinary chaos and carnage associatedwith war.

“I really marvel at people’s capacity tocontinue with the ordinary preoccupationsand rituals of life during wartime,” says Lone,who has edited and contributed to a newwork of social history titled The Daily Lives ofCivilians in Wartime Asia: From the TaipingRebellion to the Vietnam War (GreenwoodPress, 2007). “This isn’t weakness orindifference in the face of a crisis; instead, it shows strength and resilience.”

According to Professor Lone, wars in the20th century affected the lives of ordinarypeople like at no other time in recordedhistory. It is now the common wisdom that,around the 1900s, civilians accounted for 10 percent of wartime casualties. By the closeof the century, non-combatants accountedfor 90 percent of casualties.

“The body count in Iraq today tells thesame story,” he says. “Recently each month,about 120 US and Iraqi military personnel are killed but more than 10 times that number – around 1500 Iraqi citizens – alsolose their lives.”

Bombing of civilians and civilian centreshas increasingly become the norm. “In theKorean war, perhaps one million NorthKorean civilians were killed, mostly from theair,” says Professor Lone. “If we don’t knowthis, then we can’t even begin to understandNorth Korea’s actions today.”

Professor Lone points out that humour is one of the greatest forces for self-protection in war. “China’s cities werebombed by Japan in the war of 1937–45 andmillions were made homeless. But Chinesestudents found ways of escape in parody. A boy who fell in love with a girl in wartimewas said to be ‘gliding’, to have ‘taken off’ if she responded, and, if she abandoned him, to have made ‘a forced landing’.”

In his chapter on daily life in South Vietnam,1965–75, Lone writes about people’sdetermination to remain positive and focusedon life instead of death. “In Saigon throughoutthe 1960s and ’70s, senior students wouldmake a point of ensuring that first-yearundergraduates learnt ballroom dancing aspart of their orientation into university life.This was to help them avoid boredom orisolation. Even in the final days prior to thefall of Saigon to the North Vietnam People’sArmy in 1975, the Saigon Times was carryingan advertisement from a man called NguyenTrong who touted himself as ‘the best dancing instructor in Vietnam’.”

What was remarkable for Lone was how littlethe war and its privations destroyed the resolveof these people to be positive and happy.

“One woman I spoke to told me that shewoke every day of her university life withenthusiasm for the day ahead.” This womanmarried just as the North Vietnamese armywas advancing on Saigon but her mostpressing problem was to locate good-quality“lucky candles” burnt throughout thewedding ceremony. As Professor Loneexplains, “She must have found thembecause she and her husband are togethertoday, even as the government of Vietnamseems increasingly to be divorcing itself from communism.” �

How does one carry on with the rituals of life during wartime? Two new books by UNSW academics explore the lives of civilians caught in the chaos of carnage.

Rituals amidthe rubbleBy Dan Gaffney

It was Easter Sunday 1941, a time to crackfestive eggs and eat buttery almond andraisin buns, when Germany bombed

Belgrade just after dawn. Mira Crouch, then eight years old, had been

looking forward to the traditional Easter lunchwhen her mother’s Serbian relatives and herfather’s Jewish family would gather for vine-leaf rolls, roast lamb and fried spring chicken.

Food marked the gentle rhythms of life inBelgrade, an expression of a city shaped bydisparate epochs and civilisations. But fromthat day on, food became a primarypreoccupation. How to obtain it, and inventiveways to use it, became pressing questions forMira’s family as they struggled to cope withmonths of deprivation and death.

Such memories are recounted in a newbook by Mira, 75, who spent 25 yearsteaching in the School of Sociology and isnow a Visiting Fellow in the School of SocialSciences and International Studies at UNSW.Called War Fare, it traces the progress of warthrough key events affecting Mira’s family.

In the space of 11 months, from April 1941and March 1942, Mira lost her father, her

A family’s war fareBy Mary O’Malley

U N I K E N 19

grandmothers, two uncles, two aunts and acousin – all killed because they were Jews. Mira was saved because the Nazi racial policyin occupied Serbia exempted children of mixedmarriages from persecution.

Nonetheless, she deeply felt the scars of loss,particularly of her beloved father. He wasgassed in a truck, “liquidated” among patientstaken from a Jewish hospital in which he hadbeen imprisoned.

Mira did not consciously set out to write abook. Her memoir was penned with her sonAlex in mind. But in the process of writing acomprehensive record of her life for him, twoleading themes emerged: death and food.

“I knew that death would play a large part inmy story,” says Mira in her introduction. “But Idid not expect that memories of loss, when fullyarticulated, would be so thoroughly entangledwith minutiae of our existence at that time.”

The brave attempts to re-create the snug

comforts of pre-war meals poignantlycounterpoints Mira’s account of atrocitiesinflicted on her paternal family.

The provisions the family managed to buy,grow or somehow procure provided physicaland emotional sustenance. Daily food gatheringand preparation — precious chicken stews lacedwith paprika, the plump eggplants, capsicumsand sunlit tomatoes of the vegetable patch —clearly signified the moments of light andhappiness Mira found against the darkbackdrop of the war years.

Every event, from the Soviet Union’s entryinto the war, to the invasion of Sicily, is tracedthrough the family’s perception of them. Three years after the German planes attackedBelgrade, again on Easter Sunday, allied airforce units dropped bombs on the city andcontinued to do so, off and on, for five months.

