Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Toole, Associate Principal Research Fellow, Burnet Institute

Australia’s elimination strategy during the first two years of the COVID pandemic was one of the most effective in the world. Through a combination of early border closures, widespread testing and meticulous contact tracing, localised lockdowns and mask mandates, the number of reported cases was kept to around 28,000 in 2020.

This compared with 805,000 in 2020 in the Netherlands, which has a population nine million fewer than Australia.

In 2021, Australia recorded 402,000 cases. The increase was largely due to the Delta outbreak in the second half of the year.

Fast forward to mid-2022, when Australia has leapt in rank to 15th in the world for total cases over the course of the pandemic – well ahead of countries with a similar population, such as Taiwan and Chile, and larger countries, such as Canada, Mexico and Iran.

The situation has changed dramatically this year. While Australia has reported 9,225,519 cases since early 2020, 96% have been this year. This has led to Australia’s global ranking of cases, hospitalisations and deaths being among the highest in the world.

Australia’s cases, hospitalisations and deaths

The seven-day average of new daily cases is currently just under 47,000, which is lower than the peak of 103,000 in mid-January.

Somewhat surprisingly, the number of COVID patients in hospital (5,359) is the highest since the pandemic began.

However, the number of infected persons admitted to an ICU is well below the January peak.

This may be due to higher vaccination rates than at the beginning of the year and the availability of antiviral drugs, resulting in fewer hospital cases with very severe illness. Though it’s worth noting aged care residents have been highly affected and many never made it to ICU despite severe illness.

Why is the ratio of cases to hospitalisations so high?

It’s possible that case numbers have been underestimated. A recent Conversation piece provided a number of reasons why this might be the case.

Read more:
COVID hospitalisations and deaths are rising faster than cases – but that doesn’t mean more severe disease

It’s also possible that BA.5 is more virulent than its Omicron predecessors, perhaps because it targets the lungs, or simply because it is more distantly related to ancestral SARS-Cov-2 and so better at immune escape than its predecessors. This might explain the high number of deaths in residential aged care facilities.

Whatever the reason, it is not unique to Australia. In Portugal, a third dose booster was associated with a 93% reduction in hospitalisation for BA.2 infections compared with just a 77% reduction for BA.5. This is equivalent to three times the risk of hospitalisation with BA.5 than BA.2.

The seven-day average of daily deaths (72) has doubled since mid-May.

Recent data from Victoria revealed those who had not received a third vaccine dose made up 72% of those who died with, or due to, COVID.

Boosters may not prevent infection but they are essential to prevent severe illness and death, especially among the elderly. And they may reduce the incidence of long COVID.

Read more:
Triple vaccination seems to reduce the chance of long COVID – but we still need to prepare for a jump in cases

How does Australia rank globally?

Over the past week, Australia has ranked second in the world for reported cases per million, behind Brunei and ahead of New Zealand, Singapore and South Korea, excluding small island states.

It’s worth noting all five of these countries had effective responses to the pandemic in its first two years.

Fewer than 40 countries provide up-to-date figures on COVID hospital admissions; among them, Australia ranks second. The current Australian COVID hospitalisation rate of 21 per 100,000 compares to 30 in France, 19 in Italy, 14 in Canada and Japan, 11 in the United States, and three in Malaysia.

Read more:
We’re two frontline COVID doctors. Here’s what we see as case numbers rise

Up until July 26, 11,285 Australians have lost their lives with COVID; 80% of those deaths occurred in 2022. Australia ranks second for deaths per capita behind New Zealand and ahead of Croatia, Taiwan and Spain.

Why does Australia rank so poorly on key COVID indicators?

Low population immunity

It’s tempting to explain the current COVID situation in Australia by the relatively low exposure to the virus by the population in the first two years of the pandemic.

A study of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID) antibodies by the United Kingdom Office for National Statistics found 71% of people in England had been infected by the end of February 2022.

A similar study in the United States found 58% of Americans had been infected during the same period.

By contrast, a study by the Kirby Institute found just 17% of Australians had been infected by the virus up until the end of February. A more recent survey in June found that this figure had jumped to 46% but it’s still lower than the US and UK.

While low population immunity may partially explain the Omicron wave in Australia in January 2022, it doesn’t explain the spike in July by Omicron sub-variants that have been shown to evade the immunity acquired from previous infections.

Read more:
How soon can I get COVID again? Experts now say 28 days – but you can protect yourself

Seasonal effects

It’s difficult to interpret the impact of climate on COVID. Large waves occurred during the summer of 2021 in the United States and huge outbreaks occurred during the hot season in India and Japan. Australia’s largest wave occurred in the summer of 2022.

Right now, it’s summer in the northern hemisphere and winter here. That may partially explain the high case rates in Australia and New Zealand but not in Brunei, South Korea and Singapore.

Low vaccine booster rate

Just over 70% of eligible Australians have received a third dose of a COVID vaccine. This leaves around 5.7 million adult Australians unprotected against the Omicron variant.

When measured as a proportion of the entire population, Australia’s third dose booster rate ranks 35th in the world.

But this doesn’t explain the high case rates in South Korea, Singapore and New Zealand, which all have much higher booster rates than Australia.

Masks and other measures

A review of mask mandates reveals very little difference between Australia and the rest of the world.

Most countries still mandate masks on public transport and health care and aged care facilities, while universal mask mandates remain in China and in some indoor settings in South Korea.

It is difficult to find reliable data on compliance. However, anecdotally, mask compliance is much higher in countries like Japan and Italy than Australia.

No one reason for Australia’s poor ranking

It’s hard to identify a single reason why Australia’s key COVID indicators rank so poorly. It’s probably a combination of low population immunity via a combination of low vaccine booster rates and less natural exposure than other countries (noting that less infection is a very good thing overall), and the relaxation of almost all mitigation measures and seasonal factors.

However, overall it reflects the narrative by political leaders since the beginning of the year that the pandemic is in the past tense. That has profoundly affected the attitudes and behaviours of the public.

Read more:
Do we care enough about COVID?

Given the current effective reproductive rate is a little over 1, it just needs to get below 1 to halt the spread of the virus.

Increased booster rates, indoor mask mandates and provision, a greater focus on testing and isolating and an investment in improved ventilation would take us through this wave to a more secure health and economic situation. We need stronger leadership to get us there.

Michael Toole receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council.

Brendan Crabb and the Institute he leads receives research grant funding from the National Health & Medical Research Council of Australia and other Australian federal and Victorian State Government bodies. He is the Chair of The Australian Global Health Alliance and the Pacific Friends of Global Health, both in an honourary capacity. And he has recently joined the Board of the Telethon Kids Institute.

– ref. Australia’s response to COVID in the first 2 years was one of the best in the world. Why do we rank so poorly now? – https://theconversation.com/australias-response-to-covid-in-the-first-2-years-was-one-of-the-best-in-the-world-why-do-we-rank-so-poorly-now-187606

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Norman Duke, Professor of Mangrove Ecology, James Cook University

Environmental scientists see flora, fauna and phenomena the rest of us rarely do. In this series, we’ve invited them to share their unique photos from the field.

In the summer of 2015-2016, some 40 million mangroves shrivelled up and died across the wild Gulf of Carpentaria in northern Australia, after extremely dry weather from a severe El Niño event saw coastal water plunge 40 centimetres.

The low water level lasted about six months, and the mangroves died of thirst. Seven years later, they have yet to recover. My new research, published today, is the first to realise the full scale of this catastrophe, and understand why it occurred.

This event, I discovered, is the world’s worst incidence of climate-related mangrove tree deaths in recorded history. Over 76 square kilometres of mangroves were killed, releasing nearly one million tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere.

