Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Myra Williamson, Senior Lecturer in Law, Auckland University of Technology

The decision by Israel’s parliament to designate the United Nations’ Palestinian relief agency UNRWA a “terrorist organisation” has been condemned by many governments, with claims it will create a “catastrophe in what is already an unmitigated disaster”.

This came three months after the International Court of Justice’s landmark advisory opinion in July declaring Israel’s presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory unlawful. All states now have a legal obligation to ensure they are not assisting Israel to continue its unlawful occupation.

But with the reelection of Donald Trump as US president, how the international community will respond to breaches of international law becomes even less clear.

New Zealand has criticised the United Nations Security Council for its failure to resolve the crisis, and has backed calls in the UN General Assembly for humanitarian ceasefires in Gaza.

But some, including the Green Party, have called for the government to take tougher measures against Israel, including divestment and sanctions. If the government were to consider such a path, then, what would its options be?

The Russian invasion of Ukraine provides the most obvious precedent. The Russia Sanctions Act (the first law of its kind in New Zealand) was passed in 2022, covering travel, trade and assets associated with the Russian and Belarusian governments. Stronger action against Israel would likely require something similar.

Divestment, on the other hand, could happen without any law changes. The guardians of the Superannuation Fund, for example, could review their portfolio and decide to divest, and technically would not need to consult the finance minister.

NZ’s Israel investments

New Zealand has investments in Israeli companies and government bonds. The latest portfolio disclosure from the Super Fund (which is a crown entity) shows investments in five Israeli software and IT companies totalling NZ$29,510,559.

The Super Fund also has $5,996,326 invested in “Israeli sovereign bonds”, according to an Official Information Act response I received from Finance Minister Nicola Willis.

These investments arguably breach section 61(d) of the Superannuation and Retirement Income Act which requires “ethical investment”. They may also go against the Super Fund’s sustainable investment framework, which guides investments and “protects the reputation of the Fund”.

The framework states the fund may take account of international law and “the severity of the breach of standards” when making investment decisions. It also says the fund will exclude investment in the government bonds of any state where:

• there is widespread condemnation or sanctions by the international community

• and New Zealand has imposed meaningful diplomatic, economic or military sanctions aimed at that government.

The first requirement of “widespread condemnation” appears to have been met: 124 states (including NZ) voted in the UN General Assembly in September to call for an end to Israel’s unlawful occupation of East Jerusalem and the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

The second requirement is more difficult to satisfy because New Zealand has not yet “imposed meaningful diplomatic, economic or military sanctions” on Israel.

Ministerial direction

As Willis has made clear, the Super Fund is an autonomous crown entity with its own responsible investment policy.

However, if the fund is perceived not to be investing ethically or in accordance with the sustainable investment framework, the minister could take action.

Under section 64 of the act, the minister could issue a non-binding ministerial direction to the fund’s guardians directing them to consider divesting from sovereign bonds to avoid “prejudice to New Zealand’s reputation as a responsible member of the world community”.

The minister could also send an “enduring letter of expectation” setting out what responsible and ethical investment might look like. This has happened before, most recently in 2021 when the Labour government required Crown Financial Institutions to seek “zero carbon investment portfolios” by 2050.

The fund’s guardians might also strengthen the fund’s sustainable investment framework by making its language more emphatic. For example, by stating the fund “shall” – rather than “may” – take account of international law and “the severity of the breach of standards” by another state.

Calls for sanctions

Meanwhile, the humanitarian situation in Gaza and now Lebanon has become even more dire, with Israel accused of further violations of international law, including using civilians as human shields and targeting UN peacekeepers in Lebanon.

Internationally, calls for economic sanctions and divestment have been increasing, including from some Israeli citizens, as well as from the leaders of Spain and Ireland, and the European Union’s top foreign affairs and security diplomat.

New Zealand can impose sanctions, if they have been imposed by the UN Security Council, through regulations permitted by the United Nations Act 1946. But this is highly unlikely in the case of Israel, given the US power of veto.

Without UN sanctions, New Zealand would require a specific law similar to the Russia Sanctions Act. Or it could use the current crisis to create an “autonomous sanctions” regime that would allow it to impose sanctions unilaterally.

This was recommended by an independent advisory group in May 2023, after an autonomous sanctions bill was proposed but defeated in 2021. This puts New Zealand out of step with its Five Eyes intelligence network allies, which all have autonomous sanctions legislation.

In the absence of a meaningful ceasefire, divestment would be the possible next resort should the government choose to take a tougher line.

Myra Williamson is a member of the NZ Labour Party.

– ref. The NZ Super Fund has Israeli investments worth $35 million – could it divest? – https://theconversation.com/the-nz-super-fund-has-israeli-investments-worth-35-million-could-it-divest-241476

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katrin Schreiter, Senior Lecturer in German and History, King’s College London

The 35th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall, an event that powerfully symbolised the collapse of communism in eastern Europe and signalled the end of the cold war, is an opportune moment to take stock of what remains of East Germany (GDR) in the capital of Germany.

Remnants of the wall in the eastern part of the city, most visible in the so-called East Side Gallery along the river Spree in Berlin-Friedrichshain, have become a tourist attraction. The former American border crossing, Checkpoint Charlie, likewise, is a highly frequented stop on Berlin’s sightseeing map.

Many of the wall’s original concrete slabs were gifted abroad. A piece baring graffiti by artist Jürgen Grosse, known as Indiano, is on display outside London’s Imperial War Museum.

What remains of the wall in Berlin is a fading demarcation line. A trail of inscripted metal and simple cobble stones has people tripping over this part of German history – the 40-year division of the country and the “anti-fascist protection wall” that was meant to separate East Germans from the lure of the capitalist west.

However, the attentive tourist will note that the landmarks of the former GDR are gradually disappearing from the landscape of Berlin. Architectural heritage is falling victim to urban planners – and a specific political desire to frame the East German past in a certain way.

Not all asbestos is created equal

The most notorious example is the Palast der Republik, the glass, steel and concrete GDR parliamentary building and public event space. It was erected in 1976 on the site of the palace of the Hohenzollern, once home to imperial Germany’s ruling family, but ultimately destroyed in the war. The discovery of asbestos in the East German “people’s palace” in the 1990s made demolition a rational option. The deed was done in the early 2000s.

Funds could instead have been invested in repairing the building, had there been the wish to save this iconic architectural heritage of the GDR. But conservative forces drummed up political support for a highly controversial project to replace it – the partial rebuilding of the Hohenzollern palace.

Supporters emphasised tradition and the shared history of all Germans. Opponents point to the colonial crimes of empire. This discussion has continued since the new building houses the Humboldt Forum, a museum that is home to an “intercultural” collection of colonial exhibits that do not rightfully belong to Germany.

Meanwhile, the International Congress Centre, a conference complex in west Berlin that was also built with asbestos in the 1970s, has been listed for historical preservation.

Refurbished into political neutrality

In the meantime, the city has taken a different approach to other, more useful buildings such as the restructuring effort that has gone into the famous prefab plattenbauten – the large apartment blocks that dominate the urban landscape in the eastern part of the city.

According to the German Statistical Agency, between 1970 and 1990 the GDR built about 1.9 million apartments in blocks of this kind to combat a severe housing shortage. They attained cult status in the early 2000s, when it became fashionable among Berlin’s university students and young professionals to live in them. Concerns about sufficient living space in the growing capital justified the investments that the city put into the modernisation of these buildings.

But taking such a utilitarian approach to dealing with East German architectural heritage arguably robs buildings such as the plattenbauten of their political meaning. In being refurbished for future use, they are neutralised.

In recent years, a number of plattenbauten beyond Berlin have been listed for historical preservation. Only last month a similar step was announced for central Berlin. It includes houses in Münzstraße, Torstraße, Neue and Alte Schönhauser Straße and Dircksenstraße.

But anyone who is familiar with the area knows that buildings there were erected by East German urban planners during the “rediscovery” of Berlin’s architectural heritage in the 1980s. They emulate the style of turn-of-the-century apartment blocks and have nothing in common with the giant modernist plattenbauten that had helped in resolving the East German housing crisis.

Berlin, as the contested city of the cold war and the new seat of government in a reunited Germany, remains a challenged urban space. Whether or not there’s an explicit political agenda at work, conscious or unconscious biases among politicians inevitably come into play when they decide which buildings are allowed to stand and which are torn down.

Katrin Schreiter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Thirty-five years since the wall fell, Berlin is divided – over what to do with crumbling communist buildings – https://theconversation.com/thirty-five-years-since-the-wall-fell-berlin-is-divided-over-what-to-do-with-crumbling-communist-buildings-242662

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Smith, Associate Professor in American Politics and Foreign Policy, US Studies Centre, University of Sydney

Donald Trump has been elected the 47th president of the United States. He is just the second president in US history to win a second non-consecutive term in office after being defeated – the first was Grover Cleveland in 1892.

His is a decisive victory, sweeping every one of the much-analysed “swing” states by two or three percentage points. These state wins were not huge, but they were good enough where it counted.

We are yet to see the final popular vote, but it’s entirely possible Trump will win that too, becoming the first Republican candidate to do so since George W. Bush in 2004. And the result emerged quickly this time, unlike in the 2020 election where the early results were mixed and the count dragged on for a long time.

Economic pain won Trump votes where it mattered

There will be much post-election analysis in the coming days and weeks, but I believe the biggest reason Trump won was discontent with the Biden administration. Kamala Harris could not separate herself from it, given she was vice president, and a lot of Americans feel the past four years have not served them well.

Harris certainly performed a lot better in this election than President Joe Biden would have. But the fact is that a lot of Americans’ perception and experience of the economy is that it is in dire shape, and they are dealing with the biggest price shocks since the 1970s. This is something they experience every time they buy groceries or fill up the car with petrol – and they took it out on Harris.

Polls show most Americans feel they are worse off than four years ago. Only a small proportion think the country is on the right track economically.

So when people were looking for change that they believed would improve their lives, they turned to Trump. People’s memories of the first Trump administration were that the economy was stronger then, even though the last year of COVID was pretty disastrous.

However, they do not seem to hold that against him, and instead think they were better off then than they are now, and that was a very powerful sentiment for the vice president to be fighting against.

Lingering misogyny

Being a woman was also probably a disadvantage for Harris. From the time she became the presumptive Democratic nominee, we saw she was fighting against a misogynistic culture. The level of debasement and obscenity from the Trump campaign only got worse, and disturbingly, they paid no penalty for it. That in itself says a lot about what Harris was up against.

While there was much talk early in the campaign about abortion playing a major role in the vote, in the end it was overshadowed by other issues. Abortion was always going to be overshadowed by the economy, because the economy is what people are dealing with every day. The same goes for immigration – it did not play as big a role in the vote as some expected. So two big issues that each side ran hard on were not as significant, in the end, as the economy.

Some significant demographic shifts

It’s clear from the results that Trump has significantly improved his vote with Latinos. Exit polls showed him in the mid-40s with Latinos, which was up there with other electorally successful presidents, and clearly the controversy over a racist joke about Puerto Ricans did not change Latinos’ willingness to vote for Trump. Many Latinos tend to be socially conservative, and they have been hit very hard by inflation and economic strain.

One of the exit polls showed Trump with 12% of the African-American vote. If that proves to be the case once all the votes have been counted, that is a significant increase for him. It might seem like a small proportion, but at the margins it could have been pretty important.

Trump has managed to persuade conservatives among Latinos and African-Americans that the Republican party has a place for them – that it’s not just a party for white people.

Harris won among young people, but her margin in that group wasn’t as big as Biden’s in 2020. This is extraordinary given she’s nearly 20 years younger than him, but there are probably a few different factors at play: young people are also hard hit by the economy, and are only just forming their voting habits. They may have found much of the contest to be uninspiring.

What now for the Democrats?

The Democrats will likely have a significant period of despondency. We need to see how the House of Representatives turns out – there’s a chance it too may have a Republican majority. But whatever happens, the Democrats will need to rebuild from opposition.

In recent history, parties have rebuilt themselves quite quickly from opposition, as Americans tend to turn on their governments very quickly.

They may well look for a new generation of leadership. Remember that by the end of his four-year term, Trump will look very old, and is likely the last of the baby-boomer leaders. Also, he can’t run for president again.

So Democrats may take the message that they can’t win just by opposing – or just by not being Donald Trump. One observation from this campaign was that they didn’t stand for enough, they didn’t promise enough, and they didn’t represent enough. Younger leading Democrats such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will be trying to push the party in a more progressive direction.

