The minor parties

The 2019 federal election is noteworthy for many reasons. One of the defining stories should be that the ALP and the Liberal–National Coalition have been unable to draw voters back from the minor parties and Independents. Put simply, the long-term trend is away from the major parties. In this election, there was a small nationwide increase in the vote for minor parties and Independents in the House of Representatives, while in the Senate there was a modest decline. The State-level results are more varied. The Coalition lost ground in some places and maintained its vote in others. The ALP vote, in contrast, was demolished in Tasmania and in Queensland. Almost one in three Queenslanders and Tasmanians decided to support a party or candidate in the House other than the ALP or the Coalition. Across the entire country, this was around one in four (see Figure 17.1). In the Senate, Queensland and Tasmania again had the largest non–major party vote. These results are dissected in greater detail in other chapters in this volume, but they suggest that supply-side opportunities remain for parties and candidates expressing anti–major party sentiments. Put simply, the political environment remains fertile for minor party insurgents

Conceptual design study of 1985 commercial VTOL transports that utilize rotors

Conceptual design studies of pure and compound helicopter commercial short-haul transport aircraft for initial fabrication in 1980 were performed to determine their technical and economic feasibility. One-hundred-passenger configurations were optimized for minimum direct operating cost consistent with producibility and marketability, with emphasis on proper account of mass properties, performance and handling qualities adequacy, and suppression of internal and external noise. The effect of external noise constraints was assessed, in terms of gross weight and direct operating cost, for each aircraft

Standardisation of fuses

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Building ‘Holland’s Tallest Office Block’: The Transnational Origins and Troubled History of a Speculative Office Development in Post-War Rotterdam

This article examines the remarkable surge of UK property development activity in the Netherlands which took place in the early 1970s, with a focus on Rotterdam. It explores some of the structural and commercial reasons behind this boom in transnational development activity, relating it to political and economic conditions on both sides of the North Sea. We examine the role of the property developer Town & City Properties Limited and its role in exporting UK development practices and techniques to the Netherlands, taking Rotterdam’s SOM-designed Europoint Towers as a case study. This trio of hulking, 22-storey office towers dominated Europe’s most important port. When erected, they were the tallest buildings in the Netherlands; when sold in the mid-1970s, they formed the largest property transaction the country had ever seen. The Europoint project provides an ideal lens through which to examine the growth and global transmission of new commercial architectures, along with the increasing internationalisation of commercial property development in this period. Architecture remained important to such projects, but the profession tended to become somewhat subsumed within the wider corporate structure of internationalising development companies, or else the work was contracted out to ‘starchitects’ to lend landmark building projects further prestige. This early episode of transnational urban property development provides new insights into the historical genealogy and chronology of the global commercial systems of architecture, development, and investment that dominate present-day cities.Cities, Migration and Global Interdependenc

Is all salinity the same? I. The effect of ionic compositions on the salinity tolerance of five species of freshwater invertebrates

Salts of marine origin, predominantly consisting of Na+ and Cl- ions, are dominant in most Australian inland saline waters. The proportions of other ions, Ca2+, Mg2+, SO42-, HCO3- and CO32-, in the water may influence salinity tolerance of freshwater organisms and thus the effect of increasing salinity may vary with difference in ionic proportions. We exposed freshwater invertebrates to different concentrations of four ionic compositions and compared them with commercial sea salt ( Ocean Nature). They were: synthetic Ocean Nature (ONS) and three saline water types (ONS but without: SO42-, HCO3- and CO32- (S1); Ca2+, HCO3- and CO32- (S2); and Ca2+ and Mg2+ (S3)), which are considered to be the predominant saline water types in south-eastern Australia and the Western Australian wheatbelt. The 96-h LC50 values for the five media were determined for six invertebrate species and sub-lethal responses were observed for two species. There were no differences between responses of invertebrates to various ionic compositions in acute toxicity tests. However, in prolonged sub-lethal tests, animals reacted differently to the various ionic compositions. The greatest effect was observed in water types lacking Ca, for which plausible physiological mechanisms exist. Variation in ionic proportions should be taken into account when considering sub-lethal effects of salinity on freshwater invertebrates

Determining the relative sensitivity of benthic diatoms to atrazine using rapid toxicity testing: A novel method

Herbicides pose a potential threat to aquatic ecosystems, especially to phototrophic organisms such as benthic diatoms. Benthic diatoms may be a valuable indicator of the toxic impacts of herbicides in aquatic systems. However, this requires information on the herbicide sensitivity of a wide range of freshwater benthic diatom taxa. Unfortunately this information is only available for a limited number of species as current methods of developing new algae toxicity tests on individual taxa are lengthy and costly. To address this issue, we developed a new rapid toxicity test method to test natural benthic communities, from which the relative herbicide sensitivity of many individual taxa can be derived. This involved the collection of natural benthic communities from rocks in situ, which were placed directly into laboratory toxicity tests. Sensitivity data for several diatom genera in a 48hour exposure toxicity test were produced, without the need for cultures or multiple site visits. After exposure to the highest treatment of atrazine (500μgL-1) there were significant declines of healthy cells in the most sensitive genera: Gomphonema declined by 74%, Amphora by 62%, Cymbella by 54% and Ulnaria by 34% compared to control levels. In contrast, the genera, Eunotia, Achnanthidium and Navicula, had no statistically significant decline in cell health. This method can identify the diatom taxa most at risk of herbicide toxicity within the natural benthic diatom community. The rapid toxicity testing method presented is a simple and effective method to obtain sensitivity data for multiple taxa within a natural benthic diatom community in a relatively short period of time. © 2014 Elsevier B.V

Relative salinity tolerance of freshwater macroinvertebrates from the south-east Eastern Cape, South Africa compared with the Barwon Catchment, Victoria, Australia

Salinity is rising in many southern African and Australian rivers with unknown effects on aquatic organisms. The extent of spatial variation, at any scale, in salt tolerances of aquatic organisms is unknown, so whether data from one location is applicable elsewhere is also unknown. The acute tolerances (72-h median lethal concentration (LC50)) to sea salt of 49 macroinvertebrate taxa from the south-east Eastern Cape (SEEC), South Africa were compared with those of 57 species from the Barwon Catchment, Victoria, Australia. The mean LC50 values from both locations were similar (Barwon: 31 and SEEC: 32 mS cm(-1)) and less abundant (rare) taxa tended to be more tolerant than more abundant (common) taxa. There was, however, a greater range of LC50 values (5.5-76 mS cm(-1)) in the Barwon Catchment than in the SEEC (11-47 mS cm(-1)). The species sensitivity distribution (SSD) for SEEC taxa was bimodal whereas the Barwon Catchment's SSD had a single peak. With few exceptions, members of an order had similar tolerances in both locations. The differences in SSD between locations were related to crustacean, odonate and non-arthropod relative richness. Although it is not ideal to extrapolate SSDs from one location to another, it may be reasonable to assume similar salinity tolerances among related taxa

Nativism, civic nationalism and the malleability of voter attitudes

Nativism is one of the defining phenomena of the contemporary era. Yet, we know little about how malleable citizen attitudes associated with nativism and nationalism are to priming effects when media frames which deal with key issues such as immigration are introduced. In this article, we present the findings from a survey experiment fielded to a nationally representative sample of voters in Australia in May 2019. In it, we explore whether the attitudes of voters for different political parties can be primed by introducing two contrasting media frames to measure these effects. We find positive and negative frames have no effect on the attitudes of voters for Australia’s populist radical right party, but that the former has an effect on centre-right voters in Australia. Such findings have important implications for our understanding of political communication and the malleability of political attitudes