But this event, while unprecedented in scale, is not unique. My research also discovered evidence of another mass die-back of mangroves in the region in 1982 – the same year the Great Barrier Reef suffered its first mass bleaching event.

The mangroves took 15 years to recover. This time, we won’t be so lucky.

Mangroves are immensely important

In Samoa, El Niño-driven sea level drops are called “Taimasa” because of the putrid smell of decaying marine life from long-exposed corals, when sea levels remained low for months on end.

In northern Australia, Taimasa conditions in 2015 left mangroves at higher elevations exposed for at least six months. Without regular flushing and wetting of tides, shoreline mangroves don’t stand a chance.

Mangroves are enormously valuable coastal ecosystems. Healthy mangrove ecosystems not only buffer shorelines against rising sea levels, but they also provide valuable protection against erosion, abundant carbon sinks, shelter for animals, nursery habitat, and food for marine life.

These benefits have cultural and economic value, with widespread significance to local communities.

The mass die-back event of 2015 was widely reported in national and international news, with shocking images emerging from the remote region.

Although the cause was unknown at the time, the implications of such catastrophic damage were immense for local and regional communities, natural coastal ecosystems and the fisheries that depend on them.

Access was difficult and expensive, and environmental records for the region were scarce. But after four years of research , we uncovered evidence this event was indeed a dramatic consequence of climate change.

Why the mangroves probably won’t recover this time

Our research reveals the presence of a previously unrecognised “collapse-recovery cycle” of mangroves along Gulf shorelines. The mangroves, damaged in 1982, are now attempting to recover again after the mass-death event in 2015.

But, at least three factors have changed since 1982, leaving recovery less likely.

Read more:
La Niña just raised sea levels in the western Pacific by up to 20cm. This height will be normal by 2050

For one, sea levels have risen dramatically due to climate change, causing erosion. This places escalating pressure on tide-fed wetlands to retreat towards higher land.

Younger trees are essential for future mangrove habitat. But upland, environmental conditions for newly established seedlings can be deadly. Landward pressures of bushfires, feral pigs and weed infestations are made far worse by the catastrophic sudden drops in sea level associated with severe El Niño events.

Two, localised storms, such as tropical cyclones, have become increasingly severe. At least two particularly severe cyclones struck the Gulf of Carpentaria coast: Owen in 2018, and Trevor in 2019. A severe flood event also hit the region in 2019.

The cyclone impacts were notable and extreme. Piles of dead mangrove timber were swept up and driven across tidal areas, bulldozing any newly established trees, as well as sprouting survivors.

And three, the threat of future Taimasa low sea level events appear imminent, as evidence points to a link between climate change and severe El Niño and La Niña events. Indeed, El Niños and La Niñas have become more deadly over the last 50 years, and the long-term damage they inflict are expected to escalate.

Under these circumstances, the potential for the mangroves to recover are understandably low.

Protecting these vital ecosystems

These new findings make us more aware of the vulnerability of shoreline ecosystems, and the benefits we’re losing.

A $30 million fishing industry relies on these mangroves, including for redleg banana prawns, mudcrabs and fin fish. When the El Niño of 2015-2016 struck, redleg banana prawn fishers reported their lowest-ever catches.

Read more:
An El Niño hit this banana prawn fishery hard. Here’s what we can learn from their experience

Mangroves also help stabilise shorelines by buffering otherwise exposed areas from erosion. Such shoreline protection is crucial as sea levels continue to rise rapidly, coupled with increasingly severe storm waves and winds.

Healthy living mangroves are among the world’s most carbon-rich forests, binding and holding considerable carbon reserves both in their woody structure and below ground in peaty sediments.

Losing mangroves in the Gulf released more than 850,000 tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere, across both mass dieback events. That’s similar to 1,000 jumbo jets flying return from Sydney to Paris.

It’s critical these buried carbon reserves remain intact, but this will occur only if living vegetation on the surface remains healthy and protected.

Mangroves are also like the kidneys of the coast. Losing them will amplify pollutants in runoff, with excess nutrients, sediments and agricultural chemicals travelling unmitigated into the sea.

Read more:
From sharks in seagrass to manatees in mangroves, we’ve found large marine species in some surprising places

They need greater monitoring

Tropical mangroves – as well as saltmarsh-saltpans, the other part of tidal wetlands – need much greater protection, and more effective maintenance with regular health checks from dedicated national shoreline monitoring.

Our aerial surveys of more than 10,000 kilometres of north Australian coastlines have made a start. We’ve recorded environmental conditions and drivers of shoreline change for north-western Australia, eastern Cape York Peninsula, Torres Strait islands and, of course, the Gulf of Carpentaria.

As the climate continues to change, it’s vital to keep a close eye on our changing shoreline wetlands and to ensure we’re better prepared next time another El Niño disaster strikes.

Read more:
Mangroves from space: 30 years of satellite images are helping us understand how climate change threatens these valuable forests

Norman Duke received funding from the Australian Government’s National Environmental Science Program (NESP) and administered and managed by their Tropical Water Quality Hub and the Northern Australia Environmental Resources Hub. Supplemental funding was also received indirectly from CSIRO Oceans & Atmosphere, the Northern Territory Government’s Department of Environment, Parks and Water Security, and World Animal Protection.

– ref. Climate change killed 40 million Australian mangroves in 2015. Here’s why they’ll probably never grow back – https://theconversation.com/climate-change-killed-40-million-australian-mangroves-in-2015-heres-why-theyll-probably-never-grow-back-166971

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Frew, Lecturer and ARC DECRA Fellow, University of Southern Queensland

Under your feet lies the most biodiverse habitat on Earth. The soil on which we walk supports the majority of life on the planet. Without the life in it, it wouldn’t be soil. Unfortunately, Australia’s soils are not in good shape. The new State of the Environment report rates our soils as “poor” and “deteriorating”.

We’re all familiar with some soil dwellers, such as earthworms. But the lion’s share of life underneath is invisible to the naked eye. Microbiota like bacteria, nematodes, and fungi play vital roles in our environment. These tiny lifeforms break down dead leaves and organic matter, they cycle nutrients, carbon and water. Without them, ecosystems would collapse. Amazingly, most of this wealth of life is unknown to science.

Australia has not undergone the same glacial or volcanic activity as other parts of the world. That’s left most of our soil old and infertile. Our soils are highly sensitive to human pressures, such as contamination, acidification and loss of organic carbon. When we remove communities of plants, this leads to soil erosion. Land clearing also hits underground life hard, causing microbial diversity to decline.

Soil’s lifeforms are also under immense pressure from agriculture, as well as climate change and urban expansion. If we include livestock, more than half of Australia is now being used for farming. If we can improve farming methods, we can bring back soil biodiversity – and use it to produce healthy crops.

Why does it matter if we lose soil microbial diversity?

Australia has many different soil types. Images of each state’s iconic soil demonstrates how much they can differ. Importantly, soils differ greatly in their ability to support industrial crop production. Much of Australia is not naturally suited to this.

Read more:
Pay dirt: $200 million plan for Australia’s degraded soil is a crucial turning point

Some intensive farming methods like ploughing, irrigation and the use of fertilisers and pesticides are particularly damaging to the life in our soils. We know these practices reduce the abundance and diversity of a particularly important group of microorganisms, known as arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. These fungi spread out into vast fungal networks below ground, and colonise the root systems of plants in a symbiotic relationship.

When you look at a field of corn or wheat, you might think all the action is above ground. But what happens in the soil is vital. The plants we rely on to survive rely in turn on strong relationships with these underground fungal networks.

Soil fungi can boost plant uptake of key resources like phosphorus and water and can even improve how plants resist pests. These fungi are also critical to the cycling of nutrients and carbon in our environment, and the networks they form give structure to soil. These relationships go back much further than humans do. Plants and fungi have been cooperating for hundreds of millions of years.