Others in the party might blame the loss on them being too progressive. But I think Harris actually spent most of her time appealing to moderate and conservative voters. It might be time to try something new.

Second Trump term will not be dull

Trump has promised a lot of genuinely horrifying things, some of which are just to entertain his base, and some of which are really what he believes. But whether he will actually be able to do the things he says he will do is another matter. I’m sure he does want to deport every illegal immigrant in the country, for example, but the legal and practical difficulties of that are very real and limiting.

If he wants to impose tariffs as broadly as he says, he’ll need the cooperation of Congress. Many will caution against it. We might think other elected Republicans are completely in his thrall, but given he’s not running again, I wonder whether those with their eyes on the future might try to carve out a more independent path.

One of his plans is to fire as many bureaucrats as possible and replace them with loyalists who would not oppose him on any measure. On one hand, he might be able to fill the government with people who do what he wants, but on the other it might be hard for him to govern if he fires everyone who knows how government works. So while he certainly has a lot of big plans, it remains to be seen just how many of them he will actually be able to implement.

David Smith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Americans have voted for Donald Trump to become president again, and the economy is the biggest reason – https://theconversation.com/americans-have-voted-for-donald-trump-to-become-president-again-and-the-economy-is-the-biggest-reason-243035

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jared Mondschein, Director of Research, US Studies Centre, University of Sydney

Trying to predict what Donald Trump will do during a second term in office is a fool’s errand.

It is all the more challenging considering Trump has prioritised winning re-election far more than discussing a detailed policy agenda. In many ways, Kamala Harris had the same strategy of maintaining an ambiguous policy agenda, though to obviously lesser success.

With that said, Trump comes back to the White House after not only four years of a prior tenure in the Oval Office, but also an additional four years since leaving office. These many years in the public eye may not tell us exactly what he will do, but they do give us an indication of his priorities.

Trump’s ambiguous policy agenda

Many point to Trump’s policy agenda as lacking both consistency and coherence.

On one hand, he has touted his Supreme Court nominees for overturning Roe v Wade. On the other, he shied away from talking about abortion on the campaign trail and encouraged fellow Republicans not to legislate conservative restrictions.

On one hand, many of his top advisors from his first term in office wrote the exceedingly conservative and controversial Project 2025 manifesto. On the other, he has distanced himself from it and the people who wrote it, saying he had never even read the document.

And on one hand, Elon Musk, one of Trump’s biggest supporters and financial backers, has claimed he could cut the size of government, government spending and even a number of federal agencies. On the other hand, most economists have said the Trump campaign’s economic agenda would dramatically expand the federal deficit more than Harris’ proposed policies.

It should be noted, however, there definitely is one area where Trump has never wavered: trade.

Trump has maintained a protectionist stance for many decades, so we can expect
consistency here. However, it remains unclear how much his Republican colleagues from rural parts of America will support such protectionist policies.

The agenda for a ‘dictator on day one’

The most well-known – and probably the most infamous – of Trump’s promises for his return to the White House was his statement about being a dictator “only on day one”.

This quote became a well-known part of the Biden and Harris campaigns’ stump speeches against Trump. It’s perhaps less well-known what exactly he would do.

He initially pledged to immediately close the border with Mexico and expand drilling for fossil fuels. On the campaign trail, he broadened his first-day priorities to also include:

• firing Special Counsel Jack Smith, who has charged Trump in two federal cases
• pardoning some of the rioters imprisoned after the January 6 2021 riots
• beginning mass deportations for the estimated 11 million people living in the United States without legal immigration status
• and ending what he has called “Green New Deal atrocities” within President Joe Biden’s framework for tackling climate change.

Trump also, in a surprise to immigration activists, said he would also “automatically” give non-citizens in the country permanent residency when they graduate from college.

What about his Cabinet?

The old adage that “personnel is policy” applies to Republican and Democratic administrations alike.

When Biden appointed Kurt Campbell to lead the White House’s Indo-Pacific efforts on the National Security Council, the move made clear that an “allies and partners” approach would define his administration’s policy in Asia.

And when Trump appointed Mike Pence to be his running mate in 2016, it made clear to traditional Republicans that Trump would have a “Republican insider” in an influential position in his administration.

Trump has made clear that Musk and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will play sizeable roles in his administration, but it remains unclear exactly what they will do.

Musk has promised to cut government regulation and red tape and Kennedy has pledged to “Make America Healthy Again”. On a practical level, however, it’s still too early to tell what type of role the two celebrities will have – particularly given Trump cabinet appointees will require Senate confirmation.

While the Republicans are going to control the Senate again, this doesn’t guarantee it will support his appointees. A slim Republican majority in the Senate in 2017 did not support all of Trump’s agenda.

The high staff turnover that defined Trump’s first term of office may once again define his second term. There was also sometimes little coherence between his appointments. For example, Trump national security advisors Michael Flynn and John Bolton had little in common beyond a shared antagonism for the Obama administration’s policies.

At the same time, deputy national security advisor Matt Pottinger ultimately stayed for nearly the entirety of the Trump administration. He not only led much of Trump’s strategic policies toward Asia, but also defined the term “strategic competition”, which will likely outlast both the Biden and Trump administrations.

The more things change, the more they stay the same

Ultimately, if Trump’s second term in office is anything like his first term, then the prognostication about his policy agenda and personnel appointments will continue for some time.

It’s therefore less valuable to guess what Trump will do than to focus on the long-term structural trends that would have continued regardless of who is in the White House.

After all, the Biden administration maintained or sought to expand man of the Trump administration’s efforts abroad, including his “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” policy, tariffs, and the Abraham Accords that normalised relations between Israel and several Arab states.

At home, the Biden administration built on Trump policies that included government support for domestic manufacturing, expansion of the Child Tax Credit and increasing restrictions on large technology firms.

And furthermore, even a Harris administration would have been unlikely to view China as a fair economic partner, deploy US troops to the Middle East, or oppose NATO allies increasing their defence spending.

Trump will undoubtedly remain unpredictable and unconventional, but it would be a mistake to think there are not clear areas of continuity that began before Trump and will continue long after him.

Jared Mondschein does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Trump has vowed to be a ‘dictator’ on day one. What exactly will he do? – https://theconversation.com/trump-has-vowed-to-be-a-dictator-on-day-one-what-exactly-will-he-do-243049

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jared Mondschein, Director of Research, US Studies Centre, University of Sydney

Trying to predict what Donald Trump will do during a second term in office is a fool’s errand.

It is all the more challenging considering Trump has prioritised winning re-election far more than discussing a detailed policy agenda. In many ways, Kamala Harris had the same strategy of maintaining an ambiguous policy agenda, though to obviously lesser success.

With that said, Trump comes back to the White House after not only four years of a prior tenure in the Oval Office, but also an additional four years since leaving office. These many years in the public eye may not tell us exactly what he will do, but they do give us an indication of his priorities.

Trump’s ambiguous policy agenda

Many point to Trump’s policy agenda as lacking both consistency and coherence.

On one hand, he has touted his Supreme Court nominees for overturning Roe v Wade. On the other, he shied away from talking about abortion on the campaign trail and encouraged fellow Republicans not to legislate conservative restrictions.

On one hand, many of his top advisors from his first term in office wrote the exceedingly conservative and controversial Project 2025 manifesto. On the other, he has distanced himself from it and the people who wrote it, saying he had never even read the document.

And on one hand, Elon Musk, one of Trump’s biggest supporters and financial backers, has claimed he could cut the size of government, government spending and even a number of federal agencies. On the other hand, most economists have said the Trump campaign’s economic agenda would dramatically expand the federal deficit more than Harris’ proposed policies.

It should be noted, however, there definitely is one area where Trump has never wavered: trade.

Trump has maintained a protectionist stance for many decades, so we can expect
consistency here. However, it remains unclear how much his Republican colleagues from rural parts of America will support such protectionist policies.

The agenda for a ‘dictator on day one’

The most well-known – and probably the most infamous – of Trump’s promises for his return to the White House was his statement about being a dictator “only on day one”.

This quote became a well-known part of the Biden and Harris campaigns’ stump speeches against Trump. It’s perhaps less well-known what exactly he would do.

He initially pledged to immediately close the border with Mexico and expand drilling for fossil fuels. On the campaign trail, he broadened his first-day priorities to also include:

• firing Special Counsel Jack Smith, who has charged Trump in two federal cases
• pardoning some of the rioters imprisoned after the January 6 2021 riots
• beginning mass deportations for the estimated 11 million people living in the United States without legal immigration status
• and ending what he has called “Green New Deal atrocities” within President Joe Biden’s framework for tackling climate change.

Trump also, in a surprise to immigration activists, said he would also “automatically” give non-citizens in the country permanent residency when they graduate from college.

What about his Cabinet?

The old adage that “personnel is policy” applies to Republican and Democratic administrations alike.

When Biden appointed Kurt Campbell to lead the White House’s Indo-Pacific efforts on the National Security Council, the move made clear that an “allies and partners” approach would define his administration’s policy in Asia.

And when Trump appointed Mike Pence to be his running mate in 2016, it made clear to traditional Republicans that Trump would have a “Republican insider” in an influential position in his administration.

Trump has made clear that Musk and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will play sizeable roles in his administration, but it remains unclear exactly what they will do.

Musk has promised to cut government regulation and red tape and Kennedy has pledged to “Make America Healthy Again”. On a practical level, however, it’s still too early to tell what type of role the two celebrities will have – particularly given Trump cabinet appointees will require Senate confirmation.

While the Republicans are going to control the Senate again, this doesn’t guarantee it will support his appointees. A slim Republican majority in the Senate in 2017 did not support all of Trump’s agenda.

The high staff turnover that defined Trump’s first term of office may once again define his second term. There was also sometimes little coherence between his appointments. For example, Trump national security advisors Michael Flynn and John Bolton had little in common beyond a shared antagonism for the Obama administration’s policies.

At the same time, deputy national security advisor Matt Pottinger ultimately stayed for nearly the entirety of the Trump administration. He not only led much of Trump’s strategic policies toward Asia, but also defined the term “strategic competition”, which will likely outlast both the Biden and Trump administrations.

The more things change, the more they stay the same

Ultimately, if Trump’s second term in office is anything like his first term, then the prognostication about his policy agenda and personnel appointments will continue for some time.

It’s therefore less valuable to guess what Trump will do than to focus on the long-term structural trends that would have continued regardless of who is in the White House.

After all, the Biden administration maintained or sought to expand man of the Trump administration’s efforts abroad, including his “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” policy, tariffs, and the Abraham Accords that normalised relations between Israel and several Arab states.

At home, the Biden administration built on Trump policies that included government support for domestic manufacturing, expansion of the Child Tax Credit and increasing restrictions on large technology firms.

And furthermore, even a Harris administration would have been unlikely to view China as a fair economic partner, deploy US troops to the Middle East, or oppose NATO allies increasing their defence spending.

Trump will undoubtedly remain unpredictable and unconventional, but it would be a mistake to think there are not clear areas of continuity that began before Trump and will continue long after him.

Jared Mondschein does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Trump has vowed to be a ‘dictator’ on day one. With that day approaching, what exactly will he do? – https://theconversation.com/trump-has-vowed-to-be-a-dictator-on-day-one-with-that-day-approaching-what-exactly-will-he-do-243049

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

Opposition transport spokeswoman Bridget McKenzie has admitted to receiving sixteen undisclosed upgrades, including on five personal flights to or from New Zealand.

The five NZ flights, with Qantas, were between 2016 and 2018, when her boyfriend was New Zealand then-parliamentarian David Bennett.

While McKenzie has been in the shadow transport portfolio since the last election, there have been three Qantas upgrades from economy to business, when she was flying on parliamentary business.

Other upgrades included one from Qantas in January 2015, and seven Virgin domestic upgrades between 2015 and 2019.

After Anthony Albanese’s upgrades became an issue following publication of Joe Aston’s book The Chairman’s Lounge, McKenzie went strongly on the attack. Initially she denied she had had any upgrades herself. After that was seen to be wrong she wrote to the airlines asking for her details.

When it became clear the opposition was about to be embarrassed by the McKenzie record, it pulled back from pursuing the upgrades issue.

In a Wednesday statement, McKenzie acknowledged her “deficiencies in disclosing these matters do not meet the expectations of the Australian people and the parliament and were an oversight on my part, and for this I apologise”.

