Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Lindenmayer, Professor, The Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University

Imagine this fictitious scenario. The federal environment minister announces government approval for a large-scale penguin farm near Alice Springs. It will produce 300,000 penguins each year for the high-end feather market in Europe.

Penguin feathers are also, in this make-believe world, proven superconductors that could provide an alternative to lithium for renewable energy batteries. The $40 million farming project promises to create jobs and growth in regional Australia.

To any informed reader, the idea of farming cold-ocean seabirds in the Australian desert is mind-numbingly silly. But this hypothetical idea helps us better understand how environmental governance in Australia has gone badly wrong.

The real-world problems were laid bare on Tuesday when the State of the Environment report was released. It showed a devastating loss of plants, animals and habitat on land and in oceans. And without dramatic action, the problem will only get worse.

So let’s look at the policies the federal government should fix to tackle this sorry state of affairs.

Penguins R Us

First, let’s explore our make-believe penguin farm a little further.

The venture would use river water to create a new, cool aquatic environment for the penguins. It will be located near two other large farm projects that also draw water from the river. The proponent, Penguins R Us, will monitor environmental impacts at the site.

Environmental groups oppose the plan. But the fictitious environment minister said the department thoroughly reviewed the proposal and it represents “world’s best practice” penguin farming.

Environmental conditions attached to the project stipulate that water from only one river can be diverted to the project. Loss of habitat for the endangered orange-throated parrot – a fictitious species invented for the purposes of this example – will be offset by tree planting on a neighbouring pastoral station.

Penguins R Us is a generous donor to major political parties. The fictitious federal government of the day will provide 50% of the project’s initial finance.

No-one – yet – has proposed this silly farming idea. But all too often, a similar script plays out in real life. Here are five reasons why.

Read more:
This is Australia’s most important report on the environment’s deteriorating health. We present its grim findings

1. Weak endangered species protection

Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek this week signalled reform of Australia’s key environment law, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. As an independent review in 2020 by Graeme Samuel showed, the law has done a woeful job of preventing actions that harm threatened species, such as land clearing.

As the State of the Environment report revealed, about 93% of terrestrial habitat used by threatened species, and cleared between 2000 and 2017, was not referred to the federal government for assessment under national laws.

Compounding the problem, the cumulative effects of developments across a landscape are largely ignored during the approvals process. This is the case with the hypothetical penguin farm, which is located alongside other developments that also disturb the landscape.

Orange-throated parrots are hypothetical threatened species. Protection of threatened species should take precedence over destructive developments – but this almost never occurs.

2. Gross underfunding

Proper conservation of the fictitious orange-throated parrot is likely to be hampered by inadequate funding for conservation actions.

Australia is a true laggard on environmental spending. Current expenditure is just 15% of what’s needed to avoid extinctions and recover threatened species.

Good science is needed to ensure funding is well-targeted and effective. The federally funded Threatened Species Recovery Hub once conducted targeted practical research on how to best and most effectively conserve threatened plants, animals and ecosystems. It partnered closely with land mangers, including Traditional Owners.

But the hub was axed last year by the Morrison government. With it went a huge amount of capacity to tackle Australia’s biodiversity crisis in many parts of the continent. This, and many other shortsighted funding decisions, must be reversed.

3. Poor offset process

Under our make-believe scenario, loss of habitat for the endangered orange-throated parrot will be compensated by planting trees elsewhere. This is known as “biodiversity offsetting”.

The body of evidence on poorly performing offsets is vast. They are supposed to prevent net loss of habitats or populations of a particular species. This almost never happens.

The Samuel review found environmental offsetting should be “immediately improved” to ensure, among other things,
it delivers genuine protection and restoration.

This reform is urgent. Offsets must be properly assessed, rigorously verified and robustly monitored to ensure they deliver.

4. Inadequate environmental monitoring

In this fictitious scenario, the proponent will monitor the impacts of the penguin farm. This often means a poorly designed and executed monitoring program.

What’s more, it will be almost impossible for governments and the general public to evaluate the proponents’ efforts to fix any environmental problems it causes. A string of reviews have shown Australia’s record on monitoring species recovery and environmental remediation is woeful.

Mandatory monitoring of projects should be conducted independently – and by people who know how to design and implement such programs.

Read more:
‘Bad and getting worse’: Labor promises law reform for Australia’s environment. Here’s what you need to know

5. Problematic political donations

Penguins R Us is a major donor to the fictitious party in government. The government then invested in the penguin project to get it off the ground.

Australia’s political donations system lacks transparency. But from what we do know, the donations often buy companies access to politicians and influence over the political process, including environmental decisions on developments.

For example, research suggests powerful corporate interests have played a major role in the climate policy decisions and actions in Australia over the past 15 years.

So reform on campaign donations is essential to protecting Australia’s environment.

Doing better

Australia may not be farming penguins in one of the world’s hottest and driest environments. But this hypothetical scenario highlights serious deficiencies in species conservation, environmental management, project approvals, and monitoring of major development impacts.

Clearly, non-Indigenous Australians are failing in our custodial role to protect and properly manage the priceless natural assets of this continent. We can – and must – do far better.

Read more:
‘That patch of bush is gone, and so are the birds’: a scientist reacts to the State of the Environment report

David Lindenmayer receives funding from the Australian Government, the Victorian Government and the NSW Government

– ref. A penguin farm in the Australian desert: a thought experiment that reveals the flaws our in environment laws – https://theconversation.com/a-penguin-farm-in-the-australian-desert-a-thought-experiment-that-reveals-the-flaws-our-in-environment-laws-187142

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adriana Errico, Computer engineer, MSc Bioinformatics, University of Southern Queensland

If you close your eyes and imagine a system of planets orbiting a distant star, what do you see?

For most people, such thoughts conjure up systems that mirror the Solar System: planets orbiting a host star on near-circular orbits – rocky planets closer in, and giants such as Jupiter in the icy depths.

However, the more we study the cosmos, the more we begin to realise planetary systems like our own might be more of an exception than a rule.

Imagine a system with one gaseous planet, a little larger than Saturn, skimming the surface of its host star on an extremely fast orbit. It’s hellishly hot and glows a dull red, baking in stellar radiation.

Then imagine another giant planet farther out, larger than Jupiter, moving on a distant and highly elongated orbit which makes it look more like a comet than a traditional planet.

It doesn’t sound much like home, does it? Yet that’s what we found.

Introducing the HD83443 planetary system

The story of the HD83443 system begins in the late 20th century, when astronomers began obsessively observing stars similar to the Sun. They were looking for evidence of those stars wobbling back and forth under the influence of unseen planetary companions.

Using the 3.9 metre Anglo-Australian Telescope at the Siding Spring Observatory near Coonabarabran, researchers discovered a planet orbiting the star HD83443. This planet, HD83443b, was as massive as the gas giants Saturn and Jupiter.

But that’s where the similarities ended. HD83443b is a “hot Jupiter”: a giant gas planet skimming the surface of its host star (which is a little smaller and cooler than the Sun), and completing each lap in less than three Earth days!

For two decades since its discovery, we have continued to monitor the HD83443’s movements. In recent years, we’ve been conducting this work at the University of Southern Queensland’s Mt Kent Observatory.

By combining our observations with others, we discovered a strange new planet in the system, which we describe in a paper published last month.

This world, HD83443c, takes more than 22 years to orbit its host star, and is some 200 times more distant than its hellish sibling. Since HD83443c’s “year” is so long, we needed more than two decades of observations to confirm its existence – by tracking a single lap around its host star.

But what’s really unusual is the eccentricity of its orbit. While the planets in the Solar System follow near-circular orbits, HD83443c follows a much more elongated path reminiscent of comets in our Solar System.

The aftermath of a planetary tango

Planets such as the “hot Jupiter”, HD83443b, are particularly interesting to astronomers as they’re unlike anything close to home. Gas giants such as Jupiter begin their lives far from their host star where ices are abundant.

Those ices allow them to rapidly grow, gaining enough mass to shroud themselves in huge atmospheres.

Unlike the Solar System’s giant planets, as HD83443b grew to maturity, it must have migrated inwards to end up close to its host star. What caused this migration?

Well, over the years, astronomers have found many hot Jupiters. In trying to understand those weird planets, several mechanisms have been proposed to explain their migration – but in most cases, any evidence of the cause of the migration is lost in the distant past.

In the specific case of HD83443b, however, it seems our new discovery might have provided the evidence of the smoking gun. The newly-discovered world, HD83443c, might be the reason its sibling ended up on its current hellish orbit.

Imagine HD83443c and HD83443b first forming in the icy depths of the HD83443 system. They would have been buried in the massive disc of gas and dust surrounding the star, called a “protoplanetary disk”.

As the planets moved through the disc, they fed from it, growing ever more massive, and drifting slowly inward as they interact with the disc around them.

Eventually they came too close together. They didn’t quite collide, but as they swung past one another, their immense gravitational pulls acted like a slingshot, catapulting them both onto new orbits.

HD83443b, the hot Jupiter, was flung inwards onto an orbit that skims the star’s surface at its closest approach, before swinging back outwards towards the initial scene of near collision. The other planet, HD83443c, is flung outwards onto its current elongated path.

Over millennia, something remarkable happened. Every time HD83443b swung close to its host star, its presence raised tides on the star, and in turn the host star caused tides to rise on it. This would have essentially “applied the brakes” to HD83443b’s motion.

This means HD83443b lost a tiny bit of speed each time it swung past the host star. As it flew back outwards again, it failed to travel as far as before and its orbit was slowly circularised. It was dragged inwards until it reached its current tiny, circular orbit – on which it will spend the rest of its life.

HD83443c, however, experienced no such fate. After having been flung outwards during the initial encounter with HD83443c, it remained so distant from the central star that its orbit was never impacted.

Its very slow and elongated orbit is evidence of that initial planetary encounter from when the system was young.

Is there no place like home?

This story is a fascinating one – but the main goal of our ongoing search for alien worlds is to find places much more like home.

We’re using the same tools that led us to HD83443c to find planetary systems like our own – with giant planets on orbits far from their host stars. We may need to gaze out at distance stars for decades at a time, watching their graceful celestial waltz.

We will no doubt find many more surprising systems akin to HD83443, that reveal more about the true variety of planetary systems out there.

Brad Carter receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Jonti Horner received funding from the Australian Research Council in 2016 to help construct Minerva-Australis, the exoplanet detection array at the University of Southern Queensland that was used to detect HD83443 c.

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

– ref. A cosmic tango: this distant planet’s very strange orbit points to a violent and chaotic past – https://theconversation.com/a-cosmic-tango-this-distant-planets-very-strange-orbit-points-to-a-violent-and-chaotic-past-185703

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Catherine Speck, Emerita Professor, Art History and Curatorship, University of Adelaide

On cold nights in July, Adelaide audiences are flocking to an extraordinary festival of light and sound.

The top bill of the Illuminate festival is Wisdom of AI Light, an immersive digital performance in which the audience experience art meshed with science at breakneck speed. Billed as a “digital renaissance”, it is much more than that.

Held in a large pop-up space, the creators are the Istanbul-based Ouchhh Studio who are exploring the limits of what machines can do.

Spurred on by Alan Turing’s Computing machinery and intelligence (1950), a host of digital artists have been exploring how machines replace the artist in thinking, making art and music.

Ouchhh Studio take the digital art revolution to a whole new level. Art history is a data set from which their artificial intelligence scientists, animators and designers create algorithms that produce stunning visual effects that dance over the walls and floor of the space.

Every so often, Leonardo da Vinci’s enigmatic Mona Lisa (1503) or his Vitruvian Man (1490) appear, along with fragments from Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling (1508-12) or Pieta (1498-99), only to dissolve into particles.

In the second part of the performance, the creators turn to the writings of Galileo, Einstein and other physicists. Snippets of their text and scientific symbols dance across the walls and floor, only to dissolve into computer language or abstract designs.

The partnership of the Ouchhh Studio with scientists at CERN and NASA is ground-breaking: their multi-sensory performance is a visual feast.

Read more:
Friday essay: Rise of the artistic machines

Painting trees with light

In the botanical gardens, the Montreal-based Moment Factory are presenting another after-dark spectacle, Light Cycles. The Moment Factory’s laboratory is the forest. Trees, plants and built structures become their canvas.

A curated pathway through the gardens takes audience members on a journey where light, music and video interact. The world of the everyday slips away and nature comes alive.

At one point, you move through a maze of intersecting laser lights. At another, lights dance up and down giant trees accompanied by thumping music that emulate the fantasy-laden tree-monsters of children’s stories.

Further on, a choreography of lights dance across a lake performing movements to rival contemporary dance. The finale is the changing light parade at the Palm House.

This deeply performative, immersive and experiential walk through light and sound is utterly stunning.

Rewriting history

Illuminate Adelaide is also lighting up buildings throughout the city after dark. The façade of the Art Gallery of South Australia is host to Vincent Namatjira’s Going Out Bush.

The gallery’s classical columns become gum trees in the Hermannsburg style of watercolour painting made famous by Albert Namatjira, while Vincent weaves in and out of Country in his great-grandfather’s signature green truck.

The imagery is, at one level, jocular and folksy. At a deeper level it is rewriting colonial history. The scene is set in Indulkana, the artist’s home in the APY (Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara) Lands, where the local football team plays and the camp dog roams.

Colonial power, symbolised by images of Captain Cook and the Queen, becomes First Nations power. The heads of Captain Cook and the Queen are replaced by Vincent Namatjira’s: a nighttime dream or more?

