Nick Tsagaris - ISS Is Passing Over Australia, Here's What You Need To Know To Spot It

Australians sure are a curious bunch when it comes to the International Space Station (ISS).

We're one of the top countries in the world to seek out where and when we'll next see it floating by in the night sky, according to NASA.

This weekend's a great opportunity to get out for a squiz — if you're in or around Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne or Perth, you're in for a treat.

Want to get in on the fun? It's easy. Here's what you need to know:

ELI5, what is the ISS?

ISS is jointly owned by the United States, Russia, Canada, Europe and Japan.

It's been orbiting the Earth since 1998, and has been slowly expanded over the years.

The best way to describe it is "Earth's space lab", astrophysicist Dr Brad Tucker says.

"If you want to test things in space, if you want to put things in space, you need to build an entire satellite. Or the space station really was this multi-national effort to provide that lab to do experiments," Dr Tucker said.

"Lots of groups mount telescopes or measuring devices around the space station so instead of building all these individual satellites you can put it on the space station.

"You also have an astronaut there so if something goes wrong they can work on it, send you data, or fix it. So it really is a space lab."

ISS has at least another 10 years of use left in it, and Donald Trump is interested in selling the US stake in it.

There are currently six crew members on board.

How many times a day does ISS orbit the Earth?

Quite a lot.

Every orbit is about 90 minutes, so two orbits every three hours, or 16 per day.

That's a whole lot of sunrises and sunsets for those on board.

It's not like ISS is following any set path either — the station crosses all parts of the Earth because the orbit "wobbles".

"But a lot of those times are during the day time, or it passes just on the horizon, but because it's doing it so often there's actually a number of times the space station passes overhead," Dr Tucker said.

"Usually in a given week or so you can find a time that the space station is passing over in the evening over an area near you."

How will I know when the ISS is flying overhead?

NASA has its own "Spot the Station" website set up where you can check sighting opportunities from nearly 100 locations across Australia up to 10 days in advance.

You can sign up there for text message or email notifications whenever there's going to be a decent chance of spotting the station.

Generally you should get an alert 12 hours ahead of a scheduled sighting.

There are also some apps for your phone you can set up for similar alerts.

ISS Detector is one, ISS Spotter is another.

How often can I expect to see the ISS?

Some places around the world are luckier than others when it comes to ISS sightings.

Some spots can get only one sighting a month, others can get several a week.

The planets really have to align (space pun intended) if you're going to see the ISS doing its thing in low orbit.

You need the correct:

• Time: It needs to be dark where you are. It has to be just before sunrise or just after sunset.
• Location: Just like real estate, it's all about "location, location, location". The station must be 40 degrees or more above the horizon from where you are for it to be visible.
• Weather: Clear skies are best obviously, cloudy conditions can ruin your chances of a sighting.

Tick all three boxes, and you're in with a shot!

The ISS is due to fly over my area. What am I looking for?

A very bright light moving across the sky — somewhere between an aeroplane and a shooting star.

"The space station is the brightest moving object in the sky, and it will move quickly across the sky," Dr Tucker said.

"It moves faster than an aeroplane, but the lights don't blink, but it's like a shooting star where it's just this bright light that moves.

"It can last from 20 seconds up to a few minutes depending on where it's orbiting."

No need for a telescope either — you can spot the ISS with the naked eye.

Basically it'll look a little something like it does in this video:

I've just got an alert about an upcoming sighting of the ISS. How do I decipher the information?

If you sign up to one of those apps mentioned above, you may get a notification like this:

SpotTheStation! Time: Wed Apr 25 7:45 PM, Visible: 4 min, Max Height: 66 degrees, Appears: WSW, Disappears NE.

To break it down for you:

Time: When the sighting opportunity will begin in your local time zone. All sightings will occur within a few hours before or after sunrise or sunset. This is the optimum viewing period as the sun reflects off the space station and contrasts against the darker sky.

Visible: The maximum time period the space station is visible before crossing back below the horizon.

Max Height: It represents the height of the space station from the horizon in the night sky. The horizon is at zero degrees, and directly overhead is ninety degrees. If you hold your fist at arm's length and place your fist resting on the horizon, the top will be about 10 degrees. It's measured in degrees (also known as elevation).