She said she had never sought free upgrades.

Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Bridget McKenzie admits to 16 undeclared upgrades, including on personal New Zealand flights – https://theconversation.com/bridget-mckenzie-admits-to-16-undeclared-upgrades-including-on-personal-new-zealand-flights-243050

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katherine M. FitzGerald, PhD Candidate, Queensland University of Technology

In the 2020 US elections, Joe Biden’s win against Donald Trump prompted the Trump campaign to file more than 60 lawsuits challenging the result, mostly focusing on swing states.

Trump falsely claimed widespread voter fraud, although none of the proceedings found any evidence of this. Yet he continued to use these baseless claims as a key part of his 2024 campaign.

Such rhetoric undermines trust in the electoral process – and it’s in this context that we must assess the conspiracies and reactions to the fake bomb threats that have emerged since polling began today.

As misinformation researchers, we spent election day monitoring a wide range of hashtags and keywords on X and Reddit to identify political misinformation. Our goal was to collect data that will help determine where, how and through whom misinformation and conspiracy theories spread in the wake of breaking news.

Regarding the fake bomb threats, we observed an online reaction that demonstrates a clear erosion of citizens’ trust in the election process.

Fake threats hit polling stations nationwide

Around midday in Georgia, local time, non-credible bomb threats were called in to polling stations across the country, with a particular focus on the battleground state of Georgia.

Georgia police said 32 fake threats had been called in to Fulton County. Fulton is the state’s most populous county – and one where the 2020 election result came down to less than 12,000 votes. Further threats were made in Georgia’s DeKalb and Gwinnett counties.

The FBI released an official statement saying they were “[…] aware of bomb threats to polling locations in several states, many of which appear to originate from Russian email domains”. The Georgia secretary of state also said the threats were from Russia – this video announcement receiving significant attention online. That said, United States intelligence agencies will need to conduct further investigation before the source can be confirmed.

One thing is for sure: the threats added further confusion and fear to an already contentious election. In some locations, voting was paused as emergency services swept polling stations to ensure voters were safe. Judges also had to make emergency interventions to allow polling to remain open late, to account for the temporary closures.

On X and Reddit, we observed discussions that the threats may have intentionally targeted predominantly Black counties to discourage voting. In response, some users with large followings started calling on potentially hesitant voters to return to the line and vote.

Rejecting official reports

As for who is behind the threats, not everyone is buying the narrative that Russia is likely responsible.

We’ve seen fingers pointed at the Democrats, Republicans, members of the “deep state” (a group of people who are allegedly secretly controlling the government) and even Elon Musk. It’s too early to say which will emerge as the most popular conspiracy.

On both social media and in the traditional media, the far-right seem to have grown increasingly cynical about claims of Russian involvement in US politics. This is due to a distrust in the Democratic government and various investigations, largely organised by the Democrats, such as the Mueller report and the first impeachment of Donald Trump.

In the far-right’s view, Russia is used as a scapegoat by the Democrats to attack Trump and/or to disguise their own misdeeds. This form of conspiratorial thinking goes back to their scepticism of Russia’s “sweeping and systematic” interference in the 2016 election.

While the Mueller report detailed Russia’s involvement extensively, it has never been accepted by US right-wing media and has been discredited as the “Russia hoax”.

In the years since – and based on our observations on X today – Trump’s supporters have easily dismissed every new scandal involving Russia as another Russia hoax.

The Democrats, meanwhile, are so far largely accepting the official narrative that Russia is responsible for the hoax bomb threats. They did, however, criticise Republicans who were seemingly celebrating the poll closures.

Misinformation in a post-truth environment

Elections, particularly those involving Donald Trump, are renowned for elements of post-truth politics. This is the idea that what someone believes to be true can hold greater weight than objective facts.

One significant aspect of the post-truth era is the erosion of social trust. We can see, in the examples below, various perspectives on the Russian bomb threats:

These examples from indicate there is no widespread acceptance of US authorities’ official explanation. As such, it seems likely that regardless of the outcome of the FBI’s investigation into the source/sources, citizens will continue to be divided.

Our findings point to a clear distrust in authority and official narratives – something which is characteristic of post-truth politics.

How many people will question this year’s electoral proceedings, assuming the role of foreign interference? And if societies can’t agree on matters which should be easily settled, where does that leave them on the issues that aren’t so black and white?

Katherine M. FitzGerald receives funding from the Australian Research Council for a PhD scholarship.

Klaus Groebner receives funding from the Australian Research Council for a PhD scholarship.

– ref. The fake election bomb threats caused chaos online. It’s a perfect breeding ground for conspiracies – https://theconversation.com/the-fake-election-bomb-threats-caused-chaos-online-its-a-perfect-breeding-ground-for-conspiracies-241785

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne

Donald Trump is set to accomplish the rare feat of winning the US presidential election after losing an earlier one.

The New York Times Needle gives Trump a 95% chance to win the Electoral College. He’s estimated to have won Georgia (16 electoral votes) by 2.5% over Democrat Kamala Harris and North Carolina (16) by 3.3%.

Other key states have not yet been called, but Trump has an 85% probability of winning Pennsylvania (19 electoral votes), a 71% chance to win Michigan (15), a 79% chance to win Wisconsin (ten) and an 83% chance to win Arizona (11). There are still no results from Nevada (six).

If Trump wins all the seven key states in which the “needle” favours him, he will win the Electoral College by a 312–226 margin.

The needle’s popular vote projection also favours Trump by 1.2%. If Trump wins the popular vote as well as the Electoral College, it will be the first time Republicans have won both since 2004. In 2000 and 2016, Republicans won the Electoral College but not the popular vote.

The main reasons for Trump’s victory were Joe Biden’s unpopularity, the US economy being only just above average, and record illegal immigration during Biden’s term. I’ve mentioned all these factors in my previous US election articles.

Abortion was not the vote-shifter Democrats expected. In lower-turnout elections such as the 2022 midterms and byelections, Democrats have performed well owing to voters motivated by abortion. But in this high-turnout presidential election, abortion was marginalised.

Polls understated Trump across the board, though they were not as bad as they were in 2020. Using Nate Silver’s aggregate of final polls, Trump outperformed his polls in the seven key states by two to three points. This is the third successive time that polls have underestimated Trump.

In the past, the Selzer Iowa poll has had outlier results that turned out to be accurate. This time the final Selzer poll gave Harris a three-point lead in Iowa, but Trump will win by 13 points according to the needle’s forecast.

Barack Obama won Florida in both 2008 and 2012, and Trump won it by one to three points in both 2016 and 2020. This year, Trump won Florida by 56–43. He won the heavily Hispanic Miami-Dade county by 55–44. At the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Clinton had defeated Trump in Miami-Dade by 63–34.

In some states that have nearly finished counting, such as Kentucky, there were swings across the board to Trump compared with 2020. It wasn’t just a rural swing to Trump as there were also swings in urban counties.

The New York Times said Trump had gained nine to ten points since 2020 in New York, New Jersey and Florida, all racially diverse states.

The only comfort for Democrats from this election is that the gap between the popular vote and the Electoral College “tipping point” state has almost disappeared, if the needle is right. Democrats will lose the popular vote by 1.2% but Pennsylvania, the tipping point state, by 2.2%. This will be a gap of 1.0%, down from nearly 3.9% in 2020.

Senate also ugly for Democrats

Democrats and allied independents held a 51–49 Senate majority coming into this election, but they were defending 23 of the 33 regular seats up for election. Senators have six-year terms with two from each of the 50 states.

Republicans have gained the Senate with a 51–42 lead over Democrats, after gaining West Virginia and Ohio from Democrats and defending Florida, Nebraska and Texas. Republicans lead Democrats in four more Senate races, so they could win a 55–45 Senate majority.

All of the House of Representatives is up for election every two years. Republicans currently have a 183–155 lead over Democrats. A majority requires 218 seats.

Adrian Beaumont does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Donald Trump poised to become next US president, likely sweeping all the seven key states – https://theconversation.com/donald-trump-poised-to-become-next-us-president-likely-sweeping-all-the-seven-key-states-242766

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

Trust in politicians is at an all-time low, not only in Australia but across the world. Now more than ever, people are demanding a higher standard for our elected officials.

The row over flight upgrades and the Qantas lounge has reinforced distrust.

So has the strong criticism of the head of the National Anti-Corruption Commission, Paul Brereton, in his conduct over referrals from the Robodebt royal commission. The Inspector of the NACC found Brereton, who had a conflict of interest because he knew one of the people, had not properly recused himself from the consideration of whether the NACC should investigate the referrals.

Independent MP Helen Haines, who holds the Victorian seat of Indi, has long focused on integrity issues, and she joined us on the podcast.

Haines, who is deputy chair of the parliamentary committee with oversight of the NACC, says the new body – which she strongly believes is surrounded by too much secrecy – has not started well:

We are just over one year in, but I’d have to say that the National Anti-Corruption Commission has got off to a disappointing start, given the Robodebt incident and the subsequent inquiry by the Inspector.

The [parliamentary] oversight committee will have the opportunity very soon – in a public hearing on the 22nd of November, when the Commissioner comes before us in regard to the annual report of the NACC – to ask him questions. And I certainly will be giving full consideration to what line of questioning needs to happen in that committee in order to unpack the events of the past year.

Will that committee make a decision on whether Commissioner Brereton should be asked to resign?

I think what happens next will be determined by what the committee unpacks in that public hearing. But I think, to be clear, that under the legislation, our committee has powers to review the performance of the Commissioner and Deputy Commissioners. So that’s what we’ll be doing.

On grant programs, Haines says the Albanese government is pork barrelling, just as the Coalition did:

It’s a really strong example of the two major parties and the duopoly they hold. They wouldn’t do it if it didn’t work. But there are ways that we can remedy this. I’ve put forward twice in the parliament now a piece of private member’s legislation that would bring an end to pork barrelling. It would mean that eligibility criteria and guidelines by legislation must be published before grant moneys are allocated.

It would re-institute parliamentary oversight of these grant programs. And it would make sure that in circumstances where the department had recommended particular projects but a minister wished to make a different decision to override that, which may be quite legitimate, but that the minister would need to come into the House and explain that.

When she is reminded one argument for a vote for an independent in her seat of Indi, when her predecessor Cathy McGowan ran, had been to make it more competitive in attracting promises, she says:

Now I think that’s regrettable. I think, though, it’s a symptom of the cynicism that everyday citizens feel when the major parties have what they consider safe seats and what they consider marginal seats.

I think that what I’ve learnt as a member of parliament is that we never fix the system if we remain that cynical. I think we need to say, what’s the problem here? The problem is that the major parties are using taxpayer dollars for political purposes and that, yes, you can feel angry, disappointed and, in fact, so cynical that you take the approaches, as we did in Indi, to say, well, we need to change our representation.

I’m saying it’s no wonder people buy into that when there’s no remedy. I want to see a remedy.

On her decision to this week to cancel her membership of the Qantas chairman’s lounge and its Virgin equivalent:

For me, the potential or perceived conflict of interest or actual conflict of interest that may arise from holding such a membership when I’m a legislator is a risk that I’m not willing to take now.

Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Independent Helen Haines says the NACC has had ‘disappointing start’, and the government is pork barrelling – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-independent-helen-haines-says-the-nacc-has-had-disappointing-start-and-the-government-is-pork-barrelling-243029

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

The High Court has struck down the Albanese government’s law enabling it to impose ankle bracelets and curfews on the more than 200 non-citizens it released from immigration detention in 2023 after  an earlier decision by the court.

Wednesday’s decision, by a five-two majority, found the measures “punitive” and an infringement of the constitution.

The plaintiff in the case  was a stateless Eritrean who was released from immigration detention last November. He was later charged  with six offences  for failing to comply with his monitoring and curfew conditions. The charges are  pending  in the Magistrates’ Court of Victoria.  His earlier criminal record includes a 2017 conviction for offences of burglary and causing injury.

Legislation for the measures was rushed through parliament a year ago, in response to the release of the detainees, many of whom had serious criminal records, including for murder, rape and assault.

During consideration of the bill, the opposition forced the government to toughen it – from providing for the measures only where needed for community safety, to saying the minister must act unless satisfied the person did not pose a risk.

At the time constitutional experts such as Anne Twomey, from the University of Sydney,nas well as the Senate Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills expressed doubts about the legislation.