Read more:
Terra nullius interruptus: Captain James Cook and absent presence in First Nations art

Studies in melancholy

Within the walls of the Art Gallery of South Australia, Robert Wilson: Moving Portraits is on show. While not a part of Illuminate Adelaide, its focus is also light, sound and movement.

Wilson’s fascination is stillness – and the movement in stillness. His 23 video portraits are teasingly titled “moving portraits”.

Wilson is a major contemporary art world figure, best known for his collaboration with Philip Glass in Einstein on the Beach (1975), and most recently for his radical new interpretation of Handel’s Messiah (2020). In his highly innovative work across the performing and visual arts, the reductive forms of space and time are always at play.

Some of Wilson’s subjects for his highly staged, theatrical pieces in his Moving Portraits are actors because they are trained to hold a pose. The scenes created are frequently steeped in art history, cinema or literature as in Lady Gaga: Mademoiselle Caroline Riviere (2013).

This video portrait, which draws on Jean Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s famous 1806 portrait, replicates its costume and pose perfectly, but for Wilson it is a study in melancholy. The youthful Caroline Riviere died a year after Ingres’s portrait commission.

In filming, Lady Gaga held the pose for seven hours. The video portrait, which runs on a loop over several minutes, is intensely still and subdued. A tear intermittently runs down Lady Gaga’s face. A snow goose occasionally flies above to allude to the brevity and beauty of life.

Each Wilson video portrait is paired with objects from the gallery’s collection, for this one it is a Roman balsarium (c.50-200 CE), a delicate glass tear-collecting receptacle a mere 13cm high.

Wilson sees his portraits as opening up a psychological window for the viewer, the balsarium is uncanny in completing the effect.

In another intense portrait of Chinese expatriate writer and Nobel Laureate for Literature, Gao Xingjian, Writer (2005), space is compressed. The portrait zones in on his cropped face. Every facial line and skin pore are visible.

With his eyes closed, apart from the slight flicker of the eyelids, the face becomes a record of struggle and success. Text in French from Jean Paul Sartre, edges slowly across his face reading, in English, “solitude is a necessary condition for liberty”.

The video portraits extend to animals, the human-animal nexus a particular fascination for Wilson. This includes the intriguing Ivory, Black Panther (2006) which Wilson and his technicians filmed for 23 long minutes in a domestic setting, the panther’s eyes directed at these intruders.

The union between the humans and this potentially dangerous animal is palpable: the stillness is both unnerving and its drawcard.

Other moving portraits include a softer, more vulnerable Brad Pitt, Actor (2004), clad only in boxer shorts and socks, standing in the rain and holding a water pistol, a reference to Alfred Hitchcock.

Wilson works collaboratively. That starts with his subject, and extends to his creative team who, following the theatrically staged shoot, spend another two weeks editing and sound mixing. Each portrait comes with an accompanying soundtrack.

When looking at the Wilson video portraits, time slows down; the slight movement in the imagery, such as Winona Ryder’s feather on her hat swaying in her intriguing Winona Ryder Actress (2004), requires careful looking. Viewers in the exhibition space are being subtly inducted into Wilson’s mantra of “movement in stillness” in this deeply affective series which is poetry in motion.

A truly exquisite exhibition.

Illuminate Adelaide is at multiple venues until July 31. Robert Wilson: Moving Portraits is at the Art Gallery of South Australia until October 3.

Catherine Speck has received funding from the ARC to research Australian art exhibitions.

– ref. In a cold July, Adelaide comes to life with art of light, sound and movement – https://theconversation.com/in-a-cold-july-adelaide-comes-to-life-with-art-of-light-sound-and-movement-186045

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Wellings, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, Monash University

Boris Johnson has declared his time as United Kingdom prime minister was “mission largely accomplished”. How does that self-diagnosed legacy stack up?

Nothing is inevitable in politics, but Johnson’s political demise in July 2022 might be as close as we get to such inevitability. This was not so much because of the growing pressure to oust him once revelations of his wrongdoing occurred.

Rather, it was because of the well-known character flaws of chaotic self-management and flagrant disregard for responsibility that he brought to the job of prime minister.

Read more:
Why is Boris Johnson still UK prime minister and how might he be replaced?

Nevertheless, he has left a significant political legacy for whoever his successor turns out to be, and for the United Kingdom as a whole. This is not to say his legacy was part of a coherent ideology or governing strategy.

Contrast Johnson with Margaret Thatcher who, although reviled on the left of politics, was recognised as having a formed-up plan and effectively implementing it. Conversely, Tony Blair had an electoral strategy and was feared on the right for over a decade for winning the middle ground of politics from the Conservatives (although many Labour voters never really forgave Blair for hollowing out the party).

So what is Johnson’s legacy?

It is hard to see any order in Johnson’s chaos. Johnson was seen as a fixer, a prime minister who governed through and by crises. The list of his main legacies will run as follows.

Mission largely accomplished 1: Brexit and UK unity

Johnson will be best remembered for getting Brexit done. However, this is not quite right. Brexit is not done yet, certainly not in Northern Ireland. The statecraft required to get the UK out of the European Union was focused on political concerns in England and paid little regard to those parts of the UK that voted to remain.

The push for Scottish independence has entered a new phase, with the Scottish government sending its plans for a referendum on separation from the UK in 2023 to the UK’s High Court.

Mission largely accomplished 2: levelling-up

The flipside of Brexit was “levelling-up”. This was a plan to reinvest in those relatively deprived areas in the north and midlands of England that had voted to leave the EU.

There have been many plans to overcome the north-south divide in England; none have really achieved their stated aims. The cancellation of the Leeds branch of a high-speed rail project doesn’t look like a promising departure from the norm.

Mission largely accomplished 3: Pandemic response and the economy

Of course, it might be too early to tell just how successful Brexit has truly been. Its medium and long-term effects are yet to become apparent.

This is most obvious in regard to the economy, which was hit by the pandemic only weeks after the UK formally left the EU in January 2020. The anticipated “Brexit opportunities” have certainly not arrived for fisher people who were a key source of support for the “leave” campaign back in 2016.

Although Johnson is often seen as having got the big decisions on the pandemic response right, his record is chequered here even before we get to Partygate. His initial avoidance of emergency meetings spoke to his disregard for process and avoidance of responsibility.

Read more:
Four key takeaways from the ‘partygate’ investigation into Boris Johnson’s Downing Street

Mission (actually) accomplished: lack of trust in politics

What Johnson may have fully accomplished is destroying trust in politics. His greatest legacy will take some time to become apparent. At the electoral level, Brexit was built on the support of those who had lost faith in the ability of politics and politicians to change their lives for the better (see above about Tony Blair).

Johnson has squandered the trust that those people put in him by his disregard for the responsibilities that go with the role of PM, and his lack of empathy for the situation of others he so obviously wished to rule.

Who are the candidates to replace him?

We have come down to the final two candidates who will face a vote of the party’s grassroots members in August: the former chancellor of the exchequer (treasurer), Rishi Sunak, and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss.

With his high-taxation policies, Sunak is what passes for a liberal among Conservatives. This may weaken his chances against Truss. Truss is presenting herself as the continuity candidate.

About 160,000 members of the Conservative Party will choose the UK’s new prime minister between now and early September.

This is where former prime minister David Cameron’s legacy, rather than Boris Johnson’s, has come to fruition. Back in 2010 the Conservatives were often described as stale, pale and male. Cameron selected female and ethnic minority candidates for safe seats (contrast this with the Australian Coalition’s difficulties over quotas). Those decision are now bearing fruit as the next prime minister will be either a woman or the UK’s first non-white PM.

Conservative fortunes

As Enoch Powell famously wrote, “All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure.” Johnson’s political demise can hardly be describe as coming at a happy juncture.

Yet, for all his flaws, Johnson bequeaths his successor a healthy parliamentary majority; down from 80 in 2019, but still a very strong 73. Even with a huge swing away from the Conservatives, the Labour opposition – which has ruled out a coalition with the Scottish National Party – still has a proverbial mountain to climb. The Conservatives may be dining out on Brexit and Johnson’s single election win for some years to come.

Johnson signed off on his last prime minister’s questions in the House of Commons by quoting The Terminator: “Hasta la vista, baby.” His time as prime minister has come to an end; but for a natural-born grandstander like Johnson, we can be sure he’ll be back.

Ben Wellings 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. Boris Johnson says his time as UK PM was ‘mission largely accomplished’. How does that actually stack up? – https://theconversation.com/boris-johnson-says-his-time-as-uk-pm-was-mission-largely-accomplished-how-does-that-actually-stack-up-187273

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Angela Dew, Associate Professor, Deakin University

People with disability and their family members from non-English speaking refugee backgrounds come up against language and communication barriers when they try to access services, including the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).

Some of these barriers are experienced by all migrants from non-English speaking backgrounds. But this group’s issues are further compounded by services that operate in isolation and don’t recognise diversity.

In one corner: adult migrant English programs that don’t routinely accommodate for disability. In the other: disability services that don’t necessarily recognise or address cultural and language barriers. This means many people with disability and family members from refugee backgrounds are excluded from, or not able to easily access, the support they need.

Read more:
Young women’s memoirs of migration, dispossession and Australian ‘unbelonging’ demand to be heard

What are the barriers?

Across a number of projects over the past five years, we partnered with refugee and disability support services in Victoria and New South Wales, along with academics from UNSW Sydney. We’ve spoken with over 50 people with disability and family members from Syrian and Iraqi refugee backgrounds about their experiences of accessing services such as the NDIS.

A lack of English language skills was universally identified as a significant barrier.

People with disability and family members from refugee backgrounds, many of whom have been living in Australia for up to 10 years, may have little spoken or written English.

People with disability report adult migrant English programs are too fast-paced and sessions too short to accommodate their disability needs. “Girgis” (not his real name), is deaf and has an acquired brain injury. He arrived in Australia as a refugee from Syria five years ago. Girgis explained:

I don’t know English. English is too difficult for me. I had a fall [when I was young] and I injured my head at the back of my head, which means that I can’t learn much anymore and study would be too hard for me.

“Hana”, who cares for an adult son with an intellectual disability, also arrived from Syria five years ago. She told us:

My English is not good because I didn’t go to school [to learn English] because I’m stuck at home with [my son] all the time.

When limited English meets the system

Having limited English is compounded by a complex disability and health service system that doesn’t have enough interpreters. People with disabilities and family members are often confused about what the NDIS is and how they can access it. Research fellow and disability advocate, Mahmoud Murad noted:

We [people with disability from refugee backgrounds] need time to understand. It took me two or three years to understand what is the meaning of NDIS.

“Farid”, a man with a physical disability, who arrived in Australia four years ago described the ad hoc nature in which he learnt about the NDIS.

No one told me that I was supposed to register with the NDIS until after they made an artificial organ for me in the hospital, a doctor there told me ‘how you are not registered with the [NDIS]’?

People want clear and concise information about the system in their own language. They want to be supported by someone who speaks their language through the process of applying for and getting disability support.

Read more:
Digital inequality: why can I enter your building – but your website shows me the door?

Specific communication and cultural gaps

A major barrier people encounter when trying to get information about the NDIS and other services is that they can’t search websites using languages other than English.

Many organisations, including the NDIS, publish online information in Arabic (and other languages) but to find this information people need to be able to search using English words.

Disability service providers lack awareness of how to accommodate people with disability and family members who do not speak English.

And service providers are largely unaware of the often traumatic experiences of people from refugee backgrounds. In addition, they are uninformed about the cultural stigma around disability experienced by this group. Cultural disability stigma can mean people do not seek or use disability services.

“Ajmal” told us:

I mean, we left our country and were displaced and lost all our homes, and we will find some negligent [disability service provider] employees who do not feel your feelings.

Read more:
When is a condition ‘chronic’ and when is it a ‘disability’? The definition can determine the support you get

Start with a bilingual workforce

Refugee support services are the first point of contact for people from refugee backgrounds.

This year marks ten years since the Australian government introduced a health waiver which exempted people applying for humanitarian visas from having the ongoing costs of health care assessed as part of their application.

The waiver meant people with disability could come to Australia as refugees for the first time. Some refugee support services responded by employing staff with disability expertise to work alongside bilingual workers.

Similarly, the disability sector could build a bilingual workforce and promote their services in languages other than English. To improve access to information, NDIS and disability service provider websites must include information in languages other than English and must facilitate site searches in multiple languages.

NDIS plans must be routinely translated into the person’s language, this often does not happen unless people know to ask for it.

These simple changes would make a huge difference for people with disability and family members from non-English speaking refugee and migrant backgrounds.

Angela Dew receives funding from the National Disability Research Partnership, Australian Research Council, Medical Research Futures Fund, Endeavour Foundation, Lowitja Institute.

Joanne Watson receives funding from the National Disability Research Partnership and the Medical Research Futures Fund.

Louisa Smith receives funding from National Disability Research Partnership and Dementia Australia Research Foundation.

Mahmoud Murad receives funding from the National Disability Research Partnership.

– ref. Small changes could bridge communication and cultural gaps for people from refugee backgrounds who need disability support – https://theconversation.com/small-changes-could-bridge-communication-and-cultural-gaps-for-people-from-refugee-backgrounds-who-need-disability-support-185405

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joshua Black, PhD Candidate, School of History, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University

In the past fortnight, former prime minister Scott Morrison has reemerged as a subject of public discussion. First, there was rumour about his interest in securing work with the Australian Rugby League Commission, which he promptly dismissed as “pub talk”.

Second, Morrison made his debut on the international lecture circuit with an address to the Asian Leadership Conference in Seoul. He seized that opportunity to criticise China and defend his own government’s pandemic legacy, suggesting “history would treat his government more kindly” than contemporaries have done.