Appears: The location in the sky where the station will be visible first. This value, like maximum height, also is measured in degrees from the horizon. The letters represent compass directions.

Disappears: Represents where in the night sky the ISS will leave your field of view.

So for the instance above, the ISS will be visible at 7:45pm for four minutes. It will appear 66 degrees above the horizon from west south-west of your position, and disappear in the north-east.

Is there anything else I can spot orbiting the Earth?

Yes, other satellites!

"I would say on any given clear night if you're looking at the sky you'll see one satellite every 30 minutes to hour," Dr Tucker said.

One thing to keep an eye out for are iridium communication satellites and their iridium flares.

"The panels are really reflective, so there won't be a bright streak like the ISS but there will be a bright flash," Dr Tucker said.

"So sometimes if you see a bright flash it's actually what we call an iridium flare, and if the angles are right you get a bright reflection off these communication satellites."

Here's what it looks like:

By: abc.net.au

Nick Tsagaris - Meet Three Trans And Non-Binary Artists Who Are Reimagining The Way We Tell Stories

If you look at lives as if they are stories, there's one plot line that seems to dominate: birth, puberty, work, marriage, child-rearing — and finally, death.

But if you're queer or gender non-conforming, many of these plot points can be inaccessible, irrelevant or otherwise fraught.

In this context, some artists are creating works that trouble the line and the form, and in turn making their own plot points.

For Bailee-Rose Farnham, a classically trained dancer and trans woman, choreography has been a way to reconnect with the artform she loves.

"I feel like society tells you that you have to live a certain way, dress a certain way, act a certain way. I was in an environment [at a major dance company] where that was all people really did, and it was soul-crushing," says Farnham.

For non-binary theatre-maker Bobuq Sayed, "linearity [in narrative] has never been really something that appealed. I think there's a lot of really boring theatre out there. [You have to ask]: What is the theatre offering us that no other space can even hope to replicate?"

Trans and non-binary writer and poet Quinn Eades' hybrid works also resist linearity. Eades explains that while the prefix "trans" means "going across", his writings "trouble the idea that trans narratives are very simple and follow a fairly linear model of moving across from one [gender] to the other".

'Femininity is different for every single person'

There was a time when Farnham felt completely alienated from one of the things she most loved.

"It was quite confronting when I first transitioned," she says.

"I grew up in ballet being told I had to be really strong, and all of a sudden I was told I had to be more soft, that I had to have this essence of femininity — that I feel like I wasn't able to achieve because of the way I looked and the body type that I have."

She spent two years in a major dance company, and developed an eating disorder while attempting to meet their ideal of femininity.

As a woman of colour, Farnham also "felt very exoticised", she says. "I felt like my technique and my performance was only valid if I was being sexy or sprawled out across the floor; if I was exuding this hyper-sexual female."

Through choreographing her own work, which dismantles traditional ideas of femininity, Farnham has learnt to embrace her artform and her body.

"I try to swap the gender roles of the dancers around, in my pas de deux or pas de trois [ballets of two or three dancers] — where the male usually would be lifting the female, I would have the women doing the lift … or the man doing pirouettes."

The choreographer has also cast her ballets with two women or two men, rather than the usual opposite-sex couple.

"This changes the tone and changes the storyline, because I'm trying to have as much queerness [as possible] in my art," Farnham says.

She describes the results as "liberating".

"If I want to exude a hyper-sexualised feminine energy, I can do it in my own way. I don't have to conform to [another choreographer's] idea of what femininity is, because femininity is different for every single woman, every single person."

"I'm not afraid to look a certain way anymore."

Recently, Farnham choreographed a work for ABC Arts iview series Art Bites: Unboxed. "It was about my experiences in different relationships, with beauty standards, and as a gay person," says Farnham. Her next piece will explore her transition.

"I hope to draw out these experiences in the hope that it will help others."

What could trans dramaturgy be?

Bobuq Sayed is a non-binary writer, performer and multidisciplinary artist, and a member of the Afghan diaspora. Sayed doesn't identify as a man or a woman, and uses the pronoun "they".

