NEWS
campusreview.com.au
Indigenous
congress reels
from cuts
Jackie Huggins
First Peoples organisation faces move, potential
shutdown, following loss of funding.
A
bipartisan organisation that has been advocating for
improvements in Indigenous education has been cut to the
bone and isn’t even able to make its rent after the federal
government defunded it in 2014.
The National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples once received
$14 million in federal money. Almost two years after this cut, they
will be forced relocate from Redfern, Sydney to pro bono rental
space in Canberra after 31 January 2017.
For co-chair Dr Jackie Huggins, this is the latest story in a
string of bad news that dominates the narrative about Indigenous
Australians. She spoke on this yesterday during a lecture at the
University of Sydney.
“We’re quite sick and tired of the inaction of government to really
look at the way that we could all work together in partnership and
in synergy in order to overcome and tackle those severe social
disadvantage statistics that we get very tired [of],” Huggins said.
“Sometimes I think we just grow numb to the whole issue [of
Indigenous disadvantage].”
The Congress also recently lost its full-time staff member. Now
it’s just Huggins, her co-chair Rod Little, and some volunteers. If
funding isn’t granted to the Congress by December 2017, Huggins
said it will have to shut down. Though they won’t give up until then,
Huggins assured.
“We’re in dire straits people, but we’ll keep going on,” she said.
The Congress has previously called for a national body to
oversee Indigenous education in its Redfern Statement, as well
as calling for all Indigenous Australians to have access to quality
early childhood education. They also want Indigenous history and
languages to be taught in school, and for policies to be in place so
that more Indigenous Australians can access tertiary education. ■
Hints of research bias
Photo: Thinkstock
Studies the food industry
has sponsored appear to be
inclined to generate outcomes
that are favourable to the
companies funding them.
T
he first of a series of studies
may confirm the belief that food
industry-sponsored research is
likely to favour its sponsors, though there is
insufficient evidence to make a conclusion.
4
The research, published in the journal
JAMA Internal Medicine, analysed
340 studies about nutrition and concluded
that while industry-sponsored studies
were more likely to “have conclusions
favourable to industry than studies [not
sponsored by industry], the difference was
not significant”.
“These findings suggest, but do not
establish, that industry sponsorship of nutrition
studies is associated with conclusions that
favour the sponsors, and further investigation
of differences in study results and quality is
needed,” the study concluded.
Professor Lisa Bero, a University of Sydney
expert in finding hidden biases in research,
whose work is being monitored by beverage
giant Coca-Cola, said it is likely that sponsored
research is biased but there’s just no empirical
evidence to prove it.
“There’s a Cochrane Review on
pharmaceutical industry sponsorship
of drug studies and that includes over
40 studies now that have examined
the association of the pharmaceutical
industry funding and the results,” Bero said.
“What it finds is that the pharma-funded
studies are more likely to have a result
that shows effectiveness or a nonstatistical result showing harm. Basically,
it exaggerates the benefits and minimises
the harms.
“In nutrition, all we can say now is that
we’re seeing this spin on the conclusion. Spin
on conclusions is certainly quite important.
It’s been looked at in other areas. [It’s the]
author’s interpretation of their findings, and
often that’s taken up in the media and it’s
often disseminated at conferences.
“If we want a control for these different
biases, we need to do the kind of work
we’ve done with drug studies and
tobacco studies.” ■