Then the former prime minister went to Perth to deliver a sermon at the Victory Life Centre, the Pentecostal Church led by conservative former tennis star Margaret Court. In his 50-minute address, he stressed that Australians should put their trust in God rather than in governments or the United Nations. He also warned that prevailing feelings of anxiety – about the ongoing pandemic, the climate crisis or the cost of living – were part of “Satan’s plan”.

With that performance, Morrison has signalled that he will likely depart from the established conventions of post-prime ministerial life in Australia.

The leadership instability of recent years in both major parties has generated a relatively high number of ex-PMs. Their behaviour, and the reactions they receive, tell us much about our political culture.

Australia has never had more than eight former prime ministers alive at one time, and in the mid-20th century, three of them died in office. Today there are seven of them still with us, all of whom have seen their reputations rise and fall.

Australia’s most successful former leaders have been those who deliberately try to embody generosity, magnanimity and a degree of bipartisanship. The first former prime minister, Edmund Barton, set that standard in 1903 when he resigned from the top job to continue his public service on the newly created High Court. His biographer Geoffrey Bolton suggested Barton enjoyed his transformation in public opinion from “Tosspot Toby” to that of a “well-regarded elder statesman”.

Read more:
Book review: Sean Kelly’s The Game: A Portrait of Scott Morrison

Several of Australia’s postwar leaders have emulated that model. Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser left the bitter politics of the dismissal behind them and dedicated themselves to humanitarian causes. Whitlam was Australia’s ambassador to UNESCO in Brussels, while Fraser campaigned against apartheid in South Africa before joining humanitarian group CARE Australia. Both were highly critical of their successors.

Kevin Rudd has spent the past decade immersing himself in the challenge of US-China bilateral relations, and campaigning against the impact of News Corp on Australian politics. In 2016, he unsuccessfully sought Australia’s nomination for the post of secretary-general of the United Nations.

In the recent past, Julia Gillard has similarly committed herself to causes such as the promotion of girls’ education in Africa, chairing mental health support service Beyond Blue, and helming the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at King’s College London. Her erstwhile critics at The Australian newspaper admitted that this was no “miserable ghost”.

Conservatives have enjoyed their political afterlives too, albeit often in distinctly partisan ways. Earlier prime ministers such as George Reid and Stanley Melbourne Bruce were sent to London as Australia’s High Commissioner, working the British establishment. The aged Robert Menzies used his 12 years of retirement to write reminiscences, defend the British Empire from its inexorable decline, and enjoy the cricket. John Howard has studiously emulated Menzies (to the point of writing a book about him), although he remains a vigorous partisan campaigner during elections.

Even a highly unpopular leader can be rehabilitated in public opinion. Paul Keating’s “big picture” vision for Australia, which voters rejected heavily in 1996, looked more attractive after a decade of cultural division under the Howard government. By the same token, despite having lost his own seat in the landslide of 2007, Howard seemed a “byword for stability” during the leadership turmoil of the 2010s, and there was much nostalgia about him.

Under Gillard, Labor sank to new lows in the polls, but in the years since her removal in June 2013 her reputation recovered significantly, judged by some scholars to be the best prime minister post-Howard.

The public have had a little less tolerance for leaders who seem to be chasing money. John Gorton “raised a few eyebrows” with his whiskey advertisements, although Whitlam managed to get away with advertising spaghetti sauce because of his self-deprecating performance.

The popular Bob Hawke faced a fierce backlash in the 1990s following his explosive memoirs, his very public business investments, and his attempts to make money from short media appearances. It took time, some rewriting of history, and footage of beer consumption at the footy, to rekindle his love affair with the public.

Read more:
Vale Bob Hawke, a giant of Australian political and industrial history

Since Hawke, Australian politicians have followed their British and US counterparts by publishing memoirs in great volumes, but the lucrative international lecture circuit has been slightly less open to them.

It has been even more unseemly to be seen to act out of vengeance or bitterness. In the 1920s and 1930s, former prime minister Billy Hughes stayed in parliament and often caused significant headaches for his fellow non-Labor MPs, even voting to turf them out of office in 1929. Some felt him a “great statesman and patriot”, others a “renegade”.

Billy McMahon remained in parliament for ten years after his defeat in 1972, apparently with no aspiration to leadership. In the more recent past, Rudd and Tony Abbott both stayed in parliament after initially losing the confidence of their parties, yearning to retake the highest office.

Malcolm Turnbull left parliament immediately on being removed in August 2018, and as Aaron Patrick has recently argued, he was outwardly bitter at his removal and passionately critical of his successor at every turn. Bitterness is a public emotion that alienates former leaders from their supporters.

The job of a former prime minister is awkward, defined by the past rather than the future, and by the absence of formal power. It is a role without a script. The awkwardness is embodied in Shaun Micallef’s The Ex-PM, an ABC satire about a former prime minister who hires a writer to draft his memoirs, but finds he has no real story to tell.

But former leaders still have a meaningful role to play if they wish. They enjoy private offices, staff, and travel privileges subsidised by the public. They retain their extensive high-level contacts and enjoy an enormous public platform from which to speak. Parting shots at colleagues and embittered book tours reflect a fractious political culture, but can be forgiven if the offender makes peace, finds a new calling, or develops a stately persona above the partisan din. In time, if they appear magnanimous, generous and “above” daily politics, they can become a reassuring and encouraging presence within their partisan community.

By urging his audience not to trust in the institution of government itself, and by taking his Pentecostal rhetoric to such heights, Morrison is parting with former prime ministerial convention. The congregation may have approved, but his fellow Liberal MPs appeared less enthused.

Such indulgences are unlikely to re-cultivate the respect of the electorate.

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

– ref. Even in the political afterlife, Morrison departs from the norm – https://theconversation.com/even-in-the-political-afterlife-morrison-departs-from-the-norm-187346

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Bowman, Professor of Pyrogeography and Fire Science, University of Tasmania

One of the conclusions of this week’s shocking State of the Environment report is that climate change is lengthening Australia’s bushfire seasons and raising the number of days with a fire danger rating of “very high” or above. In New South Wales, for example, the season now extends to almost eight months.

It has never been more important for institutional bushfire management programs to apply the principles and practices of Indigenous fire management, or “cultural burning”. As the report notes, cultural burning reduces the risk of bushfires, supports habitat and improves Indigenous wellbeing. And yet, the report finds:

with significant funding gaps, tenure impediments and policy barriers, Indigenous cultural burning remains underused – it is currently applied over less than 1% of the land area of Australia’s south‐eastern states and territory.

Our recent research in Scientific Reports specifically addressed the question: how do the environmental outcomes from cultural burning compare to mainstream bushfire management practices?

Using the stone country of the Arnhem Land Plateau as a case study, we reveal why institutional fire management is inferior to cultural burning.

The few remaining landscapes where Aboriginal people continue an unbroken tradition of caring for Country are of international importance. They should be nationally recognised, valued and resourced like other protected cultural and historical places.

Ancient fire management

The rugged terrain of the Arnhem Plateau in Northern Territory has an ancient human history, with archaeological evidence dated at 65,000 years.

Arnhem Land is an ideal place to explore the effects of different fire regimes because fire is such an essential feature of the natural and cultural environment.

Australia’s monsoon tropics are particularly fire prone given the sharply contrasting wet and dry seasons. The wet season sees prolific growth of grasses and other flammable plants, and dry season has reliable hot, dry, windy conditions.

Read more:
The world’s best fire management system is in northern Australia, and it’s led by Indigenous land managers

Millennia of skilful fire management by Indigenous people in these landscapes have allowed plants and animals needing infrequently burnt habitat to thrive.

This involves shifting “mosaic” burning, where small areas are burned regularly to create a patchwork of habitats with different fire histories. This gives wildlife a diversity of resources and places to shelter in.

Conservation biologists suspect that the loss of such patchy fires since colonisation has contributed to the calamitous demise of wildlife species across northern Australia, such as northern quolls, northern brown bandicoots and grassland melomys.

Collapse of the cypress pine

Our study was undertaken over 25 years, and wouldn’t have been possible without the generous support and close involvement of the Traditional Owners over this time.

It compared an area under near continuous Indigenous management by the Kune people of Western Arnhem Land with ecologically similar and unoccupied areas within Kakadu National Park.

We found populations of the cypress pine (Callitris intratropica) remained healthy under continual Aboriginal fire management. By contrast, cypress pine populations had collapsed in ecologically similar areas in Kakadu due to the loss of Indigenous fire management, as they have across much of northern Australia.

Read more:
Photos from the field: leaving habitats unburnt for longer could help save little mammals in northern Australia

The population of dead and living pines is like a barcode that records fire regime change. The species is so long lived that older trees were well established before colonisation.

The timber is extremely durable and termite resistant, so a tree killed by fire remains in the landscape for many decades. And mature trees, but not juveniles, can tolerate low intensity fires, but intense fires kill both.

Since 2007, park rangers have attempted to emulate cultural burning outcomes. They’ve used aircraft to drop incendiaries to create a coarse patchwork of burned and unburned areas to improve biodiversity in the stone country within Kakadu.

Unfortunately, our research found Kakadu’s fire management interventions failed to restore landscapes to the healthier ecological condition under traditional Aboriginal fire management.

While the Kakadu aerial burning program increased the amount of unburnt vegetation, it didn’t reverse the population collapse of cypress pines. Searches of tens of kilometres failed to find a single seedling in Kakadu, whereas they were common in comparable areas under Aboriginal fire management.

Read more:
Unwelcoming and reluctant to help: bushfire recovery hasn’t considered Aboriginal culture — but things are finally starting to change

Our study highlights that once the ecological benefits of cultural burning are lost, they cannot be simply restored with mainstream fire management approaches.

But that’s not to say the ecological impacts from the loss of Aboriginal fire management cannot be reversed. Rather, restoring fire regimes and ecosystem health will be slow, and require special care in where and how fires are set.

This requires teams on the ground with deep knowledge of the land, rather than simply spreading aerial incendiaries from helicopters.

There’s much to learn

There remains much for Western science to learn about traditional fire management.

Large-scale institutional fire management is based on concepts of efficiency and generality. It is controlled by bureaucracies, and achieved using machines and technologies.

Such an “industrial” approach cannot replace the placed-based knowledge, including close human relationships with Country, underpinning cultural burning.

Read more:
Fighting fire with fire: Botswana adopts Indigenous Australians’ ancient burning tradition

Cultural burning and institutional fire management could be thought of as the differences between home cooking and fast food. Fast food is quick, cheap and produces the same product regardless of individual needs. Home cooking takes longer to prepare, can cater to individual needs, and can improve wellbeing.

But restoring sustainable fire regimes based on the wisdom and practices of Indigenous people cannot be achieved overnight. Reaping the benefits of cultural burning to landscapes where colonialism has disrupted ancient fire traditions take time, effort and resources.

It’s urgent remaining traditional fire practitioners are recognised for their invaluable knowledge and materially supported to continue caring for their Country. This includes:

• actively supporting Indigenous people to reside on their Country
• to pay them to undertake natural resource management including cultural burning
• creating pathways enabling Indigenous people separated from their country by colonialism to re-engage with fire management.

Restoring landscapes with sustainable cultural burning traditions is a long-term project that will involve training and relearning ancient practices. There are extraordinary opportunities for Indigenous and non-Indigenous people alike to learn how to Care for Country.

The authors gratefully acknowledge the contribution of Victor Steffensen, the Lead Fire Practitioner at the Firesticks Alliance Indigenous Corporation, who reviewed this article.

David Bowman has received funding to study fire ecology and management from the Australian Research Council (ARC), the NSW Bushfire Risk Management Research Hub, Bushfire and Natural Hazard CRC, Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) and Natural Resources and Environment Tasmania.

Fay Johnston receives funding from the NHMRC, the Tasmanian and ACT Health Departments, Asthma Australia, and the Select Foundation of the Menzies Institute for Medical Research.

Christopher I. Roos 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. New research in Arnhem Land reveals why institutional fire management is inferior to cultural burning – https://theconversation.com/new-research-in-arnhem-land-reveals-why-institutional-fire-management-is-inferior-to-cultural-burning-184562

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Howard Manns, Senior Lecturer in Linguistics, Monash University

Have you heard? Barry Crocker’s having a … well, Barry Crocker (“shocker”) of a time with those Reg Grundies (“undies”) people.

Karens everywhere can relate – they know it’s Jeffed up when your Danned name gets swept up in social parlance.

And sure, Crocker has a point. We’ve got to draw the line somewhere when these corporate Noahs (“sharks”, from “Noah’s Ark”) claim our names.

But we reckon having your name become part of the old Jack Lang (“slang”) – especially Aussie rhyming slang – is apples (“nice”, from “apples and spice”). So let’s take a Captain Cook (“look”) at what’s so special about rhyming slang.

Terces segaugnal: enter the world of secret languages

Over the years there have been many secret languages in English, and all of them distort words in some way, often with remarkable skill. Particularly impressive is the flip-flop of backslang, when words are said backwards — “secret languages” becomes “terces segaugnal” (yob “boy” is a rare survivor of Victorian-era backslang).

The disguise prevents bystanders or eavesdroppers from understanding what’s being said, but mainly it operates a bit like a “clique” or in-group recognition device. Being able to manipulate language in this way means you’re automatically part of the gang — it’s also a matter of identifying what’s become routine for those involved, much like slang and jargon generally.

There’s the fun of the game, too, and rhyming slang is a real lexical and etymological pass the parcel. Often we don’t even know we’re playing it. Sidney Baker gives a wonderful example: Melbourne (“back”) from Melbourne Grammar (“hammer”) from hammer and tack (“back”), which, it so happens, is also rhyming slang for zac (“sixpence”) — so Melbourne is also a “sixpence”!