Sayed is also a member of trans and non-binary theatre group Embittered Swish.

"We are dedicated to progressing trans representation, beyond a very introductory 'Trans 101' perspective," Sayed explains. "That perspective often panders to cisgendered audiences [people whose gender identity is in line with their sex assigned at birth], which is not who we are making art for."

An Embittered Swish performance doesn't unfold like a conventional piece of theatre. There is no easily discernible sense of a beginning, middle, or end. There are, however, narrative moments, punctuated by music and movement in unexpected ways.

"Trying to specifically name what trans dramaturgy is, is difficult," says Sayed, "but it is the outcome of what happens when trans artists and theatre-makers come together to make art about their experiences."

"I think often, as trans artists, the kind of art we make is confined to art about our transition and about our gender dysphoria, which is prescribed from outside our community," Sayed says.

"With [Embittered Swish], we're trying to make art that hopes to dismantle or interrupt how trans representation is typically done."

In Estrogenesis, which premiered at Melbourne's Next Wave Festival in May, the group took aim at ideas of transition, resolution and power, by examining the medicalisation of the trans experience.

This work is part of a larger vision to "contest narratives of representation, specifically this idea of transition or resolution … [or] of linearity, of moving from A to B [from one gender to another]".

"The reality of transitioning is that it doesn't look the same for anyone and there is no right or wrong way to do it," says Sayed. "It does take a lot of work and it has a psychological, emotional and financial cost on bodies, communities and subjectivities."

Hybrid, fragmentary writing

Quinn Eades is a writer, poet and researcher. "My gender identity is that I'm a trans-masc [masculine] person, my pronouns are 'he, him and his'. But it's a very layered pronoun for me; it also holds the 'she' that I was," Eades says.

"I'm pretty non-binary and so 'they/them' is in there as well," he adds.

Eades works in a kind of hybrid writing style. For example, All the Beginnings: A Queer Autobiography of the Body was "a mixture of philosophy, critical theory, poetry and autobiography".

"I pull out quotes from whatever I'm reading and then I use them to jump in and out of the writing. I think of myself as having conversations with other writers, theorists and sources, rather than doing analytical work," he says.

"There are definitely echoes and resonances for me, between living a transqueer life and also exploring those marginalities in writing, through refusing to stick to a recognisable genre and really playing with form, as well as content."

Eades is currently working on a new book, titled Transpositions. "It's a memoir from the body in transition," he says.

He says that he's working in "fragments" of memoir, alongside a column of fairy story.

"I think what we see in popular culture is a really stable narrative around trans bodies," he says.

That stable narrative sees people transitioning from one gender to another, through "a series of hormone treatments, medical procedures and social transitional processes — for example, changing your name".

"By using fragments and fairy story, I'm saying that for me and I think for most trans people, it's a lot more complex than that. There is no one trans narrative that we can follow."

By: abc.net.au

Nick Tsagaris - Dark Mofo: Hobart Lord Mayor Wants To Turn Down The Lights On Shock Festival

Hobart's Lord Mayor has declared he wants to "put the brakes" on Dark Mofo, saying the annual winter festival run by MONA is pushing the boundaries of good taste.

Ron Christie lashed out at what he described as the "shock festival" and suggested the Council may consider withdrawing its annual funding of $200,000 in cash and in-kind support.

Dark Mofo is now in its sixth year, and brings an estimated $50 million annually to the city.

Alderman Christie said he and his colleagues had been inundated with complaints about the festival, including the "unhealthy culture" it was generating.

"They say the mark of a good city is how well you look after your citizens, and I think the citizens have expressed their concerns about different aspects of Dark Mofo and which way it's going culturally," he said.

"Hobart is a community city, and it's Hobart, not Mobart."

 

Alderman Christie said what began as a family event had been tarnished by controversies.

Last year animal liberation groups were outraged over a performance involving a bull carcass, and the appearance of giant inverted crosses around the city for this year's event has caused offence among Christians.

Alderman Christie was also less than impressed with performance artist Mike Parr's three-day burialbeneath Macquarie Street.

"I'm not shocked anymore. It's not my cup of tea," he said.