Despite breaking up this relationship in our agriculture, we have achieved ever-increasing yields.

That’s because most crop and pasture production relies on various fertilisers and pesticides for crop nutrition and pest control, rather than fungal networks or soil biology. The continued development of these fertilisers and pesticides have undoubtedly enhanced crop production and allowed millions of people to escape hunger and poverty.

The problem is, relying on pesticides and fertilisers is not sustainable. Many pesticides are under increasing restrictions or bans, and phosphorus fertiliser will only become more expensive as we deplete global phosphate reserves. Critically, their excessive use negatively impacts soil biology and the environment.

If we reduce the diversity of fungi in our soils, we lose the benefits they provide to healthy ecosystems – and to our crops. A soil with less biodiversity erodes more easily, loses its stored carbon quicker and causes disrupted nutrient cycles.

Can we protect our soil fungi?

Yes – if we change how we manage our soils. By working with our living soils rather than against them, we can meet increasing demand for food and keep farms economically viable.

As you might expect, organic and conservation farming is less damaging to soil fungi compared to conventional farming, due to their limited use of certain fertilisers and most pesticides.

These approaches also involve less ploughing or tilling of the soil, which lets fungal networks remain intact and so benefitting soil structure. This can promote plant protection from pests, and this soil biodiversity also keeps disease-causing microbes in check.

Clearly, changes to our agriculture can’t happen overnight. Sri Lanka’s sudden ban on synthetic fertilisers and pesticides in 2021 caused chaos in their farming sector and continues to threaten their food security. Widespread adoption of more sustainable farming techniques in Australia must be done gradually, with support and incentives from industry and government. But it will have to happen. The status quo can’t last, as our soils continue to deteriorate and fertilisers and pesticides become more expensive and unavailable.

To care for our soils, we need to know more about them

While we know the life permeating our soils is in trouble, we need to know more. One important finding from the State of the Environment report was the need for more data on the biology of our soil to aid sustainable land use.

Why? To date, most of our understanding of how farming impacts soil fungal diversity is based on overseas research. Despite the ecological importance of these microbiota and their potential to accelerate sustainable food production, we still don’t have a clear picture of what’s underneath our fields. For a start, we need to know what mycorrhizal fungi live where.

To overcome this challenge, we have launched Dig Up Dirt, a new nationwide research project designed to let us take stock of our beneficial soil fungi.

Farmers, land managers and citizen scientists can send us soil samples to allow us to map Australia’s networks of soil fungi. The data we collect will also be fed into the international efforts to map fungi globally.

This is a long-overdue step towards learning to work with soil fungi to benefit agriculture – while conserving the life below our feet.

Read more:
Fertilizer prices are soaring – and that’s an opportunity to promote more sustainable ways of growing crops

Adam Frew receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Christina Birnbaum has received funding from Parks Victoria. She is a lead-convenor of the Ecological Society of Australia Plant-Soil Ecology Research Chapter.

Eleonora Egidi receives funding from the Australian Research Council

Meike Katharina Heuck receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Soil abounds with life – and supports all life above it. But Australian soils need urgent repair – https://theconversation.com/soil-abounds-with-life-and-supports-all-life-above-it-but-australian-soils-need-urgent-repair-187280

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julie Shiels, Lecturer – School of Art, RMIT University

Review: Spowers & Syme, Geelong Gallery.

In their pioneering coloured linocut prints, Ethel Spowers (1890-1947) and Eveline Syme (1888-1961) captured the flux and excitement of an era of rapid change.

Their modernist interpretations of Australia in the interwar period have both a complexity and a simplicity. Colour is simultaneously bold and subtle; lines vigorous and delicate. Rhythm, arcs and movement populate their images of everyday spaces, people and places.

Yet, despite initial recognition in their time, Spowers and Syme have been largely forgotten.

Now, a new exhibition meticulously curated by Sarina Noordhuis-Fairfax plots their friendship, influences and creative development in the decades after the first world war – a time when new freedoms were afforded to women of their means.

Read more:
Beauty and audacity: Know My Name presents a new, female story of Australian art

Discovering a new art form

Spowers and Syme were childhood friends from rival media families who ran competing newspapers, The Argus and the Age. Spowers studied art and Symes studied classics. As young women, both had developing art practices in painting and printmaking.

They had regularly travelled “abroad” and knew the world beyond Australia was transforming in exciting ways. By the late 1920s, they decided to be part of it.

Seeking the energy and liveliness of the London art scene, both women left Australia to learn linocut printing from Claude Flight at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art.

Linoleum, a new flooring material adopted by artists from 1900, was a cheap and accessible way to make prints. Flight saw the colour linocut print as a modern medium for a modern age: a medium that enabled innovation to respond to the excitement of the times.

Flight revolutionised printmaking in the UK. His work drew on cubism and futurism, translating his ideas into multi-coloured linocuts evoking the speed and movement of the machine age.

As a teacher, he generously shared his enthusiasm and knowledge with a talented group of colleagues and students, including Cyril Power, Sybil Andrews and Lill Tschudi.

The Grosvenor School artists regularly exhibited their lino prints throughout the interwar years, and a small survey of their work is displayed in the heart of the exhibition. Paired with a cluster of Ethel Spowers’ prints of irrepressible children – swinging, leaping, jumping and jostling – this inclusion contrasts and contextualises the diversity of mark, method and subject matter.

Urban transformation

While Flight used curved lines and fragmented colours to evoke speed, on their return to Melbourne, Spowers and Syme developed a more subtle language of movement. Their work would capture the everydayness of change in urban landscapes and industrial sites, workers, child’s play and still life.

Symes’ scenes of trams, roads, factories and bridges embrace and celebrate urban transformation. The factory (1933) has a diminutive solitary figure purposefully striding past sinuous trees bending in the opposite direction set against a backdrop of vibrant green chimneys and belching orange smoke.

Produced from four differently carved pieces of lino and printed in four different colours, the subtlety of movement, patterns and extended palette are achieved by overprinting in transparent inks or paint. The background sky is the colour, texture and translucency of the oriental paper the work is printed on.

In Sydney tram line (1936), simple line work and blocks of colour send the eye across and up the image capturing the encroachment of industry and transport on a rather luscious green landscape.

The movement of people

Spowers’ linocuts capture momentary effects on people: rain pelting on a huddle of umbrellas, a frozen moment in children’s play and a rush of wind scattering sheets of paper.

In The Gust of Wind (1931), a newspaper-seller struggles to control his copies of the evening news. Arcs and rhythmic movements emphasise the futility of the worker’s attempts to contain the breakout.

Special Edition (1936) is a sea of newspapers, all firmly in the control of a phalanx of anonymous and obscured readers. The qualities of the oriental tissue paper are again employed as an intrinsic part of the image. The newspapers are defined by slender lines and the heads of readers blur into featureless anonymity.

Both remind us of Spowers’ family connection to the publishing industry.

A sense of optimism

While it is exciting to contemplate and celebrate the very long friendship between Spowers and Syme – an alliance that enabled them both to pursue careers as professional artists – their works also give us a sense of their class and privilege.

Spowers’ surging newspaper readers and striding children all appear to be barrelling towards the future with confidence despite the Great Depression and the growing threat of fascism.

The demeanour is one of optimism, innocence, humour or cheerful bravura and the realities of their time largely overlooked. Like many educated women of their means, social responsibilities were acquitted through philanthropy. Syme, known for her commitment to women’s education reform, and Spowers to women’s and children’s hospitals.