Twomey wrote: “the effects of the political bidding war to be seen as the ‘toughest’ and most punitive  towards non-citizens will make it infinitely harder for Commonwealth lawyers to defend these measures in the courts”.

The opposition said in a statement the effect of the court decision would be that “215 dangerous non-citizen offenders including 12 murderers, 66 sex offenders, 97 people convicted of assault, 15 domestic violence perpetrators and others will be free in the community without any monitoring or curfews”.

It said since being released, 65 of these people had been charged with new state or territory offences, with 45 remaining free in the community.

Minister for Home Affairs Tony Burke said regulations were being finalised for “an adjusted process” for electronic monitoring and curfews. “I will sign off on these regulations later today.”

Burke said that on Thursday he would introduce new legislation to support the regulations. That legislation would also strengthen the government’s power to remove to third countries people whose visas had been cancelled.

“The court decision is not the one the government wanted – but it is one the government has prepared for,” Burke said.

Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Government to introduce urgent legislation after High Court strikes down law to monitor former immigration detainees – https://theconversation.com/government-to-introduce-urgent-legislation-after-high-court-strikes-down-law-to-monitor-former-immigration-detainees-243027

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Conrad Wasko, ARC DECRA Fellow in Hydrology, University of Sydney

Spain is still reeling from recent floods in the Valencia region. In some areas, a year’s worth of rain fell in a single day. Sudden torrents raced through towns and cities. Over 200 people are dead. Rapid analysis suggests daily rainfall extremes in this region and season have become twice as common over the last 75 years and become 12% more intense.

The World Meteorological Organisation has pointed out that climate change is steadily increasing the risk of extreme floods like these. Warmer air can hold more water vapour, about 7% more per degree Celsius of warming. More moisture generally leads to more intense rainfall, and therefore more extreme floods.

The physics of how temperature influences the atmosphere’s capacity to hold moisture has been known for close to 200 years. But we’ve learned something worrying more recently. When water vapour condenses to form rain droplets, it releases heat which can fuel stronger convection and boost updrafts of air currents in storms. This means the intensity of extreme rainfall could increase not just 7% per degree of warming, but over twice that rate.

Last week, CSIRO and the Australian Bureau of Meteorology released their biennial report on the State of the Climate, which found “heavy short-term rainfall events are becoming more intense”. Australia, the report states, has already warmed 1.5°C since national records began in 1910. In recent years, extreme rains have triggered devastating floods in New South Wales and Queensland.

The question now is – are we prepared for these more damaging floods? This year, Australia updated the climate change section of Australia’s flood design guidance. But while this will help ensure that future infrastructure is better able to weather extreme floods, our current bridges, roads and stormwater drains have not been built to weather these increases in extreme rainfall. Similarly, our flood planning levels – used to determine where houses, offices, hospitals and so forth can be built – have generally not factored in the reality of the threat.

More floods and more extreme

Many of us would have learned about the water cycle in school. Water evaporates from seas and lakes before falling as rain and filling lakes and rivers, which eventually makes it back to the sea.

Unfortunately, climate change is making this cycle more intense, as detailed in a recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. Rain is more likely to fall in intense short-duration bursts which are more likely to trigger floods.

This year alone, we have seen disastrous and deadly floods from extreme storms across the Americas, Asia and Europe. Scientific analysis has showed these floods were more severe due to human-caused climate change.

Australia is not immune. The devastating northern New South Wales floods of 2022 took 24 lives and ravaged towns such as Lismore. These floods are the most expensive natural disaster to date in Australia, costing A$5.65 billion in damages.

How do you prepare for worse floods?

When urban planners set flood planning levels, or engineers begin designing a new bridge or rail line, they have to take floods into account. To do so, they will inevitably reach for the local bible, Australia’s flood design guidance.

Before 2024, this document allowed for a 5% increase in rainfall intensity per degree of global warming, and generally applied it only to infrastructure intended for a very long lifespan. This clashed with most scientific studies on the topic both globally and in Australia, which showed much greater increases, and that these increases are already being witnessed.

To provide better flood guidance, we and our colleagues undertook a comprehensive review of over 300 scientific papers covering climate change in Australia and extreme rainfall.

The review proved we had been underestimating the threat of extreme rains and subsequent floods. Rain events over a 24-hour period leading to flooding are likely to increase at 8% per degree of warming, not 5%. Hourly rainfall extremes are likely increasing even faster, at 15% per degree.

Worse, these are just the central estimates. The wide range of plausible values suggests some rain events could eclipse these. For daily or longer extreme rains, the range is 2–15%. For hourly or shorter periods, that figure is 7–28% for hourly or shorter duration.

Over the month of February in 2022, the Lismore region had about 600–800 mm of rain – much more than a normal February, which might see closer to 150 mm on average. These floods took place with just 1.1°C of warming since the pre-industrial period. On our current path, it’s possible the world could warm another 1.5°C or more by the end of this century. If this happens, these rainfall totals could be substantially higher and more likely to cause even worse flood impacts.

These new figures have now been included in the August update of Australia’s flood design guidance. This is good news. It means future decisions on infrastructure and planning can now be well informed by the latest science on how climate change influences flood risk.

Over time, this will ensure essential infrastructure can be built to endure worse floods. It will affect the design and construction of everything from local stormwater drains to levees, bridges, culverts and dam spillways.

Local councils can use it to set the height of floor levels for property development. State and federal decision-makers can use it in planning for responses to flood emergencies.

Does it mean we can avoid disastrous floods like those in Spain and Lismore? Yes and no. We now have the knowledge and tools to adapt to the increased risk levels already arriving. Yet implementing this will be challenging. In many cases, it will require retrofitting or redesigning existing infrastructure to withstand more intense flooding.

Climate change is no longer something we can file under “problem for the future”. It’s here already. The flood risks we face today are already substantially worse than 25 years ago, and will continue to worsen. We must accelerate how we plan for extreme, rapid rainfall creating catastrophic floods like those in Spain.

Conrad Wasko receives funding from The University of Sydney and the Australian Research Council. Conrad has previously received funding from the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water.

Andrew Dowdy receives funding from University of Melbourne, including through the Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes and the Melbourne Energy Institute.

Seth Westra is a Professor of Hydrology and Climate Risk at the University of Adelaide, Director of Research for the One Basin Cooperative Research Centre, and Chair of the Systems Cooperative. Seth receives funding from state and federal governments support decision making under hydrological or climatic uncertainty.

– ref. The extreme floods which devastated Spain are hitting more often. Is Australia ready for the next one? – https://theconversation.com/the-extreme-floods-which-devastated-spain-are-hitting-more-often-is-australia-ready-for-the-next-one-242686

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mehak Oberai, Senior Research Assistant, Ethos Project, School of Medicine and Dentistry, Griffith University

Parts of Australia are currently facing extreme heat, with high temperatures set to continue over the coming days.

Though it’s unclear exactly what the upcoming summer will bring, climate change means Australian summers are getting hotter. Even this year in August we saw temperatures around 40°C in parts of the country.

Heatwaves aren’t just uncomfortable – they can be deadly. Health emergencies related to extreme heat place significant strain on our health-care systems, with data showing increased ambulance callouts and hospital presentations during these periods.

Although heatwaves can affect everyone, older adults are particularly at risk. But our new research has found older Queenslanders don’t necessarily believe heat poses a risk to their health. And this affects how they respond to emergency warnings.

Older people and the heat

Ageing brings physiological changes, including reduced ability to regulate body temperature, which can put older people at increased risk of issues such as heat exhaustion and heat stroke.

Heat exposure can also worsen the symptoms of existing conditions, such as heart disease, lung disease or kidney disease, which are more common in older people.

The risk is even more pronounced for older people who live in poor quality housing, are economically disadvantaged, or are socially isolated.

A report from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare shows that, of 2,150 hospitalisations due to extreme heat between 2019 and 2022, 37% were among people aged 65 and older (who make up around 16% of the population).

So there’s an urgent need to prioritise the health of older Australians as the country braces for more intense and prolonged heatwaves in the future.

Early warning systems

As we’ve learned more about the risks of heatwaves, there’s been an increased focus on developing population-based early warning systems. These systems play a crucial role in encouraging people to adopt heat-protective behaviours such as staying hydrated, avoiding strenuous physical activity when temperatures are high, and wearing loose or light clothing.

Queensland is one of the world’s most vulnerable regions to heatwaves. Since 2015, heatwave warnings have been part of the state’s heatwave subplan, which sets out strategies for managing and mitigating the impacts of extreme heat events.

These warnings involve alerts about upcoming high temperatures, and advice on staying cool. They come as notifications through the Bureau of Meterology’s weather app or via media outlets or social media. However, it’s not clear whether these warnings are reaching those most at risk.

As part of a broader project on extreme heat and older people, we surveyed 547 Queenslanders aged 65 and over to understand their perceptions of heat risks and to determine if heatwave warnings were reaching them.

We also wanted to know what factors influence how they receive and respond to these warnings, with a view to understanding how we can improve heatwave warnings for this group.

What we found

Only 25% of respondents were aware of the potential consequences of heatwaves on their health. The majority of participants (80%) perceived themselves to be at lower risk compared to others of their age group. This aligns with previous heat-health research which has similarly found older adults often don’t perceive heat as a personal risk.

While most of the sample (87%) reported having one or more chronic health conditions, 30% were unaware having a chronic health condition increased their vulnerability to heatwaves.

Several cultural and personal factors may explain why older people don’t think heat poses a danger to them. In Australia, heat is typically seen as a normal and even positive part of life. Heat risk messages are often less urgent than warnings for other natural disasters.

We also found nearly half of respondents had not heard a heatwave warning. Of those who had, roughly half took actions to keep themselves cool.

What stood out from our analysis was that participants’ awareness and actions in response to heatwave warnings were significantly influenced by their knowledge and perceptions of heat risks. Factors such as age, gender and education were not so important.

Respondents who believed they were at risk were almost twice as likely to hear the warnings, and 3.6 times more likely to take heat protective actions.

This aligns with other research that highlights the correlation between heat-health risk perception and the efficacy of heatwave warnings.

One limitation of our research is that we conducted the survey in 2022 during and following a La Nina period, where temperatures are usually lower. So there may have been fewer heatwave warnings throughout the season, potentially reducing participants’ perceptions of heat health risks.

What needs to change?

With another hot summer likely ahead, we need to rethink how we communicate about heatwaves. These are more than just hot days. We need to recognise heatwaves as a serious health risk, especially for older people, and effectively communicate that risk to the public.

This might include using primary health-care professionals such as GPs, nurses and pharmacists to share heat-health information with older patients and their family members, or developing personalised heat action plans for the summer period.

Text message alerts from the Bureau of Meteorology, along with app notifications, could be a good idea considering some older adults may not have a smartphone or be open to using apps.

To improve heatwave communication, we also need to explore the barriers and facilitators to heat protective behaviours. This includes considering structural factors (such as housing design), environmental factors (for example, access to shade and cool refuges), individual factors (such as financial constraints or health conditions) and social factors (such as access to family and community support).

Strengthening communication around heatwaves and health will not only protect individual wellbeing but enhance community resilience as extreme heat continues to affect our lives.

Mehak Oberai is a Senior Research Assistant working on Ethos project and is also a member of the AAG (Australian Association of Gerontology) Student & Early Career Working Group.

Ella Jackman is a PhD Candidate at Griffith University and a Research Assistant for the Queensland Heat Health Community of Practice (QHHCoP) and the Ethos Project.

Shannon Rutherford co-leads the Climate Action Beacon Griffith University funded, Queensland Heat Health Community of Practice and receives funding from Wellcome and NEMA. She is an affiliate member of the HEAL network

Steven Baker and Zhiwei Xu do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Only 25% of older Queenslanders are aware of the risks heatwaves put on their health – new study – https://theconversation.com/only-25-of-older-queenslanders-are-aware-of-the-risks-heatwaves-put-on-their-health-new-study-238875

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Timothy Graham, Associate Professor in Digital Media, Queensland University of Technology

As voting booths in the United States close and the results of the presidential election trickle in, tech billionaire Elon Musk has been posting a flurry of tweets on his social media platform, X (formerly Twitter). So too has Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

At first glance these tweets might appear chaotic and random. But if you take a closer look, you start to see an alarming strategy behind them – one that’s worth paying very close attention to in order to understand the inner workings of the campaign to return Trump to the White House.