Funding deal

The council's three-year funding deal for Dark Mofo is up for renegotiation this year, and Alderman Christie wants to sit down with the festival's creative director Leigh Carmichael to talk about its future.

"I think it's time now to put the brakes on. We're going too fast," he said.

"I'm sure Mr Carmichael and [MONA founder David] Walsh would welcome conversations with any city that has a chequebook — maybe they should talk to Launceston."

Mr Carmichael said it was up to the council to decide which events it supports.

"We've had a longstanding relationship since Dark Mofo started in 2013 with the council, it's a relationship that we value," Mr Carmichael said.

"It's been very important to us and it's a significant sponsorship so we will just have to deal with that if it came to pass," he said.

He said there were no plans to move the festival, even if council support dried up.

"I think Dark Mofo belongs in Hobart, it's a Hobart-based event," he said.

"It would put pressure on us in certain areas, certainly in relation to the Winter Feast, but we'd look at it at the time."

Mr Carmichael was particularly disappointed with the community's reaction to the inverted crosses.

"There's a lot more going on with those than shock, that's not what we're doing it for," he said.

"We're raising issues around symbolism and religion and these are things that I want discussed and we want discussed as a festival."

By: abc.net.au

Nick Tsagaris - How Men Are Embracing 'Clean Eating' Posts On Instagram

Instagram is the world's fastest growing social network site, with over 700 million accounts comprised of mostly young (18 to 29-year-old), female users.

                      

Part of the app's appeal is that it gives users a chance to experiment with self-presentation techniques and identify with different communities and movements online.

One such movement is "clean eating" — embracing a diet comprised of foods perceived to be "clean" and "pure", such as unprocessed, unrefined, and nutrient-rich ones, typically eaten as small meals throughout the day. A relatively recent phenomenon used to promote blogs, cook books and exercise programs, the movement advocates a plant-based diet mostly free of red meat, gluten, sugar and alcohol.

"Clean eating" has an underlying moral dimension elevating certain foods over those deemed to be dirty and impure. By default, those who do not subscribe to a "clean" diet and lifestyle are perceived to be of lower status.

Instagram's demographics — and the weight loss industry's focus on women — might lead one to expect women would dominate "clean eating" posts, but our new study has found that men feature more prominently in them.

We examined images categorised under the hashtags #cleaneating and #eatclean, looking at 144 top posts over eight days. We examined the nine highest ranking daily posts for each hashtag according to the quantity of engagement (such as "likes", comments) and the quality of it. The most surprising finding was the prevalence of men, with 68 per cent of posts featuring male subjects.

Clean eating posts on Instagram make a strong connection between lifestyle, gender and identity. Most of those depicted appear to be late teens or young adults. Images that achieved top post status overwhelmingly focused on individual bodies, rather than food.

These posts subscribed to specific ideals of masculinity. Most portrayed men engaging in muscle presentation, with exaggerated displays of flexed arms and abdominal muscles to convey virile strength and power. The muscular features of those depicted were accentuated through the use of framing, camera focus, filters and bodily positioning.

Posts of this kind represent a form of hegemonic masculinity, where fortitude, athleticism and competitiveness are valued over other masculine forms. Despite the cultural connection between meat and masculinity, when framed in relation to individual health and the environment, clean eating and meatless meals were presented as rational choices.

Insta clean eating posts feed 'healthism'

The prevalence of masculine display in "clean eating" top posts also feeds into ideals of healthism — a way of locating the problem of health and disease at the level of the individual rather than as a state or societal responsibility.

The frequency with which men featured in clean eating top posts reveals not only the importance of diet and body image for men today, but the ways in which the diet industry and advertising increasingly targets men.

Instagram has become a profitable enterprise, with bloggers using their image to influence others to purchase products and services. While there is an absence of overt advertising on Instagram, over half of the images we analysed doubled as native advertising for weight loss programs, supplements and food products. This was particularly the case with those images that focused on the body (for example, muscle presentation shots), with attractive bodies doubling as advertisements by feeding aspirational desires.

For instance, one muscle presentation post was accompanied by the caption: "Make progress not excuses. Make a change today and let me take your physique to the next level" — the image of a muscular man at the gym operating as an ad for a personal trainer.