Writing of these times, in either a scholarlyor autobiographical fashion, is relatively new

for Mira, who for years felt her story simply tobe one of thousands.

“Only when I started writing theoreticallyabout power in the 1990s could I see that I hadsomething original to say,” says Mira.

She is dismissive of her many achievements,as an academic and a writer. She says it is partof her childhood legacy, a lingering feeling thatemotionally her life is still to begin.

“Only now, when in my thoughts the pastcarries more weight than the future, can I seethat all my life has been lived in suspension, and Iknow that, at some deep level, I still wait for mytrain to arrive,” writes Mira of her sense of beingin the waiting room of a station, constantlylooking out for her loved ones on board.

“I still hope for the restoration of my worldof Before [the war], a 10-year-old still lurks inthe mind’s shadows, whispering. In the midst of the clamour of my so-called adult existence,the small voice is soft, but it insists.” �

War Fare: Sustenance in time of fear and wantby Mira Crouch, Gavemer Publishing, RRP $26.For copies email m.crouch@unsw.edu.au.

L-R: SchoolgirlMira in 1944; A man reads a Germannewspaper whichannounces thedeclaration of waron Yugoslavia;Mira on a returnvisit to Europe and again as ayounger child.

20 U N I K E N

Awhile ago, I visited a travel agent’soffice to confirm a few details aboutmy trip and make the final payment.

The office had two long desks along theside walls, on which streams of computerswere sitting. It must have been a busy timeof the year; the queue was long. I finally got to talk to one of the travel consultants. I told him what I was after and he asked, “Ah … did you make a booking with theperson sitting over there? “Yes,” I replied. “Oh … Sorry, the system on this side is not connected with the computers on theother side. You will have to talk to a person from the desk over there.” So, I joined the queue again thinking howstupid the situation was and how I wasn’tgoing back for their service again.

Many successful businesses outgrowtheir original capacity and assume newroles. Often, they employ new IT systemsto perform these new roles, which meanssome parts of the company’s businessfunctions are fulfilled by old systems thatare not compatible with the new. Overtime, IT systems develop a life of their ownand the whole IT infrastructure becomesunnecessarily complex.

The problem is not that the companies do nothave enough data about you. The problem isthat the data is scattered among differentsystems (e.g. billing, customer relations,marketing) in the organisation, managed bydifferent departments whose offices are placedin multiple geographical locations. It is just toohard for them to get a single normalised viewabout you.

Integrating applications and their data tomake them act like a single entity is a difficult,time-consuming and costly task. However,business needs and steep competition in themarketplace have been driving companies tolook for solutions. Many software vendors withhuge stock prices make their profit by sellingvarious programming platforms and theirproprietary knowledge that are designed for thetask. However, packaged solutions are costlyand cannot keep pace with constantly changingtrends in business.

This is set to change thanks to recentdevelopments in the Web. Commentators call itthe second wave of the internet revolution thatwill change the way businesses offer their

products and services to their customers andrevolutionise the ways they work with theirpartners.

At the heart of this development are Webservices. A Web service is a softwarecomponent that can be invoked and return itsresults over the Web. An importantcharacteristic of a Web service is that it makesinformation about itself available so that otherscan find it and understand how to use it. What’smore, an existing application can be Webserviced–enabled, allowing them to be readilyaccessible to other applications. An implicationof this is that individual Web services becomesoftware building blocks that can be puttogether as needed.

In the business domain, you can quickly buildnew services to meet customer demands basedon services provided by others. Web servicesmake it much easier than in the past to sharedata between applications. Customer data thatis stored in multiple sites, can now be “virtually”integrated, so that, for example, you develop aconsolidated customer profile for preciselytargeted marketing. Or, as another example, the

disparate information systems in a largeorganisation such as UNSW could becombined into a coherent informationresource that could provide novel servicesto staff, existing students and potentialstudents.

For example, the UNSW student systemand the course/student managementsystems in individual schools could beintegrated, allowing students to create a personal service that will automaticallytrack their graduate status, or perhapsrecommend their course program for the next semester depending on theirprogress.

Already Web services are levelling theplaying field between the small businessesand big businesses. For example,Amazon.com opened up its core businessfunctionality as a collection of Webservices: searching for goods, orderinggoods and paying for goods. This allowedhundreds of small retail businesses to hooktheir own catalogues into Amazon.com’sand sell their products worldwide.

Web service technology makesinformation sharing between applicationsmuch easier and shortens the development

time for new applications. It is not far-fetched tosay that in the near future, the concept of large,monolithic software applications will be obsolete.Virtually anybody will be able to build their ownapplication for the needs of the moment.

Proliferation of Web services does, however,pose issues in data security. For example,consider a loan approval service that takes yourinformation and does credit checks by passingyour information to a credit checking service.This kind of scenario is inherent in a Webservices world where one service relies on aservice provided by third party in order toachieve its goals.

Another challenge in Web services is theconstruction of single applications that involveslarge numbers of interacting componentservices. Orchestrating such a collection ofservices requires issues such as protocolmanagement, distributed transactions, qualityof service, etc. to be resolved. Researchers inthe School of Computer Science andEngineering (in conjunction with researchers in the Smart Services CRC) are at the forefrontin addressing these issues. �

By Hye-young Helen PaikLAST WORD

At your service – applications on demandThe second wave of the internet revolution will change the way businesses offer their products and services. What will this mean?