Read more:
Yeah, nah: Aussie slang hasn’t carked it, but we do want to know more about it

The comic cuts (“guts”) of Aussie rhymin’ Jack Lang

There’s no sign of rhyming slang before the 1800s. Not a single example appears in the first edition of Captain Grose’s Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (from 1785). Dating early slang is tricky, especially if it’s a secret language, but if rhyming slang had been around then, it would be among Grose’s 4,000 colloquialisms and vulgarisms.

The earliest reference to it occurs in John Camden Hotten’s 1859 slang dictionary. Hotten suggests this kind of slang “was introduced about twelve or fifteen years ago”.

People assume it began life within criminal language, and certainly this was where it was first discovered. But most likely it was the lexical invention of Cockney and Irish navvies (labourers in civil engineering projects). It later made its way into the “flash language” of the Victorian underworld.

These beginnings explain the presence of rhyming slang in early Australian English. The first recorded example (1844) is Jimmy Grant or jimmygrant for “immigrant”. Whoever he was, Jimmy Grant went on to inspire the Pom/Pommy, short for pomegranate (Pommy Grant, also “immigrant”). The Australian National Dictionary has a lovely account of the word play around the jimmies and the pommies.

Other early examples date from the late 1800s (like rubbity dub “pub”), although most of today’s survivors are from the 1900s, including favourites like dead horse (“sauce”) and she’s apples.

“Australian” rhyming slang in the USA

Our seppo chinas (“mates” from “china plates”) haven’t taken up rhyming slang as much as we Aussies. In the US, rhyming slang has largely stayed in the criminal underworld – it’s been popular among prisoners and white supremacists.

But it may surprise you to learn that rhyming slang in the US underworld was called “Australian slang”. This may be linked to the arrival of Australian criminals, the Sydney Ducks, on the US goldfields in the mid-19th century. The Ducks later did a Harold Holt (“bolt”) and left the US — they also may have left a word or two, and the label “Australian slang”.

Regardless, the Australian-ness of US rhyming slang is certainly in doubt. When a US expert on slang and argots, David W. Maurer, sent a list of 352 rhyming slang terms to Sidney Baker, the latter found fewer than 3% of these terms were Australian — just like many of our so-called Americanisms aren’t in fact American English.

Jimmy, Herby and Oscar: the grocer’s cart (“heart”) of Aussie rhyming slang

Rhyming slang is still much loved if the amount of talk is anything to go by.

As part of a wider project on Aussie slang, we examined articles from The Australian and The Age from 1996-2020 and found that, respectively, 7.32% and 10.70% of references to “slang” were to “rhyming slang”. We can compare this to combined references to “Australian slang” or “Aussie slang”, which clocked in at 7.01% and 9.05%.

But what is it about the old Jack Lang – this Aussie rhyming slang?

We reckon rhyming slang hits that sweet spot of secret, taboo and irreverent humour. For instance, every good Aussie knows that a seppo is full of shit (Yank->septic tank->septic->seppo) – but a seppo doesn’t necessarily.

However, whether it’s Jimmy Dancer (“cancer”), Herby de Groote (“root”) or Oscar Ache (“cash”), rhyming slang also gives us a way to discuss things that make us squeamish – like disease, sex and money.

Read more:
Orright you spunkrats, here’s where all our Aussie summertime language came from

Is the rhyming Jack Lang in for some froth and bubble?

Barry Crocker might be getting his Reg Grundies in a knot over the ad, but if our recent survey is an indicator, rhyming slang is in for some froth and bubble (“trouble”).

We surveyed more than 2,300 Australians on their use of Australian words. Most rhyming slang examples came from participants who were 60 or older.

What’s happening? It’s hard to know for sure, but slangs are like this – they don’t age well. We can’t expect those billy lids (“kids”) to love the same words as us.

In fact, billy’s a great example of this process – it might be giving way to a new slang homonym billy, referring to a “bong” (likely a play on billabong). (For those not in the know, a billy is a special kind of cherry ripe “pipe”.)

And, in closing, it is worth noting our survey shows another glimmer of hope for rhyming slang. One grandmother in the survey said:

“I taught Reg Grundies to my granddaughter. She thinks it’s funny. She is 7.”

Sidney Baker long ago pointed out that Australian rhyming slang’s popularity comes and goes in waves of vogue. Perhaps there’s a new generation of rhyming slang users on the horizon. And right now, we’re pinning our hope on the under-10 set.

Howard Manns receives funding from the ARC Special Research Initiative SR200200350 Metaphors and Identities in the Australian Vernacular.

Kate Burridge receives funding from the ARC Special Research Initiative SR200200350 Metaphors and Identities in the Australian Vernacular.

– ref. Is Australian rhyming slang in a bit of froth and bubble? Let’s take a Captain Cook (spoiler: the billy lids may hold the key) – https://theconversation.com/is-australian-rhyming-slang-in-a-bit-of-froth-and-bubble-lets-take-a-captain-cook-spoiler-the-billy-lids-may-hold-the-key-186731

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendan Shannon, Senior Lecturer in Paramedicine, Registered Paramedic, Monash University

Health-care systems across Australia are buckling in the wake of COVID waves and the flu season. Pictures of ambulances piling up outside hospitals have become commonplace in the media. Known as “ramping”, it’s the canary in the coalmine of a health system.

As a major symptom of a health system under stress, state governments across Australia are investing unprecedented amounts into ambulance services, emergency departments (EDs) and hospitals. South Australia has committed to an increased recruitment of 350 new paramedics. Likewise, New South Wales has committed to 1,850 extra paramedics.

Read more:
Bad for patients, bad for paramedics: ambulance ramping is a symptom of a health system in distress

Victoria, meanwhile, has committed an additional A$162 million for system-wide solutions to counter paramedic wait times, on top of the A$12 billion already committed to the wider health system. This could begin to alleviate the system pressures that lead to ambulance ramping.

But what happens when the paramedics return yet again to ED with another patient? Will they simply end up ramped again?

We also need to consider better care in the community – and paramedics could play a role in this too.

Smoother transfers and discharges

The Victorian government initiative is based on a similar model used in Leeds, in the United Kingdom, which has resulted in decreased ramping times. The Leeds model has seen only 4.9% of paramedic attendances to ED having ramping delays over 30 minutes, compared to the UK average of 21%.

The model focuses on transferring the patient from the paramedic to the ED staff, discharging patients from hospital and coordinating the patient’s care in the community.

The aim is to improve patient flow in and out of the hospital. For patients requiring a hospital bed, they are admitted. For those not requiring admission, they are discharged home in a timely manner. Discharge coordinators will assist this process, coordinating the care patients need after an ED or hospital stay out in the community and in their homes.

Read more:
Emergency departments are clogged and patients are waiting for hours or giving up. What’s going on?

The discharge process is complex. Often a well-done discharge is the difference between a patient returning to the community healthily versus a re-presentation to the hospital due to actual or perceived worsening of their condition.

However, patients often feel rushed when discharged from hospital and ill prepared to return home. Staff feel pressure to get patients discharged and out of beds to allow the next patient in.

The adoption of the Leeds model in Victoria aims to increase the flow in and out of the hospital. While this will get patients off ambulance stretchers, it may further exacerbate the feelings of being rushed.

Discharge and transitional care services, which aim to guide patients from their time in hospital to living back at home, tend to be disconnected and misunderstood by the wider health service. We must overcome these disconnections if the proposed model is going to have success.

Otherwise, new initiatives may decrease ramping at the ED, but this may come at a cost to the most vulnerable of patients in our community, if they feel they’re discharged too soon, are unable to cope and end up going back to hospital.

Paramedics can provide care in the community, too

Poor access to primary care services, such as being able to see a GP and a lack of community services, are problems across the globe. This has led to the use of paramedics in non-traditional roles in the UK, Canada, the United States, Finland and Ireland. Here, paramedics are used in emergency departments, in primary care practice and in outreach community services. Paramedics working in these non-traditional roles are collectively known as community paramedics.

Read more:
Poor and elderly Australians let down by ailing primary health system

In Australia, paramedics are university educated and professionally registered, which maintains a high workforce standard. Paramedics can work independently within the community and are well situated to supplement or complement community services and primary care. Yet 80% of paramedics in Australia work solely in ambulance services.

State governments should consider new models of care, such as the introduction of community paramedics to support primary care services and other sectors across the health care system.

With further training, paramedics in Australia could be used beyond ambulance services. This could include working alongside other health professionals in emergency departments, supporting GPs and in hospital discharge teams. With a surplus of paramedic students graduating, there is a ready-made workforce ready to assist the wider health care system.

Community paramedicine programs overseas have resulted in improved patient health outcomes and quality of life, and have been found to be economically beneficial.

A Canadian report found community paramedics saved the health-care system $29 million by keeping the 2,300 patients involved in the study healthy and avoiding hospital. Most importantly, patients had positive experiences of having their care delivered in their home.

However, not all patients wish to have their care delivered in their home or community. One report found 2.2% of patients refused to be treated by community paramedics.

Investment solely in the acute sector of our health system fails to recognise the inter-connectedness of all parts of the system. We must also invest in community services and primary care. Without system-wide investment, our health services will continue to fail.

Read more:
When is it OK to call an ambulance?

Brendan Shannon received funding from the Pre-hospital Emergency Care Council to provide evidence to support the introduction of Community Paramedicine across Ireland.

Kelly-Ann Bowles received funding from the Pre-hospital Emergency Care Council to provide evidence to support the introduction of Community Paramedicine across Ireland.

– ref. Ambulance ramping is a signal the health system is floundering. Solutions need to extend beyond EDs – https://theconversation.com/ambulance-ramping-is-a-signal-the-health-system-is-floundering-solutions-need-to-extend-beyond-eds-187270

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Watson, Professor, The University of Queensland

Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek this week acknowledged the grave state of Australia’s environment and pledged new laws to go before parliament next year.

But talk is cheap. The long-delayed State of the Environment report was not a surprise. Experts have sounded the alarm for years about the worsening plight of species and ecosystems. Labor had nine years in opposition to prepare policies. Where is the immediate action?

The new government has a tough job ahead. It took office as Australia faces overlapping and worsening environmental crises, due to more than two centuries of damage to the atmosphere, oceans, rivers and lands. And it must reverse nine years of Coalition neglect on environment policy.

The previous government sat on the State of the Environment report for months, squandering precious time. So while Labor works on its longer-term environmental reforms, here are five easy ways it can get started now.

1. Restore degraded farmland with native vegetation

More than half of Australia’s farmland is now considered degraded. Degraded land reduces the farm’s productivity and can cause significant soil erosion and aridity. The fix? Bringing back native plants tackles all these issues, as well as making farms more resilient to damage from insects and fires and less likely to damage the water table.

Read more:
This is Australia’s most important report on the environment’s deteriorating health. We present its grim findings

Restoring native vegetation doesn’t mean turning farms into forests. Strategic planting along fence lines, waterways, dams and around intact shade trees can often be enough to bring back wildlife.

Native plants boost biodiversity. More than 70% of our endangered species need targeted restoration to recover populations decimated through land clearing. Ecosystem restoration will also significantly boost natural carbon storage.

The easy win for the government? Offer tax incentives to plant diverse native trees. We already have ways to measure the carbon and biodiversity benefits of such restoration efforts, like those used by Queensland’s land restoration fund. Rewarding landholders for good land stewardship is an easy win.

2. Coordinate how we manage vegetation across all lands

The greatest threat to Australia’s biodiversity is native vegetation clearing. Our greatest carbon source, other than direct fossil fuel emissions and selling coal and gas, comes from land clearing. Australia is a global deforestation hotspot, with destruction and degradation rates hundreds of times greater than conservation rates.

Even habitat crucial to the long-term survival of threatened species doesn’t escape the bulldozers. An area the size of Tasmania of critical habitat has been cleared since legislation designed to stop this was introduced in 2000.

In short, these laws aren’t working. That was the conclusion of former consumer watchdog chief Graeme Samuel, who reviewed the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act for the previous government.

The easy fix? Act on the most important recommendation put forward by Samuel and bring in a national Environment Protection Authority now – ahead of the full-scale legislative revamp Plibersek is promising for next year. This would give teeth to the laws as they stand.

3. Phase out logging of native forests

Logging our few remaining native forests is a bad idea. It destroys threatened species habitat, making these species more endangered. It worsens fire risk, endangering people’s lives. It threatens our water supplies. Native logging also accelerates climate change because old-growth intact forests store much more carbon than pine plantations.

Logging native forests no longer makes economic sense, given the enormous losses being run up by state forestry enterprises. There’s enough timber in plantations to provide the resources Australia needs.

The easy win? Phase out logging. Work with industry and set a clear time frame to exit native forest logging through revised and accelerated Regional Forest Agreements.

4. Properly fund our protected areas

Australia’s protected areas listed in the National Reserve System are vital to our efforts to stop extinctions and biodiversity loss. Up to half of all of our endangered species live in protected areas like national parks and other reserves.

A well-managed national system of protected areas brings major climate benefits, due to the large land area under conservation management and avoiding losses that would otherwise occur through degradation and land clearing.

Australia now has 81 Indigenous Protected Areas, which play a crucial role in our national reserve system. These matter greatly, given their proven benefits to biodiversity, conservation and cultural connection to Country.

Unfortunately, our national reserves have been critically underfunded for many years. The rot started under the previous Labor government and continued through the Coalition’s nine years. Most protected areas now do not get enough funding to undertake any meaningful conservation.