The strategy has two immediate aims. First, to overwhelm the information space and thereby manage attention. Second, to fuel the conspiracy theory that there is a coordinated campaign among Democrats, the media and big tech to steal this election.

But it’s important to understand that the strategy on X is part of a master strategy of Trump’s campaign: a backup plan in case of a Trump loss, designed to encourage the public to participate in a grand re-wiring of reality via the meta-narrative of widespread voter fraud.

Overwhelm the information space

Musk has long been a prominent user of X, even before he became the owner, chief technology officer and executive chairman of the platform.

But as I reported last week, since he endorsed Trump in July, engagement with his account has seen a sudden and anomalously large increase, raising suspicions as to whether he has tweaked the platform’s algorithms so his content reaches more people.

This trend has continued in recent days.

As well as posting on X, earlier today Musk also held a “freeform” live discussion on the platform about the election. It lasted for nearly one and a half hours. Around 1.3 million people tuned in. This is one of many live discussions he has hosted about the election over the past months, including notably with Trump.

In an information war, everything is about attention management. Platforms are designed to maximise engagement and user attention above and beyond anything else. This core logic of social media is highly exploitable: who controls attention controls the narrative. In Australia, the “Vote No” campaign during last year’s referendum on Indigenous representation in government was a masterclass in attention management.

By bombarding audiences, journalists, and other key stakeholders with a constant supply of allegations, rumours, conspiracy theories and unverifiable claims, Musk and the Trump campaign eat up all the oxygen of attention. When everyone is focussed on you and what you’re saying, they are distracted from what the other side is saying.

And Musk and Trump want people to focus on the idea that the election is going to be stolen.

Fuel the election fraud narrative

From the beginning of the year, the narrative that the US presidential election is at risk of being defrauded has been steadily gaining steam. But in the past week leading up to election day, it has gone gangbusters.

For example, starting on October 27, Trump started posting on X using the #TooBigtoRig hashtag. This refers to the idea that Trump will win the election by such a large margin that the result will be incontestable. Up to this point, the #TooBigToRig campaign was driven by Trump supporters. Now, Trump has officially joined – giving it the ultimate legitimacy.

There has also been a dramatic spike over the last week in posts using similarly themed hashtags such as #ElectionFraud, #ElectionInterference, #VoterFraud and #StopTheSteal.

Musk himself hasn’t been using these hashtags very much (although replies to him from other users are riddled with them). But he has been posting material that aligns with them. For example, earlier today he retweeted a post which claimed the electronic voting system in the US was insecure. Musk added: “Absolutely”.

He has also falsely accused Google of encouraging Americans to vote for Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.

And as some early results have started trickling in, Musk has posted about Trump’s odds of winning being nearly 70%.

“The prophecy has been fulfilled,” Musk wrote.

Participatory disinformation

In many ways this has all the hallmarks of participatory disinformation. This concept, developed by computer scientist Kate Starbird and colleagues, explains how both ordinary people as well as politicians and influential actors become active participants in spreading false narratives.

Unlike the top-down model of propaganda, participatory disinformation describes how grassroots activists and regular people – often with strong convictions and genuine intentions – contribute to spreading and evolving narratives that are not grounded in facts. It is a collaborative feedback loop involving both elite framing of issues and collective sensemaking and “evidence” gathering.

Before war breaks out, there are clear signs of what’s about to unfold, even if a country publicly denies they are preparing for battle. Blood supplies, troops and weaponry are transported to the border in preparation for an invasion.

The same thing is at play here, except the weapon is us.

The flood of tweets by Musk and Trump, in particular, is setting the stage for a full-blown participatory disinformation campaign to undermine the election results.

Timothy Graham receives funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC) for his Discovery Early Career Researcher Award, ‘Combatting Coordinated Inauthentic Behaviour on Social Media’. He also receives ARC funding for the Discovery Project, ‘Understanding and combatting “Dark Political Communication”‘ (2024–2027).

– ref. Elon Musk’s flood of US election tweets may look chaotic. My data reveals an alarming strategy – https://theconversation.com/elon-musks-flood-of-us-election-tweets-may-look-chaotic-my-data-reveals-an-alarming-strategy-243021

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yanyan Hong, PhD Candidate in Communication and Media Studies, University of Adelaide

This year’s Adelaide Film Festival (AFF2024) had something truly exciting laying in wait: a spotlight on Indian cinema.

While many people are familiar with Bollywood, most don’t know about the vast film industry that exists beyond it. And this is no small market; India is currently the most populated country in the world.

This year’s festival delivered a variety of Indian films from regions and directors that remain underrepresented. From award-winning tales, to a poetic nature documentary, to a sweet coming-of-age story from the North East, the program promises to challenge and expand our understanding of what Indian cinema can offer.

Of all the films I saw, these five spoke to me the most.

All We Imagine As Light

Payal Kapadia’s Cannes Grand Prix winner, All We Imagine as Light, was the film that I’d most looked forward to – and it turned out to be as dreamlike as its title promised.

It’s an ode to the city of Mumbai, also known as India’s “dream-making factory” (and where Bollywood is based). Mumbai is where Indians from all states and of all languages come to fulfil their dreams.

The story follows three female nurses, Prabha (Kani Kusruti), Anu (Divya Prabha) and Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam), who come to Mumbai looking for a better life. Yet they find themselves struggling to belong in a city that refuses to embrace them.

As Kapadia explains: “The film is about not being able to see a way out when one is surrounded by darkness […] that hope doesn’t exist if you have never seen it.”

Kapadia’s storytelling brings a kind of realism rarely seen in popular Indian cinema – not through larger-than-life spectacle or the resplendent city skyline, but through the quiet intimacy of shared apartments, poetry booklets, dinner dates, and small joys and defeats. It is simply soulful.

The film blends themes of female solidarity and friendship with heavier topics such as religious differences, migrant struggles, language barriers and class divides – yet it feels as gentle as rain on skin.

While some have critiqued the film for being too slow (and I admittedly felt this at times), this is exactly how Kapadia managed to turn a city with more than 21 million people into a place that feels completely lonely.

Second Chance

Unlike the vibrant image of India we’re so used to – full of colour, song and lively dances – Subhadra Mahajan’s black-and-white film Second Chance is nothing short of breathtaking.

Set in the snowy peaks of Himachal Pradesh, the film follows 25-year-old Nia (Dheera Johnson) as she retreats to her family’s Himalayan holiday home after a painful breakup and the emotional toll of taking abortion pills. Mahajan captures the stark, quiet beauty of the Himalayan landscape, where time slows down and silence seems to heal.

There, she finds unexpected companions through Bhemi and Sunny. Bhemi, the gentle 70-year-old mother-in-law of the home’s caretaker, is played with a captivating authenticity by Thakra Devi, a local resident and non-professional actress. Sunny (Kanav Thakur) is Bhemi’s playful and curious 8-year-old grandson.

At the top of the world, Second Chance crafts a beautiful and intimate space where we are invited to see that there’s always another chance to find oneself – a chance as infinite and expansive as the snow-capped peaks themselves.

Nocturnes

It’s rare to see films such as Second Chance, which are made in the Himalayas. But it’s even rarer to see an Indian nature documentary such as Nocturnes. The film follows a scientist named Mansi and her indigenous assistants as they chase down thousands of Himalayan moths (particularly Hawk moths).

Directed by Anirban Dutta and Anupama Srinivasan, Nocturnes captures the hypnotic rhythms of field study (something that particularly resonates with me as a researcher).

Fluttering wings and insect trills create a serene soundscape. The close-ups of the moths – their textures, patterns and slight vibrating movements – are fascinating to observe – as the the wider shots of the scientists’ glowing setup in the darkened forest, which drew me in like a moth to light.

Nocturnes is a thoughtful, meditative film that reminds us of how our destruction of the climate can impact these ancient residents of Earth. As the voiceover reminds is, “we most likely cannot survive what the moths have been through.”

Boong

Right from the opening scene, Boong pulled me in with unexpected laughs. The titular character Boong (Gugun Kipgen) is a schoolboy who, along with his best friend Raju (Angom Sanamatum), embarks on a risky journey along India’s militarised eastern border to bring Boong’s absent father back home.

As they make their way, we’re treated to views from Manipur, India’s North East state near Myanmar, which we rarely see in mainstream Indian cinema. Boong itself tips its hat to Bollywood a few times, such as when Raju shows his excitement upon hearing the song Lungi Dance from the Bollywood blockbuster Chennai Express (2013), or when the the chief villager’s secret home cinema is adorned with Hindi film posters.

Director Lakshmipriya Devi does a fantastic job showcasing the region’s vibrant yet complex culture. All the while, she highlights some surprising lesser-known facts, such as how Hindi films were banned in Manipur for years in the name of protecting local culture, language and the regional film industry.

While Manipur’s cinematic potential is still largely untapped, Boong is a brilliant step.

In the Belly of a Tiger

Of the 23 films I saw at AFF2024, In the Belly of a Tiger was a precious gem that stayed with me.

This multinational production (which just won the festival’s Feature Fiction Award) tells a heart-wrenching story of an elderly and desperately poor couple faced with an impossible choice: which one of them will go into the forest to be eaten by a tiger so the other can receive government compensation?

It’s a deeply spiritual and painfully pragmatic exploration of power, sacrifice, love and hope.

The symbolism of the film’s poster hints at its larger themes. Just as Hindu mythology posits the universe emerged from Lord Vishnu’s navel, unfolding like the petals of a lotus, we see how fate, too, blossoms unevenly.

In the film, a poor family in a remote village longs for a better life in the next world, holding tightly to memories of young, innocent love.

Shooting in Hindi, and featuring mostly non-professional actors, In the Belly of a Tiger is both authentic and ambitious. Indian director and cinematographer Jatla Siddhartha collaborated with some of the biggest names in cinema to bring the story to life, including multiple Oscar-winning sound designer Resul Pookutty (who also worked on Slumdog Millionaire).

The music is composed by Japan’s Umebayashi Shigeru, known for his work on Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love (2000) and The Grandmaster (2013). Shigeru’s melodies bring an emotional and magical tone to what is, at its heart, a truly Indian story.

More dreams to share

The films I’ve highlighted here represent some of the most exciting and thought-provoking works coming out of India today.

While the Mumbai-based Bollywood industry is undeniably a huge part of Indian culture, it’s only one piece of the puzzle. These films paint a far richer and more diverse portrait of India, its people, its struggles and its beauty.

They also showcase a glorious future for Indian cinema – one which promises to carry the dreams of a nation eager to share its stories with the world.

Yanyan Hong does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. 5 Indian films from the 2024 Adelaide Film Festival that blew me away – https://theconversation.com/5-indian-films-from-the-2024-adelaide-film-festival-that-blew-me-away-242118

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Xanthe Mallett, Forensic Criminologist, University of Newcastle

Juries are the bedrock of common law, and have been used for centuries to decide factual issues before the court.

Jury research has for years attempted to improve our understanding of how jurors reach a conclusion, both individually and as a collective. But we have very little understanding of how each specific case is decided: in Australia, jurors are banned from discussing their deliberations outside of the jury room.

Predicting the jury’s decision in criminal matters is impossible: the whole system remains totally opaque. This has been evident in a very high-profile case just this year, when a very surprising decision was handed down; I would love to be able to pick that one apart.

A new show by SBS attempts to demystify the process. The Jury: Death on the Staircase follows the deliberations of 12 jurors as they listen to nine days’ worth of evidence in a real, concluded manslaughter case.

Observing the trial, and the jury

The names, dates, locations and images from the original case have been changed to make sure the jurors could not look up the result, and to protect the individuals involved in the real trial. These changes could, of course, alter the jury’s decision-making process.

Actors are used to re-enact the trial, using transcripts of the original case to simulate the real trial as closely as possible. The jurors are everyday Australians who volunteered to take part in this experiment.

The case revolves around the death of a man who was found at the bottom of a staircase, in the home he shared with his male partner.

Other factors the jury attaches relevance to are the 20-year age gap between the deceased and the younger accused man, and the accused is Asian.

We hear the pre-trial thoughts and motivations of the jurors, and some of the biases and prejudices start to show early on.

As the trial unfolds, specific aspects of the accused’s personality impress different members of the jury – some finding points of commonality that encourage them to be very sympathetic, others highly sceptical of his innocence. This seems less based on the evidence being heard, and instead reflects directly the personality and life experience of the juror.

The jurors, like a real jury, come from all walks of life, educational backgrounds, sexualities and ancestral groups. There are some big, dominant voices, as well as others who are much quieter and more circumspect.