Spowers and Syme made prints about a modernising Australia. They employed new materials and printing techniques, drawing on modernist art styles and influences to express their enthusiastic embrace of change. Movement is key and the combination of simple forms and dynamic, rhythmic lines animate the linocuts.

These qualities make reproductions easy to apprehend in print or online, however much of the luminosity, and unexpected nuances are lost and can only be truly appreciated in person.

Spowers & Symes offers a rich encounter with their imagery and their lives, where colour and line come to life, opening up an exciting era of transformation and change in Australian art.

Spowers & Symes is a National Gallery of Australia touring exhibition, at Geelong Gallery until October 16.

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

– ref. How pioneering Australian linocut artists Ethel Spowers and Eveline Syme captured an exciting era of change – https://theconversation.com/how-pioneering-australian-linocut-artists-ethel-spowers-and-eveline-syme-captured-an-exciting-era-of-change-185597

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

Headwinds buffeting the economy – notably high inflation and a global slowdown – have led to a significant downgrade of Australia’s economic growth forecasts, compared with the pre-election estimates.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers will tell parliament on Thursday that estimated growth has been cut by half a percentage point for last financial year, this financial year and next year.

It is now expected that real GDP grew by 3.75% in 2021-22, rather than the pre-election forecast of 4.25%.

The growth forecast for 2022-23 is now 3%, down from 3.5%. Growth is expected to slow further in 2023-24, down from the earlier projected 2.5% to 2%.

The gloomy outlook on growth follows Wednesday’s news that inflation in the June quarter was 6.1%, slightly lower than market expectations but a big jump on the 5.1% in the March quarter.

As the cost of living surges, next week is set to see another hike in interest rates, the fourth in a row.

At his news conference after the release of the inflation numbers, Chalmers said he expected real wage growth “in this term of the parliament” but made it clear it would not occur any time soon.

He said that “a lot of people are living pay cheque to pay cheque for whom this inflation will be devastating because it’s getting harder and harder for them to substitute things out of their household budgets”.

He spoke to people widely and what he heard “again and again and again is that maybe in the first instance people started winding back on discretionary items – Netflix or something like that, we saw that in Netflix’s numbers – but it comes to a point when people are trying to work out what’s left to substitute out?

“I think that’s the practical demonstration of what’s happening here. Because at some point, the most vulnerable people are making decisions between vegetables or rent. And that’s when it really bites.”

In his Thursday economic statement, which he has said will be “confronting”, Chalmers will say: “Australia is outperforming much of the world, but that doesn’t make it easier to pay the bills at home.

“Our high inflation is primarily but not exclusively global. It will subside but not overnight.

“It’s been turbocharged by a decade of domestic failures on skills, on energy and on supply chains which just aren’t resilient enough.”

With inflation set to go higher before falling – the Reserve Bank predicts 7% by the end of the year – Chalmers will stress that the primary cause is certainly not higher wages. “We don’t have an inflation problem because workers are earning too much.”

Chalmers will say the revised forecasts reflect the economic circumstances the government is facing better than the pre-election forecasts.

Just as inflation will take some time to come down. so the domestic supply side pressures take some time to dissipate, he will say.

“In the meantime, higher interest rates, combined with the global slowdown […] will impact on Australia’s economic growth.”

But “the growing pressures on the economy and the country don’t make our election commitments less important – they make them far more crucial”.

The new parliament’s first question time on Wednesday was a relatively low key clash. The opposition focused its attack on the government’s dismantling of the Australian Building and Construction Commission. The government had ministers outline their plans in response to a series of “dorothy dix” questions from Labor backbenchers.

Michelle Grattan 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. Chalmers’s economic statement to say inflation and global slowdown will slash Australia’s growth – https://theconversation.com/chalmerss-economic-statement-to-say-inflation-and-global-slowdown-will-slash-australias-growth-187798

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Quiggin, Professor, School of Economics, The University of Queensland

The upsurge in inflation has revived old debates about what causes it.

Until recently, it has been an article of faith among both businesses and union leaders that inflation is “cost-push”, meaning it is caused by higher input prices.

Businesses (and Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe) fear a wage-price spiral, in which wages push up processing costs, and prices push up wages.

Union leaders, including ACTU Secretary Sally McManus, suggest it’s growing profits that are adding to prices and pushing up inflation.

Both versions of the cost-push theory are problematic.

The obvious difficulty with the wage-push idea is that wages have not grown fast, and show little sign of accelerating, even after a year of rapid prices growth.

Pushing real wages down even further as an anti-inflation measure is likely to do little more than exacerbate labour shortages.

The problem with the profit-push idea is more subtle.

Cost-push can’t explain what’s happening

The number of markets dominated by only a few large firms with pricing power has grown since the 1990s, but until very recently Australia had historically low inflation. And market concentration didn’t suddenly grow during COVID.

So, there is no obvious reason why profit-push inflation should emerge now, any more than there is a reason why wage-push inflation should happen now.

Our research on imperfectly competitive markets clarifies things.

Read more:
Inflation hasn’t been higher for 32 years. What now?

We have identified a theoretical channel through which market power amplifies, but does not trigger high inflation.

Central to the channel is the concept of a “strategic industry supply curve.”

What is a strategic industry supply curve?

When there is perfect competition, industries supply what would be expected.

But where one or more firms is big enough to have market power, for any given quantity sold, prices will be higher, and increasingly higher as demand for the product climbs.

This means that after a boost to demand, such as the one that followed the COVID stimulus and the end of lockdowns, firms with market power amplify the resulting inflationary shock.

Read more:
View from The Hill: Chalmers warns he’ll deliver bad news

The analysis works as follows. In setting prices, firms with market power balance the benefit of higher prices against the loss of sales due to reduced demand and increased supply from competing firms.

When demand increases, the losses from markups are lower.

Market power cuts both ways

However, a different analysis applies in the face of cost shocks from energy and other commodities, of the kind we have seen this year.

When costs increase, firms with market power might choose not to pass on the full increase, so as to avoid losing sales and market share.

A large body of research suggests that increases in import costs are typically not passed on in full, at least initially.

This has some interesting implications for fuel prices, to take one example.

Firms smooth shocks, even for petrol

A barrel of oil typically yields around 130 litres of liquid fuel along with some by-products, so the increase in world prices from US$80 to US$120 per barrel following the invasion of Ukraine added about 33 US cents (44 Australian cents) per litre to the cost of petrol.

But in fact, the increase in pump prices in Australia was only about 30c per litre.

The Morrison government’s temporary halving of the petrol excise cut 22 cents per litre from the price, but much of it was recouped in the next upward swing in the fuel cycle, leaving a reduction of only 15 cents per litre by May, after which prices remained high.

Read more:
What is petrol excise, and why does Australia have it anyway?

In effect, refiners and retailers recouped part of the reduction in margins they absorbed in response to the initial shock.

The good news is the removal of the subsidy in September should see an increase of less than 22c per litre, as long as global oil prices don’t rebound.

Although our analysis does not support the simplistic view that inflation is being driven by market power, it illuminates the way in which market power and inflation interact.

Most importantly, it provides no support for the idea of a wage-price spiral. And that means is no case for cutting real wages to fight inflation.

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

– ref. Inflation is being amplified by firms with market power – https://theconversation.com/inflation-is-being-amplified-by-firms-with-market-power-187418

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Quiggin, Professor, School of Economics, The University of Queensland

Earlier today, the federal government introduced its hotly awaited climate change bill to parliament. Despite the attention and controversy it’s attracted, the proposed legislation – as it stands – would be almost entirely symbolic.

Labor has updated Australia’s obligations under the Paris Agreement. So we’re already committed to a 43% emissions reduction by 2030, based on 2005 levels.

Enshrining the target in law might send a message that the new government is committed to reducing emissions. But as I explain below, the law will have little material effect.