The easy win? Fund our national reserve system better. These areas should be Australia’s jewels in the crown. But neglect has seen many reserves become hugely degraded. We cannot let cattle keep degrading endangered channel-country habitats of Diamintina National Park or let wild pigs keep trashing the lowland rainforests of Kutini-Payamu National Park.

5. Urgently boost threatened species recovery efforts

Australia’s threatened species crisis is getting worse. More and more species are going from to threatened to critically endangered to extinct in the wild. Previous government efforts have simply not been enough.

At present, less than 40% of our 1,700-plus threatened species has a recovery plan of any sort. Only 100 of these species get specific attention through the latest national threatened species strategy. Essentially, we’ve been picking a few winners to try to save from extinction. It’s not good enough for the rest.

The easy win? Launch an emergency national response to fight species extinction. Use the knowledge and expertise we have developed through efforts like the Threatened Species Hub to map out where and how to recover these species in the most cost-effective way.

The environment can do with some quick wins

Of course, these wins are not the entire solution. What they offer is a fresh start to turn around years of neglect and start taking the environment as seriously as it needs to be.

To tackle our looming biodiversity and climate crises properly will take sustained effort. As these crises emerge from modelled futures into our lived reality, our leaders must – at long last – heed the dire warnings from scientists and economists.

Read more:
Yes, the state of the environment is grim, but you can make a difference, right in your own neighbourhoood

James Watson has received funding from the Australian Research Council and National Environmental Science Program. He serves on scientific committees for Bush Heritage Australia, SUBAK Australia, BirdLife Australia and has a long-term scientific relationship with the Wildlife Conservation Society. He serves on the Queensland Government’s Land Restoration Fund’s Investment Panel.

– ref. Labor won’t overhaul environment laws until next year. Here are 5 easy wins it could aim for now – https://theconversation.com/labor-wont-overhaul-environment-laws-until-next-year-here-are-5-easy-wins-it-could-aim-for-now-184565

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vanessa Pirotta, Postdoctoral Researcher and Wildlife Scientist, Macquarie University

Why don’t whales have teeth like we do? asked by Henry, 6 years old.

Great question, Henry. Your teeth are an important part of your body. They help you chew your food so you can eat and grow strong. But if you ever thought about inviting a whale for dinner, think again!

It’s true, some whales are toothless – but not all of them. Did you know the world’s biggest animal, the blue whale, doesn’t have any teeth at all? Whales with no teeth are called baleen whales. Along with blue whales, these also include humpback whales, right whales and more.

Some other types of whales do have teeth. These include sperm whales, beluga whales, and narwhals (which are like chunky unicorns of the sea).

So why don’t baleen whales have teeth?

It’s all based on their diet and how they capture their food. Unlike you and me, whales don’t eat veggies, which need lots of chewing. Their diet is mainly made up of small fish, prawn-like creatures called krill, and tiny creatures called plankton.

Krill are only a few centimetres in size, and can be found in large swarms in the ocean. A blue whale can eat up to 6,000 kilograms, or a bus-load, of krill a day.

Luckily, most baleen whales have very wide mouths – as wide as a car. The best way to eat these tiny animals all at once is to scoop them up in one giant mouthful. Yum!

Baleen whales open their mouths really wide and expand their throats, which have grooves all the way down to their stomachs.

This lets the whale make their mouth super big, like an expanding slinky, and scoop up lots of krill and seawater at the same time. In fact, some whale mouths are so big an elephant could fit inside!

But what happens to all that water?

Baleen whales all have long strands hanging from the top of their mouth – imagine lots of straw broom bristles. These strands are made of the same material as your nails and hair, called keratin.

The whale uses these bristles to trap the krill in their mouths, and push sea water out. This is like a sieve separating spaghetti from pasta water.

Some whales, like the humpback whale, are clever hunters, and may blow bubbles from their nose to
create nets around their food.

These bubbles pack fish into one area, letting the whale scoop them all up in one mouthful.

So, what would happen if a baleen whale came to dinner?

Well, first of all, the whale wouldn’t fit in the kitchen, so dinner would have to be outside.

Mum or dad would need lots of krill and fish. Forget about knives, forks or any table manners, tonight you’ll be eating with your mouth only.

But here’s the crazy part. Once dinner is served, your whale friend would open its mouth and expand its throat. This would be so wide, it would probably cover the entire kitchen table, including you and your family.

Talk about a very impolite, smelly and blubbery dinner guest!

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

– ref. Curious kids: why don’t whales have teeth like we do? – https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-why-dont-whales-have-teeth-like-we-do-186727

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chad Morrison, Academic Director of Professional Experience, Murdoch University

Every few days there is another report about the teacher shortage across Australia. Last week, we learned one of Melbourne’s biggest schools is considering a return to home learning to cope with staff shortages.

Read more:
COVID and schools: Australia is about to feel the full brunt of its teacher shortage

But as we look at the causes and possible solutions, something we are not talking about is the risks around rushing student teachers into classrooms before they are fully trained and ready.

We are academics with a focus on teacher education and leaders of the Network of Academic Directors of Professional Experience. We are alarmed about the growing trend of sending unqualified teachers into classrooms.

Student teachers are teaching

Our colleagues around Australia are regularly telling us about their students being recruited into paid teaching roles with special permissions to teach. This can be as early as their first, second or third year of study.

In New South Wales, university staff tell us between 20% and 30% of their final year (fourth-year) students are employed in teaching roles. Prior to the pandemic, this only occurred in exceptional circumstances.

In Victoria, as of July, the Victorian Institute of Teaching (the teaching regulator) has approved 782 “permission-to-teach” applications for final-year education students. This is a category specifically established at the beginning of 2022 to help support schools with COVID-related workforce shortages.

In Queensland, we are seeing students teaching in classrooms before they have graduated in the hundreds, rather than handfuls. Industry partners are telling us they predict more than 600 “permissions to teach” for student teachers in Queensland in 2022. This is up from 320 in the state in 2021.

Mixing work and study

All states and territories have schemes to allow student teachers into the classroom in a paid (non-studying) role. For example, in Tasmania, when a suitable registered teacher cannot be found, a school can apply to employ a student under a “limited authority to teach”. In the Northern Territory, a similar process allows schools to recruit people to teach in hard-to-fill or specialised teaching roles.

Western Australia has also opened up opportunities for final year students to work part-time in public high schools (with mentoring) and to register in the casual teacher pool.

The state also has uses an existing fast-track to put students into the classroom as paid teachers. The Teach for Australia program employs “associates” in a school after six-weeks of intensive training. From this point on, associates balance study in a master of teaching program with employment as a teacher, with support from mentor teachers and Teach for Australia.

WA currently has 175 full-time equivalent staff in public schools, who may be Teach for Australia associates, or working towards a teaching qualification. This is up from 112 in 2020. Taking into account casual and part-time workers, the actual number of students teaching in the system is likely to be higher.

A risky fix

Putting student teachers in the classroom to help deal with the teacher shortage seems logical. But it is a quick and risky fix.

Arguably, education students are already less prepared for the classroom than their pre-pandemic peers. Around the world, student teachers have experienced disrupted study because of the pandemic with shortened, simulated and irregular practical placements.

Read more:
Could more online learning help fix Australia’s teacher shortage?

This is on top of interruptions to their regular coursework, thanks to disruption the pandemic has caused within and beyond their studies.

Additionally, student teachers are entering a stressed and depleted workforce.
COVID has added to teachers’ already demanding workloads, made them sick (and therefore absent at times) and seen some reach the end of their tether and leave.

When more experienced staff are stretched, under-prepared teachers cannot be well-supported by those around them.

While all this is happening, it is becoming harder for student teachers to get supervised practical experience as part of their teacher training – there are less teachers to supervise them.

These factors mean student teachers are less prepared than in previous years and are entering workplaces that are demanding more of them.

Graduates will burn out

From an administrative perspective, this situation is placing a huge strain on teacher registration bodies around Australia, who are not structured to assess and process masses of “special authority” applications.

We are alarmed about the potential fallout here. Under-prepared and fast-tracked teachers cannot be well-supported. Nor can they be expected to perform as highly effective graduate teachers when they are drawing on disrupted university preparation and limited placements.

This leaves them vulnerable to burnout and leaving the profession prematurely.

Importantly, these factors are also likely to exacerbate the impact of COVID on children’s learning and development.

The increased needs of many children and young people have increased the complex demands of teaching them. The training of future teachers needs to prepare them for the new realities and requirements of teaching.

This will not improve ‘quality’

The current approach contradicts the federal government’s talk about improving teacher “quality” and we fear universities will be blamed for the outcomes of putting under-prepared graduates into schools.

Read more:
No wonder no one wants to be a teacher: world-first study looks at 65,000 news articles about Australian teachers

We need to put our focus back on preparing high-quality teaching graduates – even if this takes more time and resources to get them into the classroom.

Alongside other strategies and responses, employers need to prioritise placements for student teachers. This will allow them to progress through to career entry under conducive conditions. Good preparation is essential for teacher effectiveness and retention.

What we are doing at the moment is equivalent to giving student teachers an umbrella to go out into a raging thunder storm. This is not sensible, justifiable or sustainable.

This approach also has the potential to worsen teacher shortages in the coming years and risks seeing teacher attrition levels like we have never seen before.

Chad Morrison is part of the Network of Academic Directors of Professional Experience, which is part of The Australian Council of Deans of Education. The Council aims to ensure Australia produces teacher graduates of the “highest quality”.

Brendan Bentley is part of the Network of Academic Directors of Professional Experience.

Jennifer Clifton is part of the Network of Academic Directors of Professional Experience.

Susan Ledger is part of the Network of Academic Directors of Professional Experience.

– ref. Growing numbers of unqualified teachers are being sent into classrooms – this is not the way to ‘fix’ the teacher shortage – https://theconversation.com/growing-numbers-of-unqualified-teachers-are-being-sent-into-classrooms-this-is-not-the-way-to-fix-the-teacher-shortage-186379

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Charlotte Dunn, Lecturer in Classics, University of Tasmania

Alexander the Great was a successful conqueror, but a poor planner. He died without an acceptable heir to inherit the empire, just a soon-to-be-born baby son, and a half-brother not quite up to the task.

And as Game of Thrones fans will know, such circumstances can lead to quite the power struggle, with poisoning plots, dramatic marriages, incest and a whole lot of fighting. We find all this and more in the Hellenistic Age, which is what we call the time period 323 BCE-33 BCE, starting with Alexander’s death and ending with Cleopatra’s famous snake bite.

These circumstances began the career of Demetrius the Besieger, one of the more outrageous rulers of the time. Like many others who fought for a piece of Alexander the Great’s empire, Demetrius was never supposed to be king. But he and his father Antigonus the One-Eyed didn’t let a lack of royal blood get in the way of ambition. The two of them spent many years fighting, stealing territory, and eliminating rivals.

In 306 BCE, they both claimed the title King. They were trendsetters in this area, and soon self-made kings popped up all over the place, dividing Alexander’s empire into smaller kingdoms of their own. But even during this time of royally bad behaviour and a multitude of rival kings, Demetrius still managed to gain a standout reputation.

Work hard, play harder

Demetrius’ biographer, the ancient author Plutarch, tells us Demetrius had a policy akin to work hard and play harder. He was famous for his ingenuity and extravagance when it came to siege equipment and his skill in this type of warfare earned him the name Besieger.

His repertoire included the use of a monstrosity called the Helepolis (city-taker), a type of mobile tower block estimated to be between 30-40 metres tall, with a base of 21 metres.

This terrifying creation was filled with soldiers, and would screech as it moved slowly towards its target city. This was such an amazing sight that, according to Plutarch, even those under siege had to admit they were impressed.

Coins and calendars

It can be difficult to tell fact from fiction in history, and the ancient writers certainly tell us some strange stories about Demetrius.

He is said to have manipulated time by changing around the calendar months, all so that he could complete his initiation into the Mysteries (a religious cult) faster than was legal.

He put his own portrait on his coins, and was probably the first living person to do so in the western world. Before this audacious move, the heads side of the coin had normally been reserved for images of gods or honouring important (deceased) individuals.

The Athenians even ended up addressing Demetrius as a living god in a special hymn, calling him the son of Poseidon and Aphrodite.

Parties and polygamy

Demetrius’ partying earned him an even more notorious reputation.

He had a handful of wives (Demetrius was a polygamous king, and ended up marrying at least five women), but his favourite companion was the courtesan Lamia, whose name refers to a flesh devouring monster.

There are plenty of tales of the two of them cavorting together, sometimes rather sacrilegiously. For example, the Athenians tried to honour Demetrius by allowing him a symbolic marriage to their patron goddess Athena – but the Besieger didn’t think too much of marrying a statue. Instead, he and Lamia went into the temple and committed various acts said to be rather shocking to the virgin goddess.

Demetrius is even accused of taxing the city 250 talents (about 6,000 kilos of silver or gold), only to turn it over to Lamia and his other mistresses so they could buy beauty products.

Popularity and public relations

All this irreverent behaviour can only take you so far. Kingship, like many careers, requires a certain amount of admin work. Demetrius’ Macedonian subjects were dismayed by the disinterest of their king, but on one occasion they gained a little hope.

Demetrius actually took their petitions as though he intended to read them. They followed the king along on his walk in great excitement, only to watch in horror as Demetrius then dumped all of the petitions over a bridge, into the river below.

Read more:
Pornography, the devil and baboons in fancy dress: what went on at the infamous historical Hellfire Club

He was run out of Macedonia a little while later, ancient evidence of the importance of public relations. This sort of reversal of fortune was something Demetrius was well-versed in, having won and lost many times over throughout his career. So he simply went on with campaigning until he was deserted, broke, and fell into the hands of one of his enemies.