What surprised me while watching was that many of the impressions the jury discuss – and their interpretations of them – aren’t based on the evidence at all. They’re watching the accused, trying to get a read on his guilt or innocence from his body language, where he looks at certain times.

None of them are body language experts, but they seem to think they can reliably extrapolate how he is feeling from observing him.

Some of them also speculate wildly as to what could have happened, and why.
If that’s what real jurors do, that’s worrying.

I have some questions

It’s hard to know how closely the producers mirrored the original case: was it a homosexual relationship, was there a large age gap, was the accused Asian?

These factors are important, because the jury puts weight on them and hypothesises with these in mind.

Another big question for me was how they chose the members of the jury. Was it random? If it was, they do not reflect the personalities of the original jurors and it is very clear that personality and life experience were heavily influential in each person’s response to the case.

The question was asked by one of the jurors: what if they reach a different conclusion than the original, genuine jury? What would that mean for the accused?

My sense was they were wondering if they found him not guilty of manslaughter, would that have any legal implication.

The answer is no.

It’s impossible to truly replicate a case. I would even suggest the same jury could reach a different conclusion at a different time, depending on what had happened in their lives recently and other external factors. Regardless of what result this jury reached, it could not hurt or help the real accused person.

But it is certainly an interesting program, and will give the viewer an insight into what factors most influence jurors.

It might also scare them slightly. We like to think juries make their decision based on the evidence put before them, but that does not appear to be the case, at least certainly not early on in the trial process.

The jurors focused on how the accused lived their life, and judged him accordingly – both positively and negatively. The scientist in me feels that it would be great to repeat this experience, to see if the same or a different result was achieved under these, somewhat controlled conditions.

I’d also love to see more access to real jurors, post decision: that is the only true way to gauge their thoughts and impressions as they work through a case. But as that is unlikely, this series is as close as we’ll get. It is worth a watch if you’re interested in how juries reach their – sometimes apparently inexplicable – decisions.

The Jury: Death on the Staircase is on SBS and SBS On Demand from today.

Xanthe Mallett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. How does a jury reach a conclusion? A new SBS show painstakingly recreates details to take us behind the scenes – https://theconversation.com/how-does-a-jury-reach-a-conclusion-a-new-sbs-show-painstakingly-recreates-details-to-take-us-behind-the-scenes-242114

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yuting Zhang, Professor of Health Economics, The University of Melbourne

Australia’s second-largest private health insurer, Bupa, has recently started offering its members three free GP telehealth consultations a year. This follows other insurers such as nib offering its members digital GP consults, for things like prescriptions and medical certificates, for a fee.

But if you search the government’s Compare Policies website that helps people choose among different private health plans, you will find no plans that officially cover GP visits.

This is because it is currently illegal for insurers to cover the costs of out-of-hospital services that are also funded by Medicare, which includes GP and specialist visits.

Insurers may get around this by running their digital health platforms as a separate business, rather than as part of the private health plans that are heavily regulated by the government. Another strategy is to pay the overheads of clinics which then offer “free” consultations to members.

So why might private health insurers be moving into primary care? Why hasn’t it been allowed? And is it a risk to Medicare?

Keeping people out of hospital saves money

Better access to GP (primary) care can improve people’s health and reduce their chance of needing to be hospitalised, particularly for those with chronic conditions such as heart disease, diabetes and asthma.

Sometimes people use emergency room services for minor problems that can be solved by a GP.

So offering members free or low cost primary care that’s easy to access could result in lower downstream hospital costs and save insurers money in the long run.

There are also other reasons why private insurers want to cover primary care.

The first is the potential for “cherry-picking”. In Australia, private health insurance operates under a community rating system, where premiums are not based on a person’s health status or age.

This means insurers cannot exclude or charge higher rates for people at higher risk of needing surgery or other hospital-based treatment (excluding the Lifetime Health Cover loading, which applies if you first take out private health insurance after you turn 31).

However, insurance companies often have strategies to attract healthier members. They may offer free running shoes, for example, to appeal to keen runners, or age-based discounts for new members aged under 30.

The target audience for free or easily accessible GP telehealth services is likely to be working professionals who lack time, or younger people. These groups are generally healthier and less likely to be hospitalised each year.

Another reason insurers might want to cover primary care is to help retain members, who would feel they are receiving tangible benefits and a sense of value from their insurance plans.

When Medibank trialled offering free GP visits in 2014, members who benefited from this service reported being more likely to stick with the insurer.

Across the health system, the Australian government is expanding telehealth and multidisciplinary teams (for example, GPs, nurses, nutritionists, physiotherapists and specialists) to manage chronic diseases.

In response to these changes, insurance companies are preparing for the future of health-care delivery by expanding in digital health and creating large clinics where multidisciplinary teams co-locate. Offering free telehealth GP service is a small step toward this large strategic change.

Why haven’t insurers offered primary care in the past?

When Medicare was introduced in 1984, medical professionals objected to allowing private health funds to offer cover for the “gap” between the Medicare benefit (what the government pays the clinician) and the fee (what the clinician charges).

After lobbying from the Australian Medical Association, the Minister for Health at the time, Neal Blewett, concluded allowing insurers to cover the gap would simply increase the cost of the service, especially for those without insurance – with no benefit to patients.

Consequently, a prohibition on insurance for primary care was legislated.

Over time, whenever the question of allowing private insurers to cover primary care has come up, the main argument against it has been that it could create a two-tiered system. Under such a system, those without private insurance would have lower access to primary care.

About 45% of the population has private insurance. And with insurers footing the bill, it’s likely that GP consultation prices would rise.

Additionally, private funds would likely pay more than Medicare to incentivise GPs to participate. This would leave those without private health insurance at a disadvantage.

This situation is currently unfolding in the hospital sector. Surgeons earn significantly more for surgeries in private hospitals compared to public hospitals. This leads to them prioritising working in private hospitals.

As a result, patients with private health insurance can access elective procedures without delay. Meanwhile, those without private insurance face longer wait times.

Should the government allow private insurers to cover primary care?

Current evidence does not provide much support for the government supporting the private health insurance industry via subsidising individuals’ insurance premiums.

Our research found that despite the government spending billions of dollars subsidising private health insurance every year, the sector barely took any pressure off the public hospital system.

Currently, the ability for private insurers to offer primary care is constrained by legislation, and this should continue to be the case.

Allowing private health insurers to expand further into primary care would undermine the universality of Medicare. It risks creating a two-tiered primary health-care system, replicating the disparity we have already seen in hospital care.

Insurer-funded primary care would also involve large administrative costs, as seen in the health-care system of the United States, which largely relies on private funding and delivery.

However, the government should do other things to make primary care more affordable to save downstream hospital and emergency department costs. This includes:

• increasing Medicare rebates to make primary care free to the poor and children regardless where they live
• making primary care free to rural and remote areas
• making primary care cheaper to others.

The Australian government has the financial capability to make primary care more affordable and should prioritise implementing this. Even private insurance companies recognise its benefits. But the way to do this is not through private health insurance, which would make primary care both more unequal and more expensive.

Yuting Zhang has received funding from the Australian Research Council (future fellowship project ID FT200100630), Department of Veterans’ Affairs, the Victorian Department of Health, and National Health and Medical Research Council. In the past, Professor Zhang has received funding from several US institutes including the US National Institutes of Health, Commonwealth fund, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. She has not received funding from for-profit industry including the private health insurance industry.

Nathan Kettlewell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Private health insurers are now offering GP telehealth services. Is this a risk to Medicare? – https://theconversation.com/private-health-insurers-are-now-offering-gp-telehealth-services-is-this-a-risk-to-medicare-240716

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Kidson, Senior Lecturer in Educational Leadership, Australian Catholic University

Schools are full of extremely useful and valuable facilities. These include playing fields, play equipment, sandpits, netball courts, concert halls, libraries and even pools.

But these are often closed to the public and can sit unused for hours, days and weeks, depending on the time of year. For example, in Victoria, about a third of government school grounds are not currently open to the public.

There is growing pressure for this to change, as more people live closer together and community facilities get squeezed.

In an October 2024 report, Infrastructure Victoria recommended the state government open more of its public school grounds after hours, to boost access to local recreation spaces for about half a million people.

Why don’t we do this already? And why don’t we open up private schools as well?

What happens at the moment?

There are already well-established processes to open government schools for public use.

For example, along with opening their grounds for informal use, many Victorian schools hire out school facilities. The emphasis is on educational, sporting or cultural activities for students, young people and the local community – such as a local theatre group putting on a play or an awards night for the local football team.

But as with other public parks and sporting facilities, these need regular maintenance to make sure they are in good working order. Some schools have expressed concerns about damage or antisocial behaviour when grounds are not supervised.

This means funding is required – either directly from schools’ already stretched budgets or via state governments’ already stretched budgets – to expand and maintain the use of public school facilities.

It’s not impossible to do, but governments must provide and allocate funds explicitly for this, rather than ask schools to yet again do more with less.

What about private schools?

Many private schools also already hire out their facilities for a wide range of activities, from weddings, to swimming squads, to accommodation for conferences.

But there is also pressure, particularly in New South Wales, for some private schools to open up their facilities and grounds when not in use by the school.

Former NSW state planning minister Rob Stokes is among those calling for private schools to share their spaces with local public students and the community. Stokes has argued because independent schools receive government funds “they’re public spaces”.

But a retrospective change of rules would likely spark opposition from private school parents who have already paid fees to build these facilities. As Independent Schools Australia has noted, parent contributions made up 87% of capital infrastructure costs in private schools as of 2022, with state governments only contributing 7%.

Beyond the question of who “owns” these spaces, the questions about maintenance remains. As debates about adequate funding for public schools continue, it would be both politically and financially courageous for any government to give independent schools more money.

Joint projects?

At the same time, we still have the underlying issue about a lack of local facilities for students and community members.

One place to start could be future joint projects. For example, a program could provide funding for independent schools to build new facilities on the proviso they are also accessible to the local community, perhaps at low or no cost.

This is similar to the Rudd government’s Building the Education Revolution, which built and upgraded school facilities.

What about acccidents?

But arguably the largest unanswered question is who is responsible when someone using these facilities is injured.

At the moment, when government and independent schools hire facilities to the public, there are hire agreements. This means those using them need to be adequately insured. Hire fees also help cover maintenance and cleaning costs.

If members of the public are using facilities without such agreements, it raises serious questions about duty of care and responsibility for things which happen on school grounds outside normal hours of operation.

The suggestion to open up more facilities – particularly those in private schools – has an attractive simplicity. But we need more detail and clarity about the legal and financial implications of how it could work.

Paul Kidson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. School ovals and playgrounds are sitting unused. Why aren’t more open to the community? – https://theconversation.com/school-ovals-and-playgrounds-are-sitting-unused-why-arent-more-open-to-the-community-242591

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amanda Dunn, Politics + Society Editor

Hit refresh to get the latest updates

📍 Pinned Justin Bergman, International Affairs Editor

Welcome to our live blog of the US election, where we will be posting the latest news, results and snap analysis from some of our top academic experts, as well as the politics editors at The Conversation, throughout what will no doubt be a long, drama-filled day. (Perhaps a couple days…)

Here’s what to expect: the results will start coming in after 10am AEDT when the first polls close. Then, there will be a deluge of results every hour after that. We will wait for The Associated Press to call individual states. And we’ll update our interactive map and our Electoral College vote count tracker as the day goes on. Remember: it’s 270 electoral votes to win.

Before the results come in, here are a couple of early reads: Emma Shortis on whether America is ready to elect a woman and John Hart with a short history of the Electoral College.

⏺ 6.30am Emma Shortis

It was too perfect – when I got in the Uber that was taking me to the Harris rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Saturday, Taylor Swift was playing on the radio.

Cos I’ve got a blank space baby, and I’ll write your name

There were so many women at the rally. They absolutely adored Kamala Harris, and saved their biggest cheers for her lines on reproductive freedom. If Harris wins, it will surely be via women’s turnout – the Black women who were there in huge numbers, alongside the suburban white women who could have been mistaken for Elizabeth Warren’s sister.

That’s why I’ll be watching the exit polls for the swing states of Georgia and North Carolina so closely on election day – both states with draconian abortion bans. Women’s turnout in those states will give us a very good idea of what’s to come.

The day before I went to Charlotte, I did a tour of the Capitol building in Washington, DC. As the guide pointed out to us – the Statue of Freedom that sits atop the Capitol dome is a woman.