Despite the common assumption that social media allows for more fluid expressions of identity, our research indicates the degree to which commercial interests infiltrate the platform.

Stephanie Alice Baker is a lecturer in sociology at the University of London; Michael Walsh is assistant professor of social science at the University of Canberra.

This article originally appeared on The Conversation.

By: abc.net.au

Nick Tsagaris - Nick Tsagaris - World Cup: England, Belgium Make Biggest Statement For Winning Tournament After Even Opening Round

The football world outside the British Isles loves to bag out England as a perennial World Cup choker, a rabble of overpaid, overhyped footballers on the verge of being found out by cannier opponents.

In a complementary vein, Belgium is often seen as a brilliant collection of footballers and an incredible team in theory, only to find out at some point during World Cups the game is in fact played on grass, not on paper.

And yet after an incredible even first round of matches in Russia, it is England and Belgium that have firmed as the biggest claimants to a tangible tilt at World Cup glory.

Granted, Colombia and Poland have still to play their opening matches (against Japan and Senegal respectively), but the Colombians and Poles stand more as the bookies' outsiders, rather than tournament frontrunners.

                              

Indeed, the heavily-backed favourites of Brazil, Germany, Spain and Argentina have all fluffed their lines after one match, while France was more than fortunate to come away with all three points against a battling Socceroos side.

Whether the results that went England and Belgium's way was enough to impress every naysayer is a matter for debate. Belgium eventually overcame lowly Panama 3-0 after being held goalless in the first half, while England nearly failed to find the breakthrough against Tunisia before Harry Kane's late winner.

But you know what? It's hard to break down teams that sit back to defend, frustrate and eat up time. Just ask Germany, Argentina and Brazil — those you would ordinarily take more seriously for World Cup favouritism — given how they fared in their opening matches.

Argentina's 1-1 draw with fairytale factory Iceland is a case in point. A country of roughly 300,000 people has produced a team that can not only go on an incredible run at Euro 2016, but also hold Lionel Messi's La Albiceleste to a draw thanks to a tried and tested defensive tactic of sitting deep and frustrating your more vaunted opposition.

Iceland is a team with several players (as well as their coach, a full-time dentist) who had to seek permission from their employers outside of football for permission to play at the World Cup in Russia. Argentina had 72 per cent possession in that game, yet their players found hardly any space.

If the defensive tactic can help the Icelandic minnows smite the world, you can bet other teams with more resources are going to give it a go too.

Belgium found a way to open up Panama, coming via a Dries Mertens wonder goal which opened the floodgates for Romelu Lukaku's brace to wrap up a 3-0 win.

Similarly England, which started like a house on fire before being pegged back against Tunisia, found its winner in a 2-1 victory thanks to sheer persistence and fresh legs.
Youth and Southgate's management something different

England looks to be a different animal in the Russia tournament from World Cups past. Before, England had an overreliance on overpaid stars who were often made to look good in the Premier League by seasoned, foreign teammates.

The star midfield pairing of Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard famously never functioned on the big stage, Wayne Rooney took an age to score his first-ever World Cup goal, and players' positional inflexibility meant England would time and time again be found out by more technical and savvy opponents.

That's without even mentioning the cliques and siege mentality that ran rife through so many England camps. Now, coach Gareth Southgate has torn up England's rule book, emphasising youthful players with pace and creative flair, while building a more trusting relationship with the UK's notorious football media.

The first signs in the early stages against Tunisia were encouraging, with England letting off six shots on target in the first half alone.

Belgium, meanwhile, has managed to keep a core of phenomenal talent cloistered together in the hopes that 2014's frustrating showing will blossom into a golden flourish in the 2018 World Cup.

The attacking talents of Eden Hazard, Kevin de Bruyne, Yannick Carrasco and the imposing Lukaku are immense threats, while at the back they can call on stellar names like Vincent Kompany, Toby Alderweireld and Jan Vertonghen.

For all we know, the likes of France, Germany, Brazil and Spain could come good in their second matches and get their show on the road ahead of a run deep into the knockout stages.