Labor needs the support of the Greens and one other crossbencher to get the bill through the Senate. Labor won’t concede to the Greens’ core demands, but a climate “trigger” on new developments could ensure the bill has real force.

New laws are not needed

Introducing the bill to parliament on Wednesday, Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen said Labor’s emissions reduction target of 43% was “ambitious but achievable”. But in fact, the goal is far from ambitious – and in all likelihood will be easily met.

Even before the election, Australia was on track for a 35% emissions reduction – well above the commitment of the Morrison government. This was mainly due to state government action, and rapid take up of clean energy by households and businesses.

Former prime minister Scott Morrison could not publicly admit this, or adjust the government’s official target accordingly, at the risk of antagonising climate denialists on his own side.

But it means Australia is likely to be well on track to achieve the 43% target by the next election – with a little help from Labor’s modest proposed policy changes, and steep increases in the cost of coal, oil and gas. So legislating the target isn’t really necessary.

Nor does Labor need new laws to prevent a future Coalition government from scaling back the emissions reduction target.

Under the Paris Agreement, there is no process to go backwards. Nations are expected to rachet up their pledges until, it is hoped, global emissions fall to a trajectory consistent with global temperature goals.

Read more:
4 lessons for the Albanese government in making its climate targets law. We can’t afford to get this wrong

Unless Australian withdrew from the agreement altogether – as the Trump administration did in the United States – the 43% commitment is almost impossible to reverse.

Even ignoring our international commitments, the Coalition is unlikely to propose backtracking on the 43% target.

Even if it went to the next election promising no further action on climate change, Australia would still be on track to hit the target. So modifying the the target would bring no policy benefit – and would kill off any chance of recapturing seats lost to teal independents and Greens at the last election.

Labor has proposed to tighten the so-called “safeguard mechanism” established by the previous government. But this policy is achievable under existing law and did not require inclusion in the bill now before parliament.

The mechanism is supposed to prevent big industrial polluters from increasing their emissions beyond a certain cap – a move necessary to protect gains in emissions reduction made elsewhere in the economy.

In theory, polluters receive a financial incentive if their emissions fall below a previously established baseline, and incur a financial cost if their emissions exceed it. But under the Coalition, many polluters were allowed to increase their baselines to avoid being penalised.

Labor has proposed to implement the scheme more effectively. This relatively modest policy will proceed regardless of the climate bill’s passage.

Room to move on a climate ‘trigger’

The Greens have made two key demands in exchange for supporting Labor’s climate bill in the Senate: increasing the 43% target and a ban on new coal and gas projects.

There is virtually no chance Labor will agree to a higher target – given both its election commitments, and the political imperative of not being seen to cave in to the Greens.

Read more:
No, Mr Morrison – the safeguard mechanism is not a ‘sneaky carbon tax’

Nor is the government likely to accept an explicit ban on new coal and gas projects, even though the International Energy Agency says such a ban is needed.

There is, however, room for compromise. The Greens have called for the legislation to incorporate a “climate trigger”, which would mean development proposals are not approved unless their impact on climate change has been considered.

The trigger would mean new coal and gas projects could be rejected on the grounds of potential damage to the climate, without Labor having to commit to such a ban.

Labor did not rule out the trigger before the election, and elements of Labor’s grassroots membership are calling for the policy to form part of Labor’s planned overhaul of federal environment laws.

Making real progress

The election in May of an unprecedented number of independent and Green MPs reflected a groundswell of community feeling on the need for climate action. The federal government must take account of this, if the current parliament is to land on a sustainable climate policy.

The Greens and other crossbenchers should not rubber stamp a purely symbolic statement of Labor’s targets. But for their part, they should seek a sensible compromise on measures to help decarbonise the Australian and global economies.

And what of the Dutton-led opposition? The Coalition’s embrace of climate denialism produced one of its worst electoral defeats in history. Even if it votes against the legislation now before parliament, the Coalition’s political recovery depends on it taking a more constructive climate position in future.

Read more:
3 lessons from Australia’s ‘climate wars’ and how we can finally achieve better climate policy

John Quiggin is a former Member of the Climate Change Authority

– ref. Labor has introduced its controversial climate bill to parliament. Here’s how to give it real teeth – https://theconversation.com/labor-has-introduced-its-controversial-climate-bill-to-parliament-heres-how-to-give-it-real-teeth-187762

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Freya Shearer, Research Fellow, Epidemic Decision Support, The University of Melbourne

During the pandemic we have all become familiar with a lot of epidemiological concepts.

One that was introduced to us early in 2020 is the “basic reproductive number”, or R0. This tells us about the intrinsic contagiousness of a virus, or its inherent capacity to be spread from one person to another in a particular population.

We also learned about the “effective reproductive number”, or Reff. This tells us about the rate at which a virus is actually spreading through that population.

With the emergence of BA.4/5, there has been some confusion around how these concepts help us to understand why one variant spreads faster than another.

Just because a variant spreads faster, it doesn’t necessarily mean it has a higher R0.

What does the R0 actually tell us?

R0 tells us about the number of secondary cases arising from a single case in a fully susceptible population. It describes the potential capacity of a pathogen (such as a virus) to spread, and is pathogen-specific.

Pathogens with higher R0 values have the potential to cause larger epidemics. For ancestral strains of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID), R0 was estimated to be around 3.

R0 is also population-specific. It depends on the population’s behaviour at “baseline”, before the pandemic. For example, a densely populated city with lots of indoor venues in which people mix is likely to have a higher R0 for the same pathogen than a region with a sparse population and less mixing between groups.

Read more:
R0: How scientists quantify the intensity of an outbreak like coronavirus and predict the pandemic’s spread

What about the Reff?

The Reff is the average number of new infections caused by an infected individual in the presence of public health measures, behavioural change, and population immunity (from previous infection and vaccination).

The Reff will therefore change over time.

It is a key indicator of whether an epidemic is growing or shrinking. When the Reff is above 1, the epidemic is growing. If control measures, population immunity, or other factors can bring the Reff below 1, the epidemic is in decline.

Throughout the pandemic, the Reff has been routinely estimated for Australia and reported to decision-makers.

How do new variants out-compete existing ones?

The COVID pandemic can be divided into several distinct eras, each defined by the emergence of a new variant:

• Alpha in late 2020
• Delta in mid-2021
• Omicron BA.1 in late 2021
• Omicron BA.2 in early 2022
• and now Omicron BA.4 and BA.5.

Each of these variants was able to outcompete and replace the one before it.

If we observe that a hypothetical “variant A” is spreading through a population faster than “variant B”, we say that variant A has a “growth advantage” over variant B.

This growth advantage, if sustained, means variant A will replace variant B as the new dominant variant spreading in the population.

A variant can have a growth advantage and not actually be intrinsically more transmissible. In fact, the R0 of variant A may be higher, lower, or the same as variant B.

This is because the growth advantage of variant A, compared to variant B, may be driven by any combination of:

1. a shorter generation time
2. increased intrinsic transmissibility (R0)
3. an increased level of “immune evasion”.

Each of these drivers has a different impact on the future epidemic trajectory and implications for the effectiveness of control measures.

Shorter generation time

A shorter generation time means a shorter time, on average, between a person becoming infected and then infecting another person. The average number of new infections arising from each infected person is the same for both variants, but those infections happen more quickly for variant A. This will lead to a more rapid rise in cases of variant A, even when R0 is the same.

Intrinsic transmissibility

Increased intrinsic transmissibility refers to the situation where the R0 of variant A is higher than that of variant B. Multiple different biological changes to the virus, such as changes that increase the infectiousness of an infected person, may drive this.

Immune evasion

Immune evasion refers to how easily a variant infects people who have previously been infected and or vaccinated.