– ref. US election live blog – https://theconversation.com/us-election-live-blog-242592

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Pep Canadell, Chief Research Scientist, CSIRO Environment; Executive Director, Global Carbon Project, CSIRO

Among the most rapidly changing parts of our planet are the coldest landscapes near the top of the globe, just south of the Arctic. This region is warming two to four times faster than the global average.

The frozen ground beneath these “boreal” forests and treeless plains or “tundra” is thawing, fast. That’s a problem because the permafrost holds enormous amounts of vulnerable carbon, more than twice as much carbon as is already present in the atmosphere. Some of that carbon is now on the move.

We wanted to find out just how much carbon and nitrogen is being released from the northern permafrost region. The environment can be a source of greenhouse gases, or a “sink” – effectively soaking up carbon and removing it from the atmosphere. So we had to determine and balance the budget.

As part of the Global Carbon Project, we have now published the first full greenhouse gas budget tallying sources and sinks for the northern permafrost region. It contains a mixed bag of good and not-so-good news for the climate.

What is permafrost, and why should we be concerned?

Permafrost is ground that stays frozen. It may contain soil, peat, rocks and ice. Often, remnants of ancient plants and animals such as the now extinct woolly mamooth can also be seen.

In such cold conditions, plants mainly grow during summer. New leaf litter and dead plants are then quickly frozen and permanently stored for thousands of years. This has led to the buildup of a phenomenal store of carbon: more than a trillion tonnes. For comparison, all tropical forests and soils store less than half that amount.

While the top “active” layer of soil may thaw naturally in the warmer months, the lower layers typically stay frozen. But now that human-induced climate change is making soils warmer, the thawed season is growing longer and the permanently frozen carbon is thawing too.

In thawed soil, microbes get to work decomposing dead plants and other decaying organic matter. When this process happens in the presence of oxygen, carbon dioxide (CO₂) is released. In the absence of oxygen (such as in lakes and water-saturated soils), methane (CH₄) is released.

Methane is a more powerful greenhouse gas than CO₂ as it holds more heat in the atmosphere, so it is of particular concern. Unfortunately, the melting of ice in permafrost is making more of the land wet with low oxygen levels, so more methane is being released.

The soil organic matter being decomposed also contains nitrogen, causing emissions of nitrous oxide, another powerful greenhouse gas.

The process of warming leading to more greenhouse gas emissions, which in turn leads to more warming and again to more greenhouse gas emissions, is known as a “positive” carbon-climate feedback loop. It’s important to avoid these positive or self-reinforcing processes to limit global warming.

The other type of feedback loop is a “negative” carbon-climate feedback, even though it’s actually a good thing. It’s negative because it reduces the total amount of emissions remaining in the atmosphere.

In this study, we found evidence for a negative carbon-climate feedback, one that reduces the total emissions staying in the atmosphere. Longer growing seasons (due to global warming), the increase in available nitrogen in soils, and higher CO₂ concentrations in the atmosphere, all help plants to grow for longer and accumulate more carbon.

What did we do?

A team of scientists from 35 research institutions compiled and assessed all available observations and modelling of greenhouse gas emissions on land, in freshwater, and in the atmosphere. With this information we developed a combined greenhouse gas budget for CO₂, methane, and nitrous oxide for the period 2000–20.

The effort was part of a global assessment of all regions and oceans.

Carbon on the move

We found permafrost was a small to medium CO₂ sink, storing between 29 million and 500 million tonnes of carbon a year.

The boreal forests of Canada and Russia, among other smaller regions, were largely responsible for soaking up the CO₂ during the study period from 2000–20, when there was increased plant growth and longer growing seasons. But at the same time, lakes, rivers and wildfires were a source of CO₂.

The region was also a source of methane and nitrous oxide – the second and third most important greenhouse gases globally after CO₂.

Although methane emissions were already occurring before human-induced warming, a number of sources have increased over time. We found wetlands were the largest source of methane and as the icy ground melts, more of the landscape is becoming saturated with water.

The largest sources of nitrous oxide emissions, though relatively small per unit area, came from the dry tundra and boreal forests.

Calculated over 100 years, the combined contribution to global warming of all three greenhouse gasses is close to neutral. That means the CO₂ sink leads to cooling that offsets the warming from methane and nitrous oxide emissions. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) uses the 100 year-time frame to compare all greenhouse gases during the 21st century.

But over a 20-year time scale, current greenhouse gas emissions are a net source of warming. The strong warming potential of methane emissions is what influences temperatures in the short term.

What does the future hold?

It’s not yet clear how greenhouse gas emissions of the permafrost region will change in the future. But we do know methane emissions are already growing in many regions and this trend is likely to continue.

Earth system models used by the IPCC suggest it could be possible to maintain the CO₂ sink through the 21st century under various emission scenarios. But these models are largely ignoring local permafrost collapse (as opposed to slow thawing) and extreme wildfires, which are both capable of rapidly increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

Wildfires in the permafrost regions are a growing concern. Our budget’s final year was 2020, so we missed the unprecedented wildfires of 2021 in Siberia and 2023 in Canada. Wildfire emissions from each of these two events amounted to about half a billion tonnes of carbon, enough to cancel out and even switch the CO₂ sink to a net source.

The only way to keep permafrost carbon in the ground is to quickly reduce and ultimately eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from human activities. Failing to do so is likely to give global warming a helping hand – as warming thaws permafrost and releases more carbon and nitrogen from ancient stores, creating a continuous feedback loop.

Pep Canadell receives funding from the National Environment Science Program – Climate Systems Hub.

Gustaf Hugelius has received funding form the European Union Horizon Europe program, the Swedish Research Council and the Schmidt Futures foundation.

– ref. The frozen carbon of the northern permafrost is on the move – we estimated by how much – https://theconversation.com/the-frozen-carbon-of-the-northern-permafrost-is-on-the-move-we-estimated-by-how-much-242704

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Shortis, Adjunct Senior Fellow, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University

As Americans vote in one of the most important presidential elections in generations, the country teeters on a knife edge. In the battleground states that will likely decide the result, the polling margins between Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump are razor thin.

These tiny margins, and the general confusion around American politics today, make it impossible to predict the outcome.

The polls might well be wrong: the electorate may have shifted dramatically since 2020 in ways that will only reveal themselves after the election. The reality is we do not know much of anything for sure, and we may never be able to untangle all of the threads that make up the knot of American politics.

After two assassination attempts on Trump and incumbent President Joe Biden’s dramatic decision to leave the race in August, it is entirely possible this election will throw up more big surprises. But as things stand, there are three broad possibilities for what will happen on Election Day.

All of them throw up their own challenges – for the United States, and for the world.

Possibility 1: the return of Trump

Trump may make history and win back the White House. Only Grover Cleveland has managed to get elected a second time as president (in 1892) after suffering a defeat four years earlier.

If Trump does win, it could be via a similar path to the one he took in 2016 – by once again sundering the “blue wall” and winning the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.

This feat will likely mean his campaign tactic of mobilising men has worked.

A Trump victory would represent the culmination of a generational project of the American right. A second Trump administration would be very different from the first – the movement behind Trump is more organised, focused and cognisant of the mistakes of the first Trump White House. It would also face considerably weakened democratic guardrails.

The implementation of Trump’s radical agenda, alongside some or all of the broader far-right agenda detailed in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, would radically reshape American life and create political and economic chaos.

The rest of the world would have to reorient itself, once again, around Trump.

Possibility 2: Harris makes history

It is entirely possible Harris makes history – not only by beating Trump, but by becoming the first woman and woman of colour to win the US presidency.

Like Trump, if Harris does win, it will likely be through one or more of the battleground states – in particular, Pennsylvania and Georgia.

For Harris, victory will likely come via high turnout by women and voters of colour, particularly African-Americans, or through a combination of turnout by this core Democratic base and swing voters in key states like Pennsylvania.

How Harris wins – and by how much – will be crucial, both to the immediate aftermath of the election and to the shape of a future Harris administration.

A big question: can she win by enough to head off resistance by Trump and the movement behind him? As Australian writer Don Watson has noted, a Harris victory would likely be taken as an existential defeat by the MAGA movement.

How Trump’s supporters react to such a defeat – and how US institutions react to their reaction – will be a critical test for American democracy.

Possibility 3: too close to call

This brings us to the third possibility: the polls are correct, and it’s such a tight race that the margins in the battleground states are in the thousands of votes, or even less.

If it is that close, counting could take days. And there could be recounts after that.

While conspiracies abound, a delay in the result like this would be an entirely predictable and normal outcome. In the United States, there isn’t one system for counting the votes; elections are run by the states on a county-by-county basis, and each state does it differently.

Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, for example, legally can’t start counting mail-in votes until the polls open on Election Day.

Then there is the supposed “blue shift” or “red mirage” that sometimes occurs on election night.

There are now many ways to vote in the US – in person on Election Day, early voting before Election Day or by mail-in ballot. And the time it takes to count these different ballots can vary. So, it may appear as if one candidate is winning early in the night (say, when in-person votes are counted) only for their opponent to slowly turn the tide (when mail-in ballots are counted).

In the 2020 election, this meant early Trump (“red”) leads were gradually lost to the Biden (“blue”) votes. Researchers found that counties won by Biden counted more slowly, on average, than those won by Trump – hence the so-called “blue shift”.

This is an entirely normal – and legal – phenomenon. In Nevada, for instance, state law permits mail-in ballots to be counted four days after Election Day, so long as they were postmarked by Election Day.

Trump and his surrogates like Steve Bannon, however, have exploited the differing times it takes to count votes to peddle baseless conspiracy theories, undermining Americans’ faith in their own democracy, and to incite unrest.

By baselessly declaring victory in 2020 on the early “red mirage” tallies in key states before all the votes were counted, Trump was able to create what Bannon described as a “firestorm” – one that eventually led to the insurrection of January 6 2021.

This could very well happen again. Bannon, in fact, has just been released from prison after serving four months for contempt of Congress, and could once again be a driving force in any post-election challenges by the Trump campaign.

Trump, meanwhile, lied again this week when he said “these elections have to be, they have to be decided by 9 o’clock, 10 o’clock, 11 o’clock on Tuesday night” – laying the groundwork for further election conspiracies.

Delays are normal – but fraught

Trump has made it very clear he will not accept another election loss. If he does lose, he or his surrogates will attempt to weaponise similar conspiracy theories again. They may also use legal challenges to vote counts as they did in 2020 – both to contest the result and to once again mobilise the MAGA movement.

In the event of close margins, it’s also possible some states will go to a recount.

There are different rules for this in different states. To take one example, if the margin is within 0.5% in Georgia, a candidate can request a recount.

In the 2020 presidential election, Biden narrowly defeated Trump in Georgia by 0.25%, which triggered a full hand recount of the votes. The Associated Press declared Biden the winner of the state more than two weeks after Election Day. A second recount was later reconfirmed by Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

Again, this is a normal part of the process. It ensures all votes are counted accurately and the result reflects the democratic will of the American people as best as the (admittedly, deeply flawed) system allows.

Such a delay, legitimate as it would be, would elevate the already very real risk of further political violence and instability in the United States.

None of these outcomes is inevitable. 2024 is not 2020; nor is it 2016. What happens next in America depends on the movement and interplay of so many tangled threads, it is impossible to see where old ones end and new ones might begin.

In all of this, only one thing is certain. Whatever the result – and however long it takes to come through – the divisions and conspiracy theories that have destabilised American politics for so long will not be easily or quickly resolved. That knot may well prove impossible to untangle.

Emma Shortis is Director of the International and Security Affairs program at The Australia Institute, an independent think tank.

– ref. What to expect on Election Day: history could be made, or we’re in for a long wait (and plenty of conspiracies) – https://theconversation.com/what-to-expect-on-election-day-history-could-be-made-or-were-in-for-a-long-wait-and-plenty-of-conspiracies-242598

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Duckett, Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne

Australians today are more likely than previous generations to live with complex and chronic diseases, such as diabetes, heart disease and depression.

This means they’re more likely to need health care from a variety of different providers, such as nurses, podiatrists, psychologists and physiotherapists, as well as GPs. This is known as “multidisciplinary care”. It works best when the skills of all these professions are available to the patient in a co-ordinated way.

But the roles of health professions, and the way they’re funded, have been frozen in legislation and policy for decades. Any change has been incremental and disjointed. It has mostly involved adding more items to the Medicare schedule, with each professional practising separately.