Spain, after all, famously lost its first game against Switzerland in the 2010 event before sweeping the rest of the field to its maiden World Cup triumph, and the aforementioned nations will be banking on similar fortune.

But as far as first-mover advantage is concerned, the perennially teased and tormented England and Belgium have each put a big hand up in Russia, and you'd be hanging on to old taunts if you refused to take them seriously.

By: abc.net.au

Nick Tsagaris - The Rate Of Antarctic Melting Has Nearly Tripled In The Past Five Years

The Antarctic ice sheet has lost more than 2,500 billion tonnes of ice in the past 25 years and nearly half of that has happened since 2012.

An international team of polar scientists found that melting in Antarctica has jumped sharply from an average of 76 billion tonnes per year prior to 2012, to around 219 billion tonnes each year between 2012 and 2017.

That's adding 0.6 of a millimetre to sea levels each year. Antarctica stores enough water to raise global sea levels by 58 metres, and has contributed 7.6 millimetres since 1992, according to the research published in Nature today.

The latest data is a continuation of previous assessments known as the Ice sheet Mass Balance Inter-comparison Exercise (IMBIE), which began in 2011 and tracks ice-sheet loss from 1992 onwards.

IMBIE was established with the support of NASA and the European Space Agency, to monitor the changes in ice-sheet cover around the world.

It uses combined satellite data to measure the Antarctic ice sheet's changing flow and volume.

The increase in melting should act as a wake-up call, according to project leader Professor Andrew Shepherd from the University of Leeds.

"The rapid increase in Antarctic ice loss is due to ocean melting of glaciers in the Amundsen Sea, and ice shelf collapse on the Antarctic Peninsula," he said in a statement.

"These events and the sea-level rise they've triggered are an indicator of climate change and should be of concern for the governments we trust to protect our coastal cities and communities."

Emerging Antarctic sea-level rise research points to 'worst case scenarios'

West Antarctica contributed the most ice loss from the continent, shedding nearly 160 billion tonnes each year since 2012.

Although the general trend was of reduction, there was some increase in ice cover in East Antarctica.

This region has grown by an average of around 5 billion tonnes per year over the 25-year period, although margins of error could put that figure into the negative.

The researchers attribute the increased losses in West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula to changes in regional floating-ice shelves, which can provide a buffer to continental-ice sheets.

In a separate analysis piece in Nature today, climate scientist and Antarctic policy expert Professor Rob DeConto warned that Antarctica may contribute more to sea-level rise than previously thought.

"Emerging science is pointing to more extreme worst-case scenarios with regards to sea-level rise from Antarctica," he stated.

"But the good news is that a reduction in emissions in line with the aspirations of the Paris Climate Agreement dramatically reduces the risk of flooding our coastlines in future decades and centuries."

But there is also room for caution in how this latest data is interpreted.

It's too early to say whether this melting trend will continue or slow down, according to CSIRO physical oceanographer Dr Steve Rintoul, who wasn't involved in the study.

"It's a difficult one for us to answer because the time series is still pretty short," he said.

"There's still a wide range in projections between what is going to happen in Antarctica in the future."

However, he said that there is growing evidence that projections of Antarctica's influence on sea-level rise may have been underestimated.

"What we have seen as the climate has warmed is that more warm water is reaching the Antarctic ice sheet and that's what is melting the sea ice," he said.

Separate research points to devastating role of ocean swell

As sea-ice retreats, floating Antarctic ice shelves are more exposed to destruction by wave action, according to a separate paper also published in Nature today and not affiliated with the previous study.

However, the role of sea ice in buffering ice shelves and continental ice sheets is rarely factored into Antarctic ice-loss modelling, according to lead researcher Dr Rob Massom from the Australian Antarctic Institute.

His team analysed the Larsen A and Larsen B, and Wilkins ice-shelf disintegration events, and found that lack of sea-ice was a common factor.

"It just so happens that offshore from those ice shelves, it's a hotspot of sea-ice loss," Dr Massom said.

"Ice shelves play a significant role in buttressing the discharge of grounded ice from the ice sheet into the ocean, and it's that ice that contributes to sea-level rise."

He argued that sea-ice loss needs to be considered in future modelling in order to more accurately forecast the contribution of the Antarctic ice sheet to sea-level rise in coming decades.