Variants with very high levels of immune evasion can spread quickly in highly immune populations because there are simply more people in the population who are able to be infected. But it doesn’t mean they are intrinsically more transmissible.

In fact, they may even have a reduced R0 and still have a growth advantage.

Implications for Reff

All three of these mechanisms can result in a growth advantage, but have different implications for the Reff of variant A compared to variant B.

An increase in intrinsic transmissibility or immune escape will lead to an increased Reff for variant A compared to variant B. However a shorter generation time can lead to a growth advantage without affecting the Reff. If variant A has only a shorter generation time, it will spread faster through the population than variant B.

How has this played out in the COVID pandemic?

Over the course of the COVID pandemic, several variants have emerged with considerable growth advantage over previous variants: Alpha, then Delta, Omicron BA.1 and BA.2, and most recently, Omicron BA.4 and BA.5.

The reasons for the growth advantage over previous variants have been driven by different factors.

Alpha’s growth advantage over ancestral strains was estimated to be due to higher intrinsic transmissibility. Scientists estimated the basic reproduction number (R0) of Alpha was 43–90% higher than for ancestral strains.

When Omicron BA.1 rapidly emerged in late 2021 in highly immune populations (including Australia, where most jurisdictions had achieved more than 85% second-dose vaccine coverage in eligible groups), scientists immediately suspected immune evasion was playing a role.

Analyses of emerging data quantified the relative contribution of immune evasion and intrinsic transmissibility that could explain the rapid spread.

Most recently, we have seen the rapid rise of Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 globally. Emerging evidence suggests immune evasion is, once again, likely a significant factor contributing to the transmission advantage of BA.4 and BA.5 over previous Omicron variants.

This means we expect BA.4 and BA.5 to spread rapidly in Australia, despite our very high levels of vaccination coverage and lots of previous infection.

However, the R0 may not have changed. Even with the same intrinsic transmissibility, simply having more of the population being susceptible again, means the same R0 will end up translating to more infections.

Not a simple calculation

Throughout the pandemic, infectious disease epidemiologists have had to carefully evaluate the available data to estimate why a new variant has a growth advantage.

Others, including some scientists on The Conversation, have unfortunately simply assumed that the growth advantage is due to an increased intrinsic transmissibility.

They have done this by multiplying the R0 of an existing variant by how much faster a new variant is estimated to be spreading. Repeated application of this approach has resulted in an inflated R0 estimate for BA.4/5, similar to that of measles.

While this approach was OK for Alpha, because household studies showed that the variant spread more efficiently in previously unexposed populations, it was not appropriate once Omicron appeared.

None of these considerations are unique to COVID. For example, new influenza variants mostly arise due to immune escape, driving a growth advantage and replacement of the previously circulating strain.

Read more:
Australia is heading for its third Omicron wave. Here’s what to expect from BA.4 and BA.5

So what is the R0 of BA.4/5?

With the emergence of each new variant, the task has become more challenging as the population’s infection history (whether you’ve been infected before, when and how many times) makes interpretation of the data more and more difficult.

And so it is now very difficult to estimate the R0 for BA.4/5.

It is certainly higher than for Alpha and Delta, with the weight of evidence indicating a value at least double that of the ancestral variant (3). That would make it around 6.

And it is likely higher still because Omicron BA.1 out-competed Delta due to both an increase in intrinsic transmissibility and immune escape.

We don’t yet fully understand why BA.2 replaced BA.1, with both intrinsic transmissibility and immune escape potentially contributing. But we do know that immune evasion is sufficient to explain the observed growth advantage of BA.4/5 over BA.2.

Therefore, our current best estimate for the R0 for BA.4/5 is that it is likely similar to that for BA.2, but the actual value remains uncertain. It is likely in the range of 6-10.

Read more:
Why we corrected our estimates for the reproduction number of two COVID subvariants

Freya Shearer receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Australian Government Departments of Health and Foreign Affairs and Trade, and NSW Health.

Catherine Bennett receives funding from Medical Research Future Find and the National Health and Medical Research Council. Catherine is also on the scientific advisory committee for Impact Health Technology and ResApp Healthcare Pty Ltd, and was an independent expert on the AstraZeneca COVID Vaccine Advisory Committee in 2021.

James McCaw receives funding from the Australian Government Departments of Health and Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Australian Research Council and the National Health and Medical Research Council. He is an invited expert member of the Communicable Disease Network of Australia and between January 2020 and May 2022 was an invited expert member of the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee.

Nick Golding receives funding from Australian, NSW, and WA Government Departments of Health, the Australian Research Council and the National Health and Medical Research Council.

Hassan Vally 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 COVID variants may be more transmissible but that doesn’t mean the R0 – or basic reproduction number – has increased – https://theconversation.com/new-covid-variants-may-be-more-transmissible-but-that-doesnt-mean-the-r0-or-basic-reproduction-number-has-increased-186826

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susan Hazel, Senior Lecturer, School of Animal and Veterinary Science, University of Adelaide

Does your cat kick litter all over the floor? What does this mean and how can you stop it?

Despite being skilled predators, cats are also mesopredators, meaning they are both predators and prey. Unlike apex predators at the top of the food chain with no natural predators, cats are in the middle, preying on smaller animals and being preyed upon by larger animals.

Because they are also a prey animal, cats developed instinctive behaviours to protect them from nearby predators. One of these behaviours is digging in the litter tray. Cats likely dig and cover their waste to hide their presence from visiting predators, who might be attracted by the scent.

Covering waste may also help cats to avoid parasites.

Read more:
One in three people are infected with _Toxoplasma_ parasite – and the clue could be in our eyes

Cat waste also acts as an important communicator to other cats in the area, signalling how long ago a cat came through, a female that may be in heat or many other messages a cat may leave behind.

Which brings us to: what can you do about it, so your cat isn’t kicking litter everywhere?

In terms of changing the cat’s behaviour, the short answer is: nothing. Digging is a natural and important behaviour and trying to interrupt that may cause stress and confusion for your cat.

In fact, cats who dig in their litter box for longer probably like their litter box more and are less likely to have problems with pooing or weeing.
Inappropriate pooing or weeing, especially outside the litter tray, can indicate urinary problems in cats. In a survey, of Australian cats around 20% pooed or weed outside the litter tray.

There are some simple solutions in setting up litter trays that can keep you and your cat happy – and litter in the tray.

1. Litter hygiene (you, not them)

Have you ever had to pull a gross bit of food from the sink? Your cat may feel similarly about placing their paws in a dirty litter box.

Your cat’s hesitance to use their dirty litter tray may be leading them to hedge their bets, sticking to the edge, where the litter is less soaked, and kicking litter all over the floor.

The solution: Clean the tray regularly. Ideally, remove solid waste as it happens or once a day, and completely change over the litter every few days or before the top layer becomes soaked.

2. Overfilled litter

When it comes to filling the litter tray, more isn’t always better.

For cats with health issues such as arthritis, pain or restricted mobility, an overfilled litter box means trying to balance on an unstable mound of litter. And the more litter in the tray, the more litter that can end up on the floor.

Even cats without health issues may feel the need to dig deeper to find a stable surface to squat on. This means more litter on the floor both because of the increased volume and the cats extra efforts in digging.

The solution: Fill the tray with around 2-4cm (1-2 inches) of litter.

3. Litter box number and choice

The general rule of thumb is one litter tray per cat plus one for the household. These should be placed around the house if possible, in places where your cats feel safe to go about their business.

Many litter boxes are too small. If your cat is constantly kicking litter around, try investing in a larger box. A covered litter box may be a solution, but cats are individuals too and some don’t like being cooped up when trying to poo or wee.