The result has been greater inequity of access. Because fewer than half of allied health fee-for-service visits are bulk-billed, most patients pay almost A$70 for each consultation – and sometimes much more. Those who can’t afford the out-of-pocket costs and can’t find a bulk-billing practitioner miss out.

To assess how the government can remove barriers to team-based care and get health professions working to their full potential, or their full “scope of practice”, last year the government commissioned an independent review.

The final report, released yesterday, sets a new path for the primary care workforce. This could make multidisciplinary care within reach of all Australians.

Using health-care workers’ full potential

The review involved extensive consultation, including on two issues papers. The report itself incorporates feedback from the consultations, including sceptical comments, reflecting a divergence of opinions.

Reflected the report’s title, Unleashing the Potential of our Health Workforce, its main emphasis is to change the rules and regulations imposed by state and federal governments. These stymie health professionals and limit their ability to use their full skills and knowledge to manage their patients’ care.

Over recent decades, health professionals’ education has improved. So professionals are capable of doing more than previously. Yet the rules and regulations have not advanced and so inhibit professionals from making those skills and knowledge available.

The review argues this contributes to career dissatisfaction, and to people leaving various health professions, exacerbating workforce shortages.

The review proposes a new way of documenting and describing what can be done by a profession through what it calls a National Skills and Capability Framework and Matrix.

As with many other recommendations, the review points to where this is done already internationally and how it can nestle into other policies and frameworks to aid implementation.

To the disappointment of most allied health professions, the review does not recommend more Medicare payments for them to practise independently.

Rather, the review recommends payment to general practices for them to expand multi-disciplinary teams. This would see professionals working together, rather than in competition or isolation.

The review also recommends changing the rules about referrals by health professionals, allowing qualified health professionals to refer directly to non-GP medical specialists in similar areas. This means your psychologist could refer you directly to a psychiatrist if needed, or your physiotherapist could refer you directly to an orthopaedic surgeon rather than needing to go back to your GP.

This will weaken the role of the GP as a “gatekeeper” and also potentially undermine the more holistic care that GPs provide. But from a patient’s point of view, eliminating the intermediate step saves them out-of-pocket costs.

An important recommendation recognises that the health system evolves and rules and regulations need to evolve too. It therefore supplements its recommendations for changes now, with an approach for continuous review through an independent mechanism. This would provide evidence-based advice and recommendations about:

• significant workforce innovation
• emerging health care roles
• workforce models that involve significant change to scope.

When will we see change?

The review sets out a loose timeline for implementation, described as short, medium and long term. And it assigns responsibility for each element of its recommendations to appropriate bodies and governments.

As almost all the recommendations require legislative change, and many require agreement between the Commonwealth and the states, it’s unlikely any of the changes will take effect this financial year.

The review recommends change be implemented in a systematic, evidence-based and safe way. Implementation would start in areas of greatest need such as in rural and remote Australia and also in practices most ready for the change, such as Aboriginal Controlled Community Health Organisations or Victoria’s Community Health Centres.

In releasing what he referred to as a “landmark” report, Health Minister Mark Butler noted the complexity of implementation, which would require collaborative action with states and territories. He noted the need for further consultation, but nevertheless took a supportive tone.

Can this review prompt real health reform?

Overall, the review charts a middle course between letting health professionals roam free and the tight and inappropriate rules and regulations which constrain patient care today. It also sets out the practical steps to achieve its goals.

The one downside of the report is the emphasis on harmonisation of state and territory approaches. This would replace the current approach, where each state and territory decides, for example, on what vaccines can be administered by which professionals and what pharmacists can dispense without a medical practitioner’s prescription.

One of the benefits of a federation is the potential for state- and territory-based innovation and cross-border learning. Harmonisation will limit that experimenting, and may lead to more of the stasis seen in health workforce policy in the past.

Stephen Duckett was consulted by the Independent Reviewer during the course of the Review and commented on the Review’s Issues Papers and Draft Final Report

– ref. Primary care involves more than GPs. A new review shows how patients can better access care – https://theconversation.com/primary-care-involves-more-than-gps-a-new-review-shows-how-patients-can-better-access-care-242698

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Roger Dargaville, Director Monash Energy Institute, Monash University

Both major parties in Australia see a significant role for gas as the world shifts to clean energy in a bid to avert dangerous climate change.

The Albanese government says new sources of gas are needed to meet demand during the energy transition. And the Coalition, if elected, would expand gas use as it prepares for nuclear power.

Of course, some people argue that the grave threat of climate change means we should not burn any gas. Others say the strong growth in renewable energy generation and storage means Australia won’t need gas into the future.

So who is right? As I explain below, renewable energy is a huge part of the solution but doesn’t solve every problem. So keeping some gas-fired generators in the electricity mix, and using them only when necessary, is a sensible compromise.

Getting to grips with gas

There are almost 40 large natural gas-fired generators in Australia, and they are an important part of the National Electricity Market.

According to Open Electricity — a platform for tracking Australia’s electricity transition – the gas facilities generate around 4% of the electricity we consume and comprise about 17% of overall generation capacity.

The data also shows gas plants in Australia run at just 9% of their overall capacity, meaning they are idle much of the time. Some gas plants get used quite a lot, others only rarely. But when the plants are called on – during times of peak electricity use – their services are vital.

Overnight, our demand for electricity dips. But when we wake in the morning and start toasting bread and boiling kettles and the like, electricity demand picks up.

Demand eases off in the middle of the day as the sun rises high in the sky and Australia’s booming rooftop solar reaches its peak electricity output. But when the sun sets and rooftop solar is no longer producing, electricity use peaks. This early-evening demand creates a big challenge to the system.

That’s why we need technologies that can produce electricity at any time of day or night – and do it quickly. That’s where gas-fired generation – and other “dispatchable” forms of electricity – come in.

How do gas fired generators work?

Gas generators come in two main types.

An “open cycle generator”, also known as a Brayton cycle turbine, is essentially a jet engine. It combusts gas in a chamber to create enormous pressure that spins large fans. This drives a shaft that spins in the generator to produce electricity.

This technology is relatively cheap to build and can start up very quickly – but it’s also quite inefficient to operate. It uses a lot of expensive fuel, and creates a lot of waste heat.

The second type is known as a “combined cycle generator”. It also uses a Brayton cycle gas turbine. But it captures exhaust heat from the turbine and uses it to create steam, which in turn powers a second turbine (known as a Rankine cycle). This significantly increases the amount of electricity produced for the same amount of gas burned.

So while this technology is relatively efficient, it’s also more expensive to build and takes longer to ramp up and down.

Other types of gas generators exist, but they’re a relatively small part of Australia’s fleet.

Gas is not the only option

Gas plants are not the only facilities capable of firming up Australia’s electricity grid as the share of renewables increases.

Hydro power can also quickly ramp up to meet the evening peak. However the potential for building new conventional hydro in Australia is very limited due to the lack of large river systems and the significant environmental impact on rivers and surrounding areas.

Coal-fired generators have potential to ramp up production, but are generally not designed to do this every evening. Plus, Australia’s fleet of old coal plants is on a fast path to retirement.

To maintain the delicate balance of supply and demand, more will be required of gas and hydro, to produce electricity, and batteries and pumped hydro, to store it.

Pumped hydro works by using excess renewable energy to pump water up a hill. When electricity demand is high, the water is released and passes through a turbine, producing power.

The potential for pumped hydro energy storage in Australia is large, and some projects are likely to be economically viable. But the projects can face challenges, as demonstrated by delays and cost blowouts facing Snowy 2.0 in New South Wales.

Large-scale lithium-ion batteries are relatively easy to install. Many projects have been built or are in the pipeline. But batteries are not great for long-duration energy storage.

All this means gas-fired power generation is likely to have a future in Australia in coming decades.

The downsides of gas

Methane is the main component of natural gas. It’s also a potent contributor to global warming.

During natural gas production and transport, gas leaks inevitably occur. This is a problem for climate change.

So too is the carbon dioxide produced when the gas is burned to produce electricity.

To tackle climate change, we must dramatically reduce the amount of gas we use in our electricity system. Gas use should also be eliminated for heating and cooking in our homes and, where possible, in industry.

So where does that leave us?

Unfortunately, no perfect solution exists to Australia’s electricity supply-demand conundrum.

The most likely, most economic and most environmentally acceptable approach is to use a “portfolio” of technologies: lots of batteries and pumped hydro but also some gas.

Because to keep the system stable and reliable, we need some capacity that will mostly sit idle, getting used on only a few occasions. For that reason, the technologies should be relatively cheap to build and able to run for extended periods when wind and solar generation are abnormally low.

Gas-fired power – especially open cycle generators – meets that requirement. Pumped hydro and batteries do not.

The gas plants we keep in the grid will not often be used, and so will produce relatively low amounts of carbon dioxide.

Nuanced questions remain. What will it cost to keep a gas network operating to serve a fleet of gas generators that run only for a few days a year? Gas pipelines have to be kept pressurised, and the cost of running a gas extraction network for small demand may also be uneconomical.

Non-fossil options such as biogas, hydrogen or synthetically produced methane are possible longer term options. But they are also expensive. And new technologies – such as flow batteries, thermal energy storage and cryogenic energy storage – are on the horizon.

So, keeping some gas-fired generators on standby, and using them sparingly as needed, is a reasonable approach. It allows us to reduce emissions as much as possible, and keep our electricity system secure and affordable.

Roger Dargaville receives funding from the Woodside-Monash Energy Partnership, RACE for 2030 CRC, and he consults for industry and government bodies.

– ref. Yes, burning gas is bad for the climate. But keeping it in Australia’s energy mix is sensible – https://theconversation.com/yes-burning-gas-is-bad-for-the-climate-but-keeping-it-in-australias-energy-mix-is-sensible-241689

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

Crossbench independents Allegra Spender, Helen Haines and Kate Chaney have declared they are pulling out of the elite lounges run by Qantas and Virgin, amid the ongoing spotlight on privileges politicians receive from the airlines.

Allegra Spender, the member for the Sydney seat of Wentworth, also said she’d write to ask Qantas and Virgin not to give free upgrades to parliamentarians. It was “time to end the upgrades”.

She said all sides of politics enjoyed the perks, and both major parties had blocked greater competition from Qatar Airways.

Airlines operated under government policy and ministerial decisions, she said. “The public is understandably losing trust in politicians to make those decisions impartially when they’re being given free upgrades from the companies they’re supposed to regulate.”

Spender urged a review of the ministerial code of conduct. Tighter rules were needed about what politicians could accept. The code should also be extended to shadow ministers. There should as well be much more transparency over the diaries of ministers, she said.

“This is the only way to deal with the perception – and potential reality – of decisions being influenced by perks.”

But Labor MP Luke Gosling, from the Darwin seat of Solomon, accused her of grandstanding. “It’s a bit rich from the people with harbour views who either drive or have less than a one-hour flight,” he told the ABC.

Haines, from the Victorian regional seat of Indi, said she was quitting the lounges because she wanted “to remove any possibility of an actual or perceived conflict of interest” in her work as an MP.

“The reality that airlines offer these kinds of perks because ultimately they want to get something in return does not sit well with me and I want to continue to contribute to creating a culture of transparency and accountability through my actions as well as my words.”

Haines said she wanted “to see more rigorous rules around MP disclosures of upgrades and I think a ban on soliciting free flight upgrades is more than reasonable”.

Chaney, who holds the Western Australian seat of Curtin, said with the media attention on the issue “we need to do everything we can to rebuild trust in politicians making decisions in the public interest”.

Another crossbencher, Monique Ryan, from the Melbourne seat of Kooyong, who dropped her Qantas chairman’s lounge membership last year on integrity grounds, said she welcomed the discussion about the impact of corporate largesse on MPs’ decision-making.

“I am deeply concerned about lobbying and its potential to impact government decision making. Free upgrades and airline hospitality are lobbying practices that we have taken for granted for a long time, and it is important that we re-examine them — especially given public concerns about conflicts of interest.”

Meanwhile there is no indication of when opposition transport spokeswoman Bridget McKenzie, who was leading the charge against the prime minister over his upgrades, will produce a list of her own. She has said she has written to three airlines to check what upgrades she has had.

Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Crossbenchers cancel their membership of airlines’ elite lounges – https://theconversation.com/crossbenchers-cancel-their-membership-of-airlines-elite-lounges-242782