It was a sorry end for such a colourful character, but during his captivity Demetrius applied himself as vigorously to leisure and drinking as he once had to besieging and love affairs. He might not have kept his throne, but he certainly earned his place in history, an outrageous and fascinating individual, and truly a king.

Dr Charlotte Dunn is co-author (alongside Associate Professor Pat Wheatley, of the University of Otago, Dunedin, NZ) of ‘Demetrius the Besieger’, a historical biography published in 2020 by Oxford University Press.

– ref. Siege warfare, polygamy and sacrilege: meet history’s most outrageous king, Demetrius the Besieger – https://theconversation.com/siege-warfare-polygamy-and-sacrilege-meet-historys-most-outrageous-king-demetrius-the-besieger-185866

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

If you’re outside staring in, you’d probably say the Albanese government is looking good. If you’re inside gazing out, you’d likely think its challenges appear little short of dire.

Next week the new parliament will commence with a fortnight’s sitting. There’ll be focus on the government-Green negotiations on the legislation for Labor’s 43% climate target. But it’s the economy and COVID that will actually be the more immediately worrying issues.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers, perhaps with an eye to the politics, has been using a megaphone to say he’ll have bad news when he gives a state-of-the-economy address to the House of Representatives on Thursday – a day after the release of the latest inflation figure, expected to be a shocker.

The revised economic projections will be affected by a range of factors, including to an extent the current, still-worsening, COVID wave, which governments are trying to manage without the imposition of restrictions people would no longer accept.

As we confront this wave, it would be desirable for the new parliament to have a repeat of the COVID Senate committee that did good work in the last term in questioning officials and extracting information.

Determined to show it is serious about its promises, the government released on Wednesday a list of the first pieces of legislation it will introduce.

These are bills for aged care reform, a new jobs and skills statutory body, domestic violence leave, and the climate change target. The integrity commission legislation will wait for the September sitting.

Bringing in the bills is the easy bit. Take aged care. The government says its legislation “will put nurses back into nursing homes, it will put a stop to high administration and management fees for home care [ .. ] and it will improve integrity and accountability for residential aged care homes”.

But finding all the needed nurses – to say nothing of the increased number of other staff vital for effective reform – will be enormously difficult.

Those who might have seen Labor’s win as an end to our national climate wars were prematurely optimistic. Ironically, the early days of the new parliament will see another stage in this battle.

Labor doesn’t need to legislate its new target, but wants to do so to underline its intentions and send strong signals to investors and the world in general. To get the legislation through will require the support in the Senate of the Greens and one more senator.

The Greens party room on Wednesday reiterated its view that Labor’s policy is not ambitious enough, but gave leader Adam Bandt authority to negotiate.

After the meeting the Greens said: “Areas of concern remain the adequacy of the target, the need for targets to be ratcheted up and for the bill to operate as a floor not a ceiling, the lack of enforcement mechanisms, and new coal and gas projects that would lift pollution.”

One Greens source says “we’re at the diplomacy table, not in the trenches”.

Labor has indicated it is open to tinkering with detail but won’t budge on core substance. There will be no change in the target, no ban on new mines.

The government can’t afford to make sizeable concessions to the Greens, not least because that would cast doubt on the reliability of its word. It is also anxious to signal it is not hostage to the Greens, despite its dependence on them in the upper house when legislation is contested.

Can the Greens afford to give in to the government and not oppose the bill? They would disappoint their hard-line supporters. They too, in political terms, need differentiation. But if they were to sink the legislation, they’d be accused of putting purist ideology ahead of supporting progressive policy. The Greens have quite a lot on the line in their decision.

All this will take some time to play out. The legislation could go to a Senate committee. The final vote could be a way off.

The Coalition’s “internals” on the climate legislation will be interesting. Peter Dutton has flagged his opposition. “I’m making it very clear to the Labor Party now that we aren’t supporting the legislation,” he told the ABC in June. The much-reduced Liberal moderates are not happy with that “captain’s call” ahead of the party-room discussion. There is speculation one or two might cross the floor.

And what about the teals? Their votes are irrelevant in the lower house, but crossbencher David Pocock’s vote might be needed in the Senate. The government will want to be polite to the teals, but in the end it’s the numbers that count.

The parliamentary fortnight will be closely observed for its tone, its “vibe”, as well as its substance.

While the teals and other crossbenchers won’t be determining outcomes in the House of Representatives, the crossbench there, now numbering 16, will have a significant presence, including a reasonable opportunity to quiz and critique ministers.

When parliament is sitting an opposition has a platform, but the Coalition will be struggling to make the most of it, at least in the foreseeable future.

Dutton has a ragtag bunch to manage, with senior people having trouble finding their feet in their straitened political circumstances. There are still major arguments to be had about how the opposition positions itself.

This is not uncharted ground. Labor faced the same situation after its 2019 defeat when it was even more shattered, because the loss was unexpected. The lesson for Dutton (though it would go against the grain) should be to stay low-key for a while until he’s listened and thought things through. It’s a long road to the next election.

Presently the opposition is speaking with conflicting voices on current issues – for example, it has been divided over whether the border to Bali should be closed to keep out foot and mouth disease.

The government will spruik its own plans in parliament but it will also keep reminding the public of criticisms of the Morrison government. This will complicate the opposition’s attempts to pursue ministers. For instance, it would be logical for the opposition to home in on Minister for Aged Care Anika Wells, given the COVID crisis in residential facilities. But Labor would quickly hark back to the record of former minister Richard Colbeck.

In various areas, the government will be arguing “we can’t turn around a decade of neglect immediately”. That’s true enough although this crutch will reach its use-by date with many voters fairly soon. And it’s not just neglect the Albanese government is grappling with – fresh problems are emerging all the time.

Once Albanese sits in the PM’s chair at the parliamentary dispatch box, the reality of “accepting responsibility” will take on a new intensity.

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. Grattan on Friday: Climate bill front and centre when parliament starts but it’s the least of Albanese’s problems – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-climate-bill-front-and-centre-when-parliament-starts-but-its-the-least-of-albaneses-problems-187439

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

If you’re outside staring in, you’d probably say the Albanese government is looking good. If you’re inside gazing out, you’d likely think its challenges appear little short of dire.

Next week the new parliament will commence with a fortnight’s sitting. There’ll be focus on the government-Green negotiations on the legislation for Labor’s 43% climate target. But it’s the economy and COVID that will actually be the more immediately worrying issues.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers, perhaps with an eye to the politics, has been using a megaphone to say he’ll have bad news when he gives a state-of-the-economy address to the House of Representatives on Thursday – a day after the release of the latest inflation figure, expected to be a shocker.

The revised economic projections will be affected by a range of factors, including to an extent the current, still-worsening, COVID wave, which governments are trying to manage without the imposition of restrictions people would no longer accept.

As we confront this wave, it would be desirable for the new parliament to have a repeat of the COVID Senate committee that did good work in the last term in questioning officials and extracting information.

Determined to show it is serious about its promises, the government released on Wednesday a list of the first pieces of legislation it will introduce.

These are bills for aged care reform, a new jobs and skills statutory body, domestic violence leave, and the climate change target. The integrity commission legislation will wait for the September sitting.

Bringing in the bills is the easy bit. Take aged care. The government says its legislation “will put nurses back into nursing homes, it will put a stop to high administration and management fees for home care [ .. ] and it will improve integrity and accountability for residential aged care homes”.

But finding all the needed nurses – to say nothing of the increased number of other staff vital for effective reform – will be enormously difficult.

Those who might have seen Labor’s win as an end to our national climate wars were prematurely optimistic. Ironically, the early days of the new parliament will see another stage in this battle.

Labor doesn’t need to legislate its new target, but wants to do so to underline its intentions and send strong signals to investors and the world in general. To get the legislation through will require the support in the Senate of the Greens and one more senator.

The Greens party room on Wednesday reiterated its view that Labor’s policy is not ambitious enough, but gave leader Adam Bandt authority to negotiate.

After the meeting the Greens said: “Areas of concern remain the adequacy of the target, the need for targets to be ratcheted up and for the bill to operate as a floor not a ceiling, the lack of enforcement mechanisms, and new coal and gas projects that would lift pollution.”

One Greens source says “we’re at the diplomacy table, not in the trenches”.

Labor has indicated it is open to tinkering with detail but won’t budge on core substance. There will be no change in the target, no ban on new mines.

The government can’t afford to make sizeable concessions to the Greens, not least because that would cast doubt on the reliability of its word. It is also anxious to signal it is not hostage to the Greens, despite its dependence on them in the upper house when legislation is contested.

Can the Greens afford to give in to the government and not oppose the bill? They would disappoint their hard-line supporters. They too, in political terms, need differentiation. But if they were to sink the legislation, they’d be accused of putting purist ideology ahead of supporting progressive policy. The Greens have quite a lot on the line in their decision.

All this will take some time to play out. The legislation could go to a Senate committee. The final vote could be a way off.

The Coalition’s “internals” on the climate legislation will be interesting. Peter Dutton has flagged his opposition. “I’m making it very clear to the Labor Party now that we aren’t supporting the legislation,” he told the ABC in June. The much-reduced Liberal moderates are not happy with that “captain’s call” ahead of the party-room discussion. There is speculation one or two might cross the floor.

And what about the teals? Their votes are irrelevant in the lower house, but crossbencher David Pocock’s vote might be needed in the Senate. The government will want to be polite to the teals, but in the end it’s the numbers that count.

The parliamentary fortnight will be closely observed for its tone, its “vibe”, as well as its substance.

While the teals and other crossbenchers won’t be determining outcomes in the House of Representatives, the crossbench there, now numbering 16, will have a significant presence, including a reasonable opportunity to quiz and critique ministers.

When parliament is sitting an opposition has a platform, but the Coalition will be struggling to make the most of it, at least in the foreseeable future.

Dutton has a ragtag bunch to manage, with senior people having trouble finding their feet in their straitened political circumstances. There are still major arguments to be had about how the opposition positions itself.

This is not uncharted ground. Labor faced the same situation after its 2019 defeat when it was even more shattered, because the loss was unexpected. The lesson for Dutton (though it would go against the grain) should be to stay low-key for a while until he’s listened and thought things through. It’s a long road to the next election.

Presently the opposition is speaking with conflicting voices on current issues – for example, it has been divided over whether the border to Bali should be closed to keep out foot and mouth disease.

The government will spruik its own plans in parliament but it will also keep reminding the public of criticisms of the Morrison government. This will complicate the opposition’s attempts to pursue ministers. For instance, it would be logical for the opposition to home in on Minister for Aged Care Anika Wells, given the COVID crisis in residential facilities. But Labor would quickly hark back to the record of former minister Richard Colbeck.

In various areas, the government will be arguing “we can’t turn around a decade of neglect immediately”. That’s true enough although this crutch will reach its use-by date with many voters fairly soon. And it’s not just neglect the Albanese government is grappling with – fresh problems are emerging all the time.

Once Albanese sits in the PM’s chair at the parliamentary dispatch box, the reality of “accepting responsibility” will take on a new intensity.

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. Climate bill front and centre when parliament starts but it’s the least of Albanese’s problems – https://theconversation.com/climate-bill-front-and-centre-when-parliament-starts-but-its-the-least-of-albaneses-problems-187439

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paula Lorgelly, Professor of Health Economics, University of Auckland

Earlier this week, New Zealand health minister Andrew Little stated what most who work in health already know.

Healthcare is all about people – the people being cared for and the people doing the caring.

Population growth, ageing and a pandemic mean there is no shortage of those needing care, but in New Zealand and globally, there is a chronic shortage of healthcare workers.

Little stopped short of calling it a crisis, but researchers and international agencies alike agree with a survey of New Zealand doctors that the health workforce is in crisis.

In 2016, the World Health Organization (WHO) projected a global shortage of 18 million healthcare workers by 2030. That was before the COVID-19 pandemic. Between 80,000 and 180,000 healthcare workers have died globally during the pandemic’s first 16 months, according to the WHO’s conservative estimate.

Add to this the impact the pandemic has had on the mental health of frontline health staff, including reports of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and a healthcare workforce seven times more likely to have severe COVID and now carrying the burden of long COVID. It’s clear healthcare is no longer the attractive sector it once was.

Read more:
Nurses are leaving the profession, and replacing them won’t be easy

A highly mobile workforce and a global shortage

Like the cost-of-living crisis, the health workforce shortage is not unique to Aotearoa New Zealand.

This year’s budget included NZ$76 million for medical training and primary care specialists, but doctors who started training this year will not be specialists until 2034. Meanwhile, Labour’s solution is to undertake an international recruitment drive. It is hailing New Zealand as one of the easiest places in the world for healthcare workers to come to. But are our newly opened borders attractive enough?

In my health economics lectures I often use an anecdote about the Indian doctor who gets a job in the UK (colonial ties and a multicultural society), the British doctor who moves to Canada (less administration and more family friendly hours), the Canadian doctor who moves to the United States (specialists have much higher earning potential), and the US doctor who undertakes missionary work in India.

This highlights two issues: the health workforce is highly mobile and employment isn’t always about money. Aotearoa New Zealand is competing in a global health workforce market, and minister Little recently acknowledged the health sector as “fiercely competitive”. But this isn’t a new phenomenon for New Zealand.

Read more:
A burnt-out health workforce impacts patient care

The health workforce in New Zealand has one of the largest shares of migrant workers, with 42% of doctors and almost 30% of nurses foreign-born (second only to Israel and Ireland, respectively). This is much higher than the aggregate estimates showing one in six doctors practicing in OECD countries studied overseas.