You can find trays with higher sides or an additional edge that hangs over and stops some of the litter from flying.

If you can’t find something large enough or suitable, you can try making your own from something as simple as a plastic washing tub.

A great way to work out which type of litter box your cat prefers is to place two different types side by side and see which one they use the most.

4. Wipe your paws

If it’s not any of the above, its possible your cat just has a real zest for kicking up litter.

If the litter on the floor is a real problem for you, you can place specific mats around the litter or in the doorway to the room(s) where the litter is.

These mats help to collect the litter as the cat walks over them, containing that kicked up mess to a smaller area and stopping litter from being tracked into your other rooms.

Toileting outside the litter box may indicate a behavioural or medical problem. If making the changes suggested above doesn’t help do consult your veterinarian.

If your cat is squatting frequently without much result, you should consult your veterinarian as quickly as possible.

Read more:
Curious Kids: How can you tell if your cat is happy and likes you?

Susan Hazel is affiliated with the Dog & Cat Management Board of SA and RSPCA SA.

Julia Henning 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. Why does my cat kick litter all over the place? 4 tips from cat experts – https://theconversation.com/why-does-my-cat-kick-litter-all-over-the-place-4-tips-from-cat-experts-186928

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mohiuddin Ahmed, Lecturer of Computing & Security, Edith Cowan University

This week Amazon announced plans to fork out US$3.9 billion (A$5.6 billion) to acquire US healthcare company One Medical.

One Medical reportedly provides primary care on a membership basis to some 800,000 people across the United States. In its own words, it claims to be “on a mission to make getting quality care more affordable, accessible and enjoyable for all”.

But why is Amazon – the company that helps you get a cheap home projector, or a toaster – investing in this area?

What is One Medical?

With a subscription fee of just US$199 per year, One Medical helps bridge the gap between the US’s inefficient public healthcare system and people’s need for (expensive) healthcare insurance.

It provides a comprehensive set of online resources for paying members, including a mobile app to seek medical support and “24/7 access to virtual care”.

Evidently the company has done well for itself, reporting a net revenue of more than US$250 million in 2022’s first quarter.

Meanwhile, Amazon has been increasing its presence in the healthcare sector for some years. In 2018 it acquired PillPack, which became Amazon Pharmacy. And in 2020 it introduced Amazon Care – a virtual healthcare company that connects patients with a range of telehealth and primary care services.

By acquiring One Medical, which was a competitor, Amazon is moving further in on the US healthcare market. This isn’t dissimilar to what it did with book retailers, when it first launched as what was essentially an online bookstore.

Is it all about data?

Amazon knows a lot about its customers. Through user browsing and purchases made on its website, it collects vast amounts of data to better understand what people need and want – with the ultimate goal of selling more products and services.

Amazon also has the option to tap into a worldwide network of Amazon-branded devices, such as Echo and Alexa. Recent research has suggested Amazon uses voice data collected through Alexa to target potential customers with advertisements.

Often, tech companies claim they collect data to generate a more positive experience for customers. They might be able to present you with personalised product options, saving you time and energy.

But what about when you combine this data with more privileged and sensitive information related to your health?

Read more:
Amazon Echo’s privacy issues go way beyond voice recordings

Connecting the dots

Amazon isn’t just a giant online shopping mall. It’s also a leading provider of artificial intelligence (AI) services.

While there may be some legislative protections in certain jurisdictions, it wouldn’t be difficult for Amazon to connect the dots between people’s healthcare data and all the other data it already collects.

An Amazon spokesperson said One Medical customer information protected under the US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) would be “handled separately from all other Amazon businesses as required by law”.

This does point to some basic level of privacy protection; HIPAA is designed to protect people’s personally identifiable information, medical history and other sensitive health data.

But how well Amazon can assure customers this is being adhered to will hinge on it being transparent. Without this, it will be hard for anyone on the outside to figure out the inner workings of the data handling.

The spokesperson said:

As required by law, Amazon will never share One Medical customers’ personal health information outside of One Medical for advertising or marketing purposes of other Amazon products and services without clear permission from the customer.

In regard to needing “clear permission from customers”, ideally this means Amazon will ensure the permissions process is absolutely transparent. But transparency around data-sharing requests remains a murky issue in the big tech space.

After all, voice data collected by Amazon devices can be deleted – but how many people do this? How many are aware they can?

Will Amazon start targeting Amazon Pharmacy ads for vital medications to One Medical patients who have provided “clear permission” for data sharing?

In the past, Amazon has admitted to handing over people’s personal data (collected through its Ring doorbells) to US police, without consent or warrants.

Expanding its empire?

As Amazon steps further into the healthcare space, it’s not a stretch to think it could combine its AI capabilities and Alexa voice data to target sick people with medical products or Amazon Care services.

In a worst-case scenario, we may see Amazon monopolise the US healthcare industry, with its usual practice of undercutting competitors and hard-selling to customers. It lures customers with low prices, before egging them into buying more.

Amazon Pharmacy already offers discounted drugs to Prime members. And it could be imagined those willing to pay higher fees might secure better healthcare from Amazon, opening a door into health insurance services.

The wealth of information Amazon is aggregating also makes it a more attractive target for cyber attacks and data leaks. Information that was previously held in various, disparate networks is now contained within the servers of one organisation. Criminals will inevitably take an interest.

The sensitive nature of patient information, coupled with the fact that many health organisations still use outdated digital infrastructure, means the healthcare industry is ripe for exploitation.

Read more:
Australian hospitals are under constant cyber attack. The consequences could be deadly

Could it happen here?

Luckily, the Australian healthcare system is not like the US model, where there’s no universal healthcare program.

Currently, just over half of Australian residents have private health insurance. But private health membership has declined, on and off, since the country’s publicly funded universal healthcare scheme was introduced in 1975 (as Medibank), before being replaced by the Medicare system in 1984.

Australia has more than 30 health insurers offering around 3,500 different health insurance products. With this much competition, it’s unlikely Amazon will be interested in entering the Australian market with healthcare products – at least for the foreseeable future.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Amazon just took over a primary healthcare company for a lot of money. Should we be worried? – https://theconversation.com/amazon-just-took-over-a-primary-healthcare-company-for-a-lot-of-money-should-we-be-worried-187627

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Maria O’Sullivan, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, and Deputy Director, Castan Centre for Human Rights Law, Monash University

Disturbing footage emerged this week of a chess-playing robot breaking the finger of a seven-year-old child during a tournament in Russia.

Public commentary on this event highlights some concern in the community about the increasing use of robots in our society. Some people joked on social media that the robot was a “sore loser” and had a “bad temper”.

Of course, robots cannot actually express real human characteristics such as anger (at least, not yet). But these comments do demonstrate increasing concern in the community about the “humanisation” of robots. Others noted that this was the beginning of a robot revolution – evoking images that many have of robots from popular films such as RoboCop and The Terminator.

While these comments may have been made in jest and some images of robots in popular culture are exaggerated, they do highlight uncertainty about what our future with robots will look like. We should ask: are we ready to deal with the moral and legal complexities raised by human-robot interaction?

Human and robot interaction

Many of us have basic forms of artificial intelligence in our home. For instance, robotic vacuums are very popular items in houses across Australia, helping us with chores we would rather not do ourselves.

But as we increase our interaction with robots, we must consider the dangers and unknown elements in the development of this technology.

Examining the Russian chess incident, we might ask why the robot acted the way it did? The answer to this is that robots are designed to operate in situations of certainty. They do not deal well with unexpected events.

So in the case of the child with the broken finger, Russian chess officials stated the incident occurred because the child “violated” safety rules by taking his turn too quickly. One explanation of the incident was that when the child moved quickly, the robot mistakenly interpreted the child’s finger as a chess piece.