"The disintegration was an eye-opening thing. The glaciers that were feeding into those ice shelves accelerated by up to eight-fold [after the disintegration] and that happened pretty immediately," he said.

"This is a concerning thing if you consider that ice shelves exist around 75 per cent of the periphery of Antarctica. If this kind of thing happens more in the future we have to be aware of that."

By: abc.net.au

Nick Tsagaris - Investor Retreat From The Property Market Continues As Lending Falls Again

Investors continued their retreat from the Australian property market in April as lending declined.

The value of loans to investors fell a further 0.9 per cent in the month, after a steep 9 per cent drop in March.

While the value of loans to owner-occupiers edged higher by 0.2 per cent, the number of loan commitments fell by 1.4 per cent, seasonally-adjusted.

Lending standards are tightening as the fallout from the banking royal commission continues, and economists expect this to drag down loan commitments for some time to come.

"With more stringent assessments also likely to delay loan processing, finance approvals could see a more significant decline in the next few months," Westpac economist Matthew Hassan said.

The ABS figures show first home buyers account for about 18 per cent of the owner-occupier segment, but the number of loans to first-time buyers has fallen from its peak in November last year.

"The stamp duty discounts for first home buyers across New South Wales and Victoria are still assisting some buyers, but the effect is waning," ANZ's Daniel Gradwell said.

"While falling house prices are broadly positive for these buyers, further credit tightening is likely to weigh on the segment."

Auction activity continues to weaken

In another sign of the continuing cooling in the market, auction activity declined further over the week ending June 10.

Auction volumes fell substantially as most states and territories took a long weekend for the Queen's Birthday, according to preliminary data from CoreLogic.

"There were 900 homes taken to auction across the combined capital cities, down from 2,281 last week and 1,279 this time last year," CoreLogic said.

The preliminary auction clearance rate is 55.3 per cent, slightly up on last week's final clearance rate of 54.1 per cent.

Melbourne's preliminary clearance rate of 56.1 per cent is the weakest the city has seen since 2012.

It comes after CoreLogic figures showed Australia's property prices posting their first annual decline in six years in May, with Melbourne overtaking Sydney as the worst performing market over the past three months.

By: abc.net.au

Nick Tsagaris - From A Special Relationship To A 'Special Place In Hell'

When Donald Trump fired off his bitter character assessment of the Canadian Prime Minister — a man he proclaimed to be "very dishonest and weak" — the US President wasn't just walking away from a hard-fought agreement between G7 leaders, signed hours earlier.

For many observers, it was confirmation that relations between the two North American leaders had reached a personal low that defies comparison in recent history.

Indeed, we haven't heard of such animosity between the Canadian prime minister and the US president since the last time Justin Trudeau lived at the prime minister's residence.

The year was 1972, Trudeau Jr was just a baby and his dad Pierre was in power.

Like today, the bone of contention in that falling-out was also trade policies, and specifically White House protectionism, which led Nixon to infamously describe Trudeau Sr as "a pompous egghead" and a "clever son of a bitch".

The spat culminated in Richard Nixon standing up in Canadian parliament to effectively pronounce the special relationship between the two countries to be dead.

"It is time for us to recognise: that we have very separate identities; that we have significant differences; and that nobody's interests are furthered when these realities are obscured," Mr Nixon told his audience.

The difference with this week's falling-out is that while Mr Nixon had kept his caustic character assessment of his counterpart private, Mr Trump's outburst of personal contempt for Trudeau Jr was broadcast to the whole world.

And Mr Trump's advisors were quick to join in lockstep with the rancour.

"There's a special place in hell for any foreign leader that engages in bad-faith diplomacy with President Donald J Trump and then tries to stab him in the back on the way out the door," presidential adviser Peter Navarro told Fox News.

So how did we get to this situation where the White House is accusing its northern neighbour — a so-called backstabbing, double-crossing weakling — of betrayal?

Relations under Trump

Protectionist mantras were a recurring theme in Mr Trump's election campaign, with most of his acerbic barbs directed against Mexico and China.

When the Trump presidency became an unexpected reality, the Canadian Government took quick action to promote a counternarrative.