The OECD estimates the number of foreign-born doctors and nurses in OECD countries has increased by 20%, twice the growth rate of the overall increase across the workfery concerning.

The health workforce is not equally distributed. Migration of workers from low- and middle-income countries to high-income countries like Aotearoa New Zealand is a real threat to achieving universal health coverage and sustainable development goals. New Zealand needs to be mindful that promoting our open borders is not at the expense of under-performing health systems with much greater need.

Losing healthcare workers to Australia

Outflow is also a problem in New Zealand, with New Zealand-trained doctors and nurses crossing the Tasman every year. Add to this the international recruits leaving New Zealand for Australia and there most definitely is a health workforce crisis.

As our nearest neighbour, Australia is aggressively recruiting staff. And like pavlova and Phar Lap they are happy to claim what is ours as theirs. An easier route to citizenship and voting rights will make Australia even more desirable.

How can New Zealand compete in this market? Minister Little refers to encouraging Kiwis to return home, including lifting their pay. Research shows it’s not all about income. Location and professional development opportunities are important factors when choosing career moves.

The healthcare reforms helped tempt me back to New Zealand after 22 years away. Perhaps working in a system which has equity as its focus may encourage those who are clinically trained to return as well.

There is considerable research to inform policies around retention and recruitment. The New Zealand Ministry of Health may wish to look to the UK, which was historically dependent on EU health and care workers and now has a health workforce depleted by both Brexit and the pandemic.

In the recent LSE-Lancet Commission on the future of the NHS, British scholars argued a sustainable workforce needed integrated approaches to be developed alongside reforms to education and training that reflect changes in roles and the skill mix, and more multidisciplinary working.

The LSE-Lancet Commission authors flagged the need for better workforce planning. New Zealand’s approach to workforce forecasting has also been criticised previously.

Planning aside, a possible solution worthy of discussion is the required skill mix of the workforce, particularly with technological advancements and changing health needs. For example, the introduction of non-medical prescribers has improved job satisfaction, released clinical time and increased patient access.

New Zealand’s once-in-a-generation health reforms offer a logical time to undertake workforce reforms. We need to learn from our own historical mistakes and avoid disconnecting the workforce from the policy reforms.

If minister Little and the ministry are to solve this, he will first need to admit there is a health workforce crisis. Aotearoa New Zealand is unfortunately not alone in its quest to adequately staff healthcare, but the transformation of the health sector to create a more equitable, accessible, cohesive and people-centred system means New Zealand is uniquely placed to put those people who deliver care at the centre.

Paula Lorgelly 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. Despite what political leaders say, New Zealand’s health workforce is in crisis – but it’s the same everywhere else – https://theconversation.com/despite-what-political-leaders-say-new-zealands-health-workforce-is-in-crisis-but-its-the-same-everywhere-else-187256

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Angel Zhong, Associate Professor of Finance, RMIT University

Australia has one of the world’s most concentrated banking sectors, with its four biggest banks – Commonwealth Bank, National Australia Bank, Westpac and ANZ – holding more about three-quarters of the market,

Read more:
Four pillars or four pillows? Banking’s comfy collective

It will become even more concentrated if ANZ – the “minnow” of the big four – completes its plan to buy the banking division of Queensland-based Suncorp for A$4.9 billion.

Suncorp, which also has a large insurance division, is the second largest of Australia’s four major regional banks. It is a significant brand in Queensland, and known to the rest of Australia through the name of Brisbane’s rugby stadium.

This will be the largest consolidation in Australian banking since 2008, when Commonwealth Bank took over Perth-based Bankwest and Westpac acquired Sydney-based St George Bank. It will push ANZ from fourth to third place by loan value.

First though, it needs two regulatory approvals – from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which can block any merger that “substantially lessens” competition in any market; and the federal treasurer, who has specific powers over the financial sector.

Approval is by no means guaranteed.

ANZ’s chief executive Shayne Elliott has argued the deal will “improve competition”. But that’s probably true only for ANZ.

Every smaller competitor, and consumers, have good grounds to argue the competition watchdog, or federal treasurer Jim Chalmers, should be vetoing the deal.

This isn’t 2008

When the competition watchdog and then federal treasurer Wayne Swan approved the acquisitions of Bankwest and St George in 2008, it was feared the alternative was these banks collapsing in the wake of the global financial crisis.

Bankwest’s owner, the Bank of Scotland, was in dire financial straits (and in 2009 would itself be taken over, by Lloyds Bank).

St George was in trouble, having had to raise its interest rates more than its rivals because it had borrowed so much money to expand its loans business.

ANZ’s competition argument

Suncorp is under no such existential threat. The ANZ chief executive’s argument about why the merger is good for competition has instead been based overwhelmingly on what it means to ANZ:

As the smallest of the major banks, we believe a stronger ANZ will be able to compete more effectively in Queensland offering better outcomes for customers.

He told the Australian Financial Review: “Just as Suncorp probably feels dwarfed by ANZ, we feel dwarfed by CBA.”

Absorbing Suncorp’s $45 billion of deposits and $58 billion in commercial and home loans to its books will push up ANZ’s share of the home-lending market to about 15.4%, compared with Commonwealth Bank’s 25.9%, Westpac’s 21.5% and NAB’s 14.9%.

But for everyone else, including consumers, other banks and regulators, the deal will likely hinder competition.

Concentration and competition

High market concentration does not necessarily mean competition is weak or that community outcomes will be poor, as the Productivity Commission concluded following its 2018 inquiry into the state of competition in Australian financial services.

Rather, it is the way market participants gain, maintain and use their market power that may lead to poor consumer outcomes.

However, the Productivity Commission also concluded Australia’s major banks had charged prices above competitive levels, offered inferior quality products, and had acted to inhibit the expansion of smaller competitors.

All are indicators of the use of market power to the detriment of consumers.

Bucketloads more evidence has come from the banking royal commission, which found evidence that all four big banks (and many other financial services companies) had committed illegal or unethical acts to maximise profits at their customers’ expense.

Read more:
What are we teaching in business schools? The royal commission’s challenge to amoral theory

Tackling the ‘cosy olipoly’

Following the publication of the royal commission’s final report in February 2019, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s head, Rod Sims, said

A cosy banking oligopoly is surely at the heart of recent problems, so we must and will find ways to get more effective competition in banking.

This mission is a work in progress. Some hopeful experiments, such as the “neobanks” (pure digital banks) are failing. Australia’s first neobank, Volt, which was granted its license to operate as a authorised deposit-taking institution in 2019, collapsed last month. The second neobank, Xinja, quit the banking business back December 2020.

Read more:
It’s unanimous: Economists’ poll says we can fix the banks. But that doesn’t mean we will

Given this, it’s hard to argue that further concentration is good for competition.

For the competition watchdog to block the deal, however, it must be convinced of a “substantial” lessening of competition. That means ANZ gaining market power to “significantly and sustainably” increase its prices or profit margins.

By my reading this deal will certainly lessen competition – but it’s uncertain if it will do so according to the “substantial” test.

Either way, this will prove a major test for the ACCC’s new head Gina Cass-Gottlieb, who was appointed in March, and Austalia’s new treasurer Jim Chalmers.

Angel Zhong 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. ANZ’s takeover of Suncorp will reduce bank competition – but will that be enough to block it? – https://theconversation.com/anzs-takeover-of-suncorp-will-reduce-bank-competition-but-will-that-be-enough-to-block-it-187279

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christine Judith Nicholls, Honorary Senior Lecturer, Australian National University

Review: Paper City, directed by Adrian Francis

In his first feature-length documentary, Adelaide-born director Adrian Francis offers a rigorous understanding of the American firebombing of Tokyo via survivors’ perspectives.

In a brutal attack nearing the end of the second world war, on March 9 and 10 1945, around 100,000 Japanese civilians were killed.

Many burned to death; others threw themselves into the nearby River Sumida, preferring death by drowning. Others took flight into bomb shelters where they were asphyxiated en masse.

The American Air Force’s chilling rubric for their unspeakable act was “Operation Meetinghouse.”

In Paper City’s account, the aftermath is principally conveyed by in-depth interviews with three Japanese survivors. At the time of the attack, Tsukiyama-san was 16, Kiyooka-san was 21 and Hoshino-san was just 14.

These testimonies are joined by one-off interviews with fellow octogenarians and nonagenarians who also experienced the firebombing.

Their memories collectively inform the bleak unfolding narrative, attesting to ruthless acts of terror.

Read more:
Why do we pay so much attention to Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

We must remember

Solidly researched and confronting, Paper City was seven years in the making.

The film opens with archival footage of US fighter jets Tokyo-bound, transporting incendiary bombs, underscored by Don Baker’s 1942 song There’ll be a Little Smokio in Tokio.

Baker’s jauntily vocalised racist lyrics underpin the brutal dehumanisation of Japanese civilians through horrific footage.

The wholesale civilian massacre of innocents acts as a meditation on the passage of time, on collective memory and probable permanent loss. American cruelty is also at the forefront, not by demonising perpetrators but because there isn’t any other credible interpretation.

Paper City’s pressing proposition is the imperative humankind must remember so such events aren’t repeated.

The Japanese interviewees don’t apportion blame. Some acknowledge the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy had also acted contra to how they should have.

Paper City is interspersed with deliberate, measured Japanese calligraphy, punctuating viewers’ mounting tension. These interventions mark a change of pace. The focus turns to classical Japanese aesthetics, craftsmanship and skill, evoking longstanding Japanese values.

Calligraphic artistry relies on artists’ mastery of breath control, lest there be mishaps. Paper – an important leitmotif in Paper City – attests to the beauty of the classical Japanese written word, but equally to fragility and impermanence.

In wartime Japan and for eons earlier, interior paper walls were used in mostly wooden dwellings. These building materials contributed to Tokyo’s violent conflagration, triggering the massive death toll; mass suffocation ushered in permanent cessation of breath.

Read more:
How Japanese avant-garde ceramicists have tested the limits of clay

Honouring the dead

Tsukiyama-san, Kiyooka-san and Hoshino-san advocate for lasting peace. The firebombing wasn’t an act of war between military groups, but a strike on an unarmed, peaceful demographic.

In one sequence, Kiyooka-san returns to her childhood neighbourhood, giving a public talk focusing on the experience of herself and her family. The audience of parents and children pay close attention.

Kiyooka-san explains she entered the river, spending the night tipping water over her head to avoid her hair burning. In the morning light, thousands of charred bodies were revealed. Kiyooka-san came across her own mother, who’d regained consciousness and was barely clinging to life.

Hoshino-san also addresses a sizeable audience in his neighbourhood. Expressing fears that today’s Japanese memory of this harrowing attack is virtually non-existent, he’s driven by a sense of responsibility to honour those who died.

Hos hino-san observes there has never been any governmental effort to collect the names of the dead and honour the civilians who died as a result of this attack.

But under Tsukiyama-san’s leadership, his Morishita 5 District remains a miraculous exception. Tsukiyama-san’s vision and work ethic prompted resident citizens to create a near comprehensive list of those who perished in the firebombing.

An extensive scroll is now permanently displayed in the Morishita Neighbourhood Centre, commemorating local residents who were killed. Underpinned by citizen power, local memorial services have now been held.

Regrettably, despite these elderly activists heroically fighting the good fight for remembrance, this unspeakable attack remains unmemorialised by generations of Japanese governmental leaders.

Regardless of the interviewees’ long term, uplifting dedication to Japanese national memory, Paper City is disturbing.

Then again, apropos of this, it is difficult to imagine a better film could have been made on this subject.

Paper City is available to stream through the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival until July 31.

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

– ref. In Paper City, Japanese survivors recount their experiences of the 1945 firebombing of Tokyo – https://theconversation.com/in-paper-city-japanese-survivors-recount-their-experiences-of-the-1945-firebombing-of-tokyo-187353

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gabriela Quintana Vigiola, Senior Lecturer in Planning, University of Technology Sydney

Urban areas are often thought of as concrete jungles, but they encompass much more than that. Nature, people and built structures are interconnected. Together they comprise the urban environment of the cities and towns in which we live.

In the past five years, Australian cities have continued to grow. In fact, the State of the Environment Report released this week revealed most of our major cities have grown faster than many developed cities overseas.

This growth has increased demand for resources such as water and energy. It has increased other impacts, too, including urban heat, congestion, pollution and waste.

Australian energy consumption by fuel type, 1978–79 to 2018–19

These pressures are a threat to the liveability and sustainability of urban life in Australia. However, the report assessed the overall state of the urban environment as good and stable – among the most positive ratings of any category. That’s largely a result of actions across Australia, mostly at the level of states, local councils and communities, that are starting to make progress towards cities that will be more resilient to climate change and remain good places for us to live.

The State of the Environment Report contains fundamental information on how the country’s environment is faring in areas ranging from air quality to urban environments. Western Parkland City Authority CEO Sarah Hill, private consultant and Barkandji woman Zena Cumpston and I collaborated in assessing the state of the urban environment for this report.

We found state and local governments have responded to some challenges with great initiatives that take us closer to more resilient and sustainable urban environments. However, there is still a need for national approaches and for better collaboration and co-ordination between the private and public sectors.

What are the pressures on our cities and towns?

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) defines urban as centres with more than 200 people. Australia has over 1,853 urban environments. However, 75% of people in Australia live in just 18 cities with more than 100,000 people each.

The report shows the population of these 18 urban areas grew by 20% in the past ten years. Most of that growth happened in the five years after the last State of the Environment report in 2016. At the same time, remote area populations decreased.

Property developers and the construction sectors have responded by increasing housing production. They have mainly focused on apartment buildings and semi-detached houses.

Trends in Australian new housing by type as a percentage of the total

Unfortunately, at the same time the public sector has greatly reduced its role in housing. Based on ABS data, we calculated that the government now develops only 1% of all new dwellings in Australia.

Residential building and house sizes have slightly increased while lot sizes have shrunk. This means there is less open space. And these smaller backyards and setbacks between buildings are now often paved.

As a result, we are seeing higher temperatures and reduced or endangered biodiversity. These changes have negative impacts on people’s and the environment’s well-being.

Despite local government policies to increase green cover in public areas and protect our urban forests, the changes in private properties have led to an overall loss of green spaces in our cities.

Trends in percentage of land cover by category across 131 local government areas

These developments are often found in the urban outskirts of expanding cities. Increased travel distances and limited access to jobs, education, food and services are reducing the liveability of these cities.

These pressures are even worse in smaller and more isolated areas. For example, in the report we note:

“Indigenous communities in smaller urban centres are often far from amenities such as shopping, health care, cultural business, education and social services. In 2014-2015, 75% of Indigenous Australians reported that they could not easily get to the places they needed.”

These areas also have more insecure access to resources such as digital infrastructure, energy and water. On top of this, they have suffered from shocks such as extreme bushfires, floods and mice plagues.

So, the overall liveability of smaller urban areas with fewer than 10,000 people has been assessed as poor. The liveability of larger cities, on the other hand, has remained good over the past five years.

However, we need to beware of generalisations. Differences in liveability between inner and outer areas of the bigger cities are noticeable.

Inner-city areas have higher levels of liveability based on factors such as walkability, access to green spaces and services. The urban fringes tend to have poorer access to services and longer commute times. Higher socio-economic areas tend to benefit from better tree canopy cover and digital access.

Smaller urban areas have some advantages – mainly shorter commute times – but are disadvantaged by fewer services and job opportunities.

What are we doing about the challenges we face?

Population growth and its effects on resource consumption, waste generation, travel and pollution continue to pressure the urban environment. However, our biggest challenge is climate change.

Sea-level rises, more extreme events such as bushfires, drought, extreme rainfall and flooding, and higher urban temperatures are expected to have significant impacts on cities’ biodiversity and people.

Many state and local governments are taking a hands-on approach to some of these challenges and pressures. Through urban planning policies, they are managing urban sprawl and protecting public green areas.

Governments have also been investing in more integrated infrastructure – for example, better co-ordinating the development and use of roads, public transport, cyclepaths and walkways – better waste management and reducing disaster risk.

Commonwealth City Deals, the Resilient Cities Framework applied in Sydney and Melbourne, and the National Waste Policy Action Plan are just a few of the approaches being adopted in Australia.

Trends in waste management by category, 2016–17 to 2018–19

We are on the right path with great initiatives all over Australia working to achieve more sustainable and resilient urban environments. However, they are in the early stages.

We do need more inter-agency and public-private collaboration. We need more community education, too. Policies can also be better implemented and followed up to continue improving management of the pressures on urban areas, which in turn will improve the well-being of people and the environment.

I would like to acknowledge Sarah Hill and Zena Cumpston, the co-authors of the State of the Environment Urban chapter. The joint work we did in the writing of the chapter informed this article.

Gabriela Quintana Vigiola was contracted by the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water as a researcher in the development of the Urban Environment chapter of the 2021 Australian State of Environment Report. Sarah Hill, CEO of the Western Parkland City Authority, and Zena Cumpston, a private consultant and Barkandji woman, are co-authors of this chapter.

– ref. State of the Environment report shows our growing cities are under pressure – but we’re seeing positive signs too – https://theconversation.com/state-of-the-environment-report-shows-our-growing-cities-are-under-pressure-but-were-seeing-positive-signs-too-187265

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alison Spence, Senior Lecturer in Nutrition and Population Health, Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition (IPAN), Deakin University

Like adults, children can get “hangry” – a combination of angry and hungry. Hangriness may be caused by blood glucose levels dropping, leading to irritability, bad mood, anger or tantrums.

Children have smaller stomachs than adults so may become hungry again sooner. Some may not notice they’ve become very hungry until the moment of crisis.

So, what can parents do when hangriness strikes – and reduce the risk of it happening again?

Read more:
Health Check: the science of ‘hangry’, or why some people get grumpy when they’re hungry

What’s really going on?

First: is your child really hangry, or just angry? Feeding straight away isn’t always the answer. Ask yourself:

• how long has it been since they last slept, and how was last night’s sleep? If they’re actually tired, a storybook, toy or cuddle might do. Consider whether their next meal can be earlier today – before they’re too tired to eat.

• has anything else upset them? If so, act on this, rather than using food to distract or soothe.

• how long has it been since they last ate? Did you miss a meal in the parenting rush? It happens! Maybe it’s time to pause for a healthy snack.

If it’s not long until lunch or dinner, you could:

• just wait

• let them start on the vegetable component of the meal, or

• snack on some easy veggies (of age-appropriate texture) like a carrot, capsicum or cucumber.

Dinner could be trickier if they’ve filled up on yoghurt or biscuits, so try not to serve things they love (other than veggies) at this time.

If your child complains of hunger but only wants a particular food or refuses veggies, consider whether they really are hungry.

Try not to get foods and emotions too entwined

Many adults struggle with overeating to manage their emotions, a behaviour often learned in childhood.

It’s important to find other ways of improving moods so children don’t learn to rely on foods to manage emotions. Explore other activities like listening to music, playing, or having a cuddle. We can also teach children other non food-based ways to manage their emotions, such as mindfulness and deep breathing.

Using food as a reward or to calm can also lead to emotional eating. This may increase children consuming foods irrespective of hunger.

On the other hand, overly restricting food can have unintended effects and lead to emotional eating.

3 ways to reduce hangriness risk

1. Maintain a regular eating routine

For most young children, three meals and two snacks a day works well. Having these at predictable times helps children learn to eat at meal times and be able to wait until the next meal.

Try to limit grazing. Grazing can set up a cycle where children aren’t hungry at meal times, so eat little, but then become hungry (or hangry) again soon after.

This can frustrate parents who’ve prepared a meal that isn’t eaten, and then feel pressured to prepare extra foods between meals. Grazing, even on nutritious foods, can also contribute to tooth decay.

2. Include foods that help children feel fuller for longer

Try to serve nutritious, substantial snacks. Including some protein and carbohydrates can help maintain their energy levels from one meal to the next.

Try natural yoghurt, milk, hummus, nuts/nut butter (of age-appropriate texture), eggs, oat muesli or wholegrain bread, to go with fruit or veggie snacks.

3. Encourage children to pay attention to their hunger and fullness cues

It can be tempting to pressure kids to eat more at mealtimes, or offer different foods if they reject what’s served.

But this is unlikely to help in the long run and can create a rod for your own back. It can turn mealtimes into a battle and parents into short-order chefs.

Pressuring children to eat can override their ability to self-regulate; they can get into a habit of overeating instead of listening to their hunger and fullness cues.

“Parents provide, kids decide” reminds us a parent’s role is to provide nutritious foods at regular intervals; it’s the child’s role to decide how much to eat.

If you include something at each mealtime you know your child will eat, such as a favourite vegetable, then they’ll likely eat something if they are hungry.

If they really don’t want to eat then maybe they aren’t hungry, and that’s OK.

Other tips include eating together, eating the same foods, modelling enjoyment of those foods, and turning screens off while eating.

This is general advice for healthy children, but some may have more interest or enjoyment in food, or be more fussy, and may be particularly prone to difficult behaviour when hungry. If your child experiences severe fussiness, restricted eating, or you have concerns about their nutrition or health, speak with your child health nurse, doctor, or accredited practising dietitian.

If you are finding it financially difficult to get enough nutritious food for your family, support is available to access food and low cost recipes.

A well child’s health and nutrition is unlikely to suffer with occasional short bouts of hunger.

Yes, hangriness happens occasionally (it’s normal for children to test the boundaries!). But it’s OK to stay firm and ride it out. With an eating routine there’s another meal not too far away.

Read more:
Kids’ diets and screen time: to set up good habits, make healthy choices the default at home

Alison Spence is a member of Dietitians Australia.

Alissa Burnett is a member of the Nutrition Society of Australia

Georgie Russell is a member of the Nutrition Society of Australia and the Australian and New Zealand Obesity Society.

– ref. How to deal with hangry kids and reduce the chances of it happening again – 3 tips from nutrition experts – https://theconversation.com/how-to-deal-with-hangry-kids-and-reduce-the-chances-of-it-happening-again-3-tips-from-nutrition-experts-187175

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jamal Barnes, Lecturer, Edith Cowan University

As one of its first acts in government, the newly elected Labor government turned back a boat of Sri Lankan asylum seekers trying to enter Australia.

Labor has vowed to continue Operation Sovereign Borders, including boat turnbacks and offshore detention. This is concerning. Not only do turnbacks violate international law, but offshore detention has resulted in torture and cruel and inhuman treatment of refugees.

Even more concerning is the lack of criticism Labor has received for continuing offshore detention and turnbacks. Apart from being condemned by human rights groups and minor political parties, Labor’s refugee policies appear to have gone without much comment from a large part of the Australian public.

As I found in my new research paper, the Australian government has used three forms of denial, creating physical and psychological distance between itself and refugees.

This allows the federal government to promote illegal and harmful policies while proclaiming to still be upholding human rights.

Creating indifference

Human rights abuses in offshore detention have been well documented.

On Manus Island (in Papua New Guinea) and Nauru, refugees have faced torture, inhumane detention, overcrowding, violence from guards, sexual assault and rape, and mental harm. Children as young as nine have suffered severe depression and attempted to commit suicide.

According to the latest data by the Refugee Council, 112 people remain on Nauru and just over 100 people are on Manus Island. Although New Zealand will now resettle many of them in the coming years, Nauru detention centre will continue to remain open indefinitely.

How can Australia continue to promote itself as upholding human rights, while at the same time maintain such policies?

One answer is that offshore detention has created indifference to the suffering of refugees. Australia’s policy framework has produced what the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture has called “moral disengagement”. This involves “the self-deceptive denial of reality” by denying the wrongfulness of, responsibility for, or occurrence of, human rights violations.

These “self-deceptive” strategies reduce moral dilemmas that come from violating human rights norms.

My research found Australian federal governments have used three forms of denial to push refugees out of sight and out of mind – denial of responsibility, denial of fact, and denial of wrongdoing.

Read more:
Cruel, costly and ineffective: Australia’s offshore processing asylum seeker policy turns 9

3 types of denial

Denying responsibility

The government has denied responsibility over refugees in offshore detention by denying it has jurisdiction. The term “jurisdiction” is different from sovereign territory. A state can have jurisdiction outside of its sovereign territory when it exercises effective control over others.

Showing that a country has jurisdiction over others is important. It can help hold states accountable for human rights abuses and establish responsibility for those in its care.

The Australian government has argued that PNG and Nauru – which aren’t part of Australia – have jurisdiction over the detention facilities and the refugees in them. It claims all Australia does is provide financial and material support.

Such arguments make it difficult to hold Australia accountable. But they are also incorrect. A Senate inquiry, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, and human rights groups, among others, have argued Australia exercises effective control and shares jurisdiction with Nauru and PNG.

Denying jurisdiction creates physical and psychological distance between itself and refugees, helping to create indifference. By denying responsibility, human rights abuses become someone else’s problem.

Denying fact

A second key strategy is denial of fact. The Australian government, along with the governments of Nauru and PNG, has denied human rights abuses and made it hard to find out what occurs in offshore detention.

Human rights monitors and journalists have been restricted or denied access to offshore detention.

Staff have been threatened with prosecution under confidentiality agreements if they speak publicly about detention treatment.

Operation Sovereign Borders has also been shrouded in secrecy. For example, it was common for Coalition ministers and border force officials to refuse to answer questions in the media about “on water matters”.

As Peter Young, the former mental health director of IHMS, the medical provider in immigration detention, stated: “Secrecy is necessary because these places are designed to damage”.

These policies have made it difficult to know what occurs in offshore detention. They also create doubt about whether such harm is even happening at all.

Denying wrongdoing

Along with “stopping the boats”, the government has argued offshore detention has been necessary to save lives at sea.

When former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Juan Méndez criticised Australia for violating the UN Convention against Torture in 2015, then Prime Minister Tony Abbott stated

The most humanitarian, the most decent, the most compassionate thing you can do is stop these boats because hundreds, we think about 1200 in fact, drowned at sea during the flourishing of the people smuggling trade under the former government.

This is a key strategy of self-deception. By arguing the policy is saving lives, it focuses attention away from the harm refugees suffer, to the humanitarian goal of “saving lives”.

Moral dilemmas about torture or ill treatment are pushed aside, and so are feelings of wrongdoing.

Read more:
Australia’s temporary visa system is unfair, expensive, impractical and inconsistent. Here’s how the new government could fix it

Challenging indifference

Key to ending this illegal and harmful policy is to challenge these self-deceptive strategies that have produced moral disengagement.

Other countries, such as the UK, are following in Australia’s footsteps by introducing offshore detention for asylum seekers. This means challenging strategies that deny reality – and widening our circle of empathy – is more urgent than ever.

It’s indifference that’s helping to maintain offshore detention. And it’s this indifference that needs to be challenged to both respect international law and uphold the rights and dignity of refugees.

Jamal has received funding from the Australia-Germany JRC Scheme (UA-DAAD) and Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

– ref. 3 types of denial that allow Australians to feel OK about how we treat refugees – https://theconversation.com/3-types-of-denial-that-allow-australians-to-feel-ok-about-how-we-treat-refugees-186294