Mr Trudeau's administration embarked on a charm offensive — albeit one that involved judo-like handshakes — as he attempted to persuade Mr Trump the current arrangements created jobs for Americans.

At the centre of it all was NAFTA, a free trade agreement between the US, Canada and Mexico, which Mr Trump described as a "jobs killer" that he wanted to tear up.

Canadian politicians flocked to rust belt states in a concerted effort to make the case for a continuation for the NAFTA framework.

By May 2017, the Trump administration announced its intention to renegotiate the trade pact in Americans' favour, arguing Canada had out-manoeuvred previous administrations.

This allegedly unfair playing field, Mr Trump contended, meant that Canada found itself in a competitive advantage across industries as varied as dairy, lumber and energy.

Nevertheless Mr Trudeau persevered with his optimistic entreaties until Mr Trump announced his hard-ball trade negotiation strategy — tariffs on aluminium and steel imported from allied nations.

The US is Canada's largest trading partner by a considerable margin, and Canada exports more steel and aluminium to the US than any other country.

The news of Mr Trump's proposal left many Canadians in shock.

"We're pretty consistently flabbergasted that Canada is at the top of the hit parade of trade villains in Trump's eyes," the chief economist at the Bank of Montreal, Douglas Porter, said at the time.

The White House justification for the tariffs — national security — appeared to add insult to injury, with Mr Trudeau describing the reasoning as "simply ridiculous".

The escalating rhetoric culminated in a surreal telephone conversation where Mr Trump defended his strategy by suggesting to Mr Trudeau that Canadians were responsible for burning down the White House.

(British troops did burn down the White House back in the War of 1812, but Canada wasn't even confederated until 1867.)

G7 showdown

By the time the G7 summit began in Quebec, Mr Trudeau appeared to be in an awkward negotiating position.

Negotiators struggled to decide upon even a minimalist joint commitment that addressed the deep concerns everyone held about the trade dispute.

When the world leaders convened around a bonfire for a Cirque du Soleil performance on Friday night, one can only imagine the contortionist manoeuvres performed on stage resonated with some of its audience.

Meanwhile, G7 officials cast doubt on whether a final communique would emerge from the summit.

Yet despite such reports, a compromise agreement was eventually hammered out, expressing the shared economic aspirations of the countries.

The success led even Mr Trump to momentarily abandon his anti-Canadian posturing, telling reporters Mr Trudeau had hosted a wonderful summit and their relationship was "very good".

And by the time Mr Trudeau faced the press to announce the breakthrough deal, Mr Trump was already en route to meet Kim Jong-un in Singapore.

Fielding questions from reporters, Mr Trudeau reiterated the US tariffs were unjust, his Government planned to go ahead with retaliatory measures, and that he had told Mr Trump as much.

"We did not take lightly to the fact that it's based on a national security reason that for Canadians, who either themselves, or whose parents, community members, stood shoulder-to-shoulder with American soldiers in far-off lands and conflicts from the first world war onwards, that it's kind of insulting," Mr Trudeau told journalists, echoing remarks he had made earlier.

When news of his comments reached Air Force One, Mr Trump resorted to his diplomatic channel of choice — Twitter — to wage his rebuke.

Summit's aftermath

Other G7 leaders were stunned by the last-minute withdrawal, uniting to express their dismay that the hard-fought communique was now abandoned.

Germany's Angela Merkel said Mr Trump's decision was "depressing, " and France's Emmanuel Macron concurred.

"International cooperation could not be dictated by fits of anger and throwaway remarks," he said.

On the domestic front, Mr Trudeau's position has received bipartisan support.

His predecessor, Stephen Harper, has questioned why Mr Trump appeared obsessed with its trade relations with Canada.

"Canada is the biggest single purchaser of US goods and services in the world — it's not China, it's not Mexico, it's not Britain, it's not Germany. It's Canada. So it just seems to me this is the wrong target," the former conservative prime minister told Fox News.

Such unity from his domestic rivals must surely be cold comfort for Mr Trudeau, after his summit that produced no consensus, and the realisation his truculent neighbour would rather spend his time with a North Korean dictator.

By: abc.net.au