Whatever the technical reason for the robot’s action, it demonstrates there are particular dangers in allowing robots to interact directly with humans. Human communication is complex and requires attention to voice and body language. Robots are not yet sophisticated enough to process those cues and act appropriately.

Read more:
Researchers trained an AI model to ‘think’ like a baby, and it suddenly excelled

What does the law say about robots?

Despite the dangers of human-robot interaction demonstrated by the chess incident, these complexities have not yet been adequately considered in Australian law and policies.

One fundamental legal question is who is liable for the acts of a robot. Australian consumer law sets out robust requirements for product safety for goods sold in Australia. These include provisions for safety standards, safety warning notices and manufacturer liability for product defects. Using these laws, the manufacturer of the robot in the chess incident would ordinarily be liable for the damage caused to the child.

However, there are no specific provisions in our product laws related to robots. This is problematic because Australian Consumer law provides a defence to liability. This could be used by manufacturers of robots to evade their legal responsibility, as it applies if

the state of scientific or technical knowledge at the time when the goods were supplied by their manufacturer was not such as to enable that safety defect to be discovered.

To put it simply, the robot manufacturer could argue that it was not aware of the safety defect and could not have been aware. It could also be argued that the consumer used the product in a way that was not intended. Therefore, I would argue more specific laws directly dealing with robots and other technology are needed in Australia.

Law reform bodies have done some work to guide our lawmakers in this area. For instance, the Australian Human Rights Commission handed down a landmark Human Rights and Technology Report in 2021. The report recommended the Australian government establish an AI safety commissioner focused on promoting safety and protecting human rights in the development and use of AI in Australia. The government has not yet implemented this recommendation, but it would provide a way for robot manufacturers and suppliers to be held accountable.

Implications for the future

The chess robot’s acts this week have demonstrated the need for greater legal regulation of artificial intelligence and robotics in Australia. This is particularly so because robots are increasingly being used in high-risk environments such as aged care and to assist people with a disability. Sex robots are also available in Australia and are very human-like in appearance, raising ethical and legal concerns about the unforeseen consequences of their use.

Read more:
Six ways robots are used today that you probably didn’t know about

Using robots clearly has some benefits for society – they can increase efficiency, fill staff shortages and undertake dangerous work on our behalf.

But this issue is complex and requires a complex response. While a robot breaking a child’s finger may be seen as a once-off, it should not be ignored. This event should cause our legal regulators to implement more sophisticated laws that directly deal with robots and AI.

Maria O’Sullivan received funding in the past from the Commonwealth Attorney-General’s Department as part of a research consultancy on automated decision-making.

– ref. A robot breaks the finger of a 7-year-old: a lesson in the need for stronger regulation of artificial intelligence – https://theconversation.com/a-robot-breaks-the-finger-of-a-7-year-old-a-lesson-in-the-need-for-stronger-regulation-of-artificial-intelligence-187612

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andreea S. Calude, Senior Lecturer in Linguistics, University of Waikato

Social media has the reputation of being spontaneous, rushed, prone to typos and ungrammatical sentences, and generally a linguistic disaster. And some of it is. However, analysis of Twitter posts on the topic of COVID-19 suggests there is more to social media language than first meets the eye.

While pandemics are not new, COVID-19 is the first to occur in the social media era. Anyone with a device and internet connection has had unlimited access to platforms from which to voice personal opinions and experiences.

As physical social distancing measures were introduced in 2020, Twitter saw an avalanche of related posts. One of their main characteristics was a predisposition to persuasion: Stay home! End lockdown now! Be kind! I wish everyone stopped hoarding toilet paper! Jacinda needs to lock the borders!

Everyone had an opinion, whether supportive or critical of government policy, including calling for even stronger measures. People were keen not only to share their opinions, but also to convince others and to direct them towards various actions.

But the link between people’s political stance and the language they used to express it wasn’t always what you might expect, as we discovered in our latest research.

Instruction and politeness

The language of persuasion presents an interesting paradox. On the one hand, we want to instruct people and influence them. On the other, no one wants to be told what to do, so we want to maintain harmony and not alienate others.

In English, there is a special grammatical construction whose function is to instruct, known as the “imperative” – for example, “Stay home, save lives”.

But that’s not the only way to instruct. There are more polite and vague alternatives. The strength of the directive can be softened by the use of politeness (“Please stay calm”), or “modal” verbs (“Everyone should stay calm”), or by what are known as “irrealis” constructions (“I wish everyone would stay calm”). Sometimes several strategies can be combined (“Please can everyone stay calm”).

In our recent study, we manually analysed 1,000 tweets from 2020 containing the hashtag #Covid19NZ (or variations of that) to discover which language strategies people employed to persuade others. We also included their political stance – whether they were supportive of government lockdown measures or not.

What we found surprised us: users opposed to COVID-19 restrictions who tweeted against government measures took greater care to soften their directives, opting for more polite and vague language; those in support of government actions used more forceful imperatives.

Read more:
Why does grammar matter?

It might seem counter-intuitive that individuals opposing government measures should be so indirect. However, at the time of those initial lockdowns, the majority seemed to accept the sacrifices necessary to protect their own and vulnerable people’s health (we certainly found this in the tweets analysed).

This may explain why those going against the government and perceived popular opinion were being linguistically cautious. They didn’t want to alienate others by appearing too forceful or hotheaded, and so they varied the grammar in their tweets. Such indirect language could also be used for sarcasm and to maintain plausible deniability.

Grammar is more than right or wrong

Grammar is not just about the rules that arise from maintaining consistency within language (for example, subject-verb agreement: “I like grammar, he likes grammar”). Grammar can vary in order to allow for subtlety of expression, too.

The grammatical system presents us with options and has built-in flexibility. Variation is used by speakers to put forward their many opinions, agendas and communication goals in more nuanced ways.

Interestingly, even on a social media platform like Twitter, such nuanced and strategic communication can and does take place. Users may not always plan or edit their posts perfectly, but they are linguistically savvy nonetheless.

We are currently analysing Twitter posts from later in the pandemic, specifically on the topic of vaccines, and the mood has certainly shifted in that time. Both camps appear more aggressive in their directives, less inclined to use indirect language.

Read more:
The slippery grammar of spoken vs written English

As the debate becomes more heated, the stakes rise and there are more opinions in the mix. It’s no longer just about being for or against government measures; support for a measure may not always mean support for the means used to achieve it. Consequently, language strategies are changing too.

For example, an anti-vaccine campaigner writes in their tweet: “Save mothers and babies”. The forceful imperative is more subtle than it first appears, implying that vaccinating children (and their mothers) puts them at risk, without stating what the risk is but hinting it could even be fatal.

As ever, language is a vehicle that divides as well as unites us.

This article was co-written by Jessie Burnette, a Masters Student in English and Linguistics at the University of Waikato.

Andreea S. Calude 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. We analysed NZ Twitter users’ language during lockdown – with surprising results – https://theconversation.com/we-analysed-nz-twitter-users-language-during-lockdown-with-surprising-results-187520

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stefan Hajkowicz, Senior Principal Scientist, Strategy and Foresight, Data61

Around 3.7 million Australians have been unintentionally caught in an ocean rip. For the unprepared it can be a harrowing experience – but for experienced surfers, rips are a handy way to ride through the whitewash and out to the break.

We’re not surfers, but we work at Australia’s national science agency in “strategic foresight”, which you can think of as the study of the currents taking the world into the future. These currents are a bit like ocean rips: they present risks for those who don’t understand them, but opportunities for societies, organisations and people who are prepared.

We call the biggest currents “megatrends”, and in a new report we examine the megatrends that will shape the next 20 years.

From learning to live in a changing climate and shrinking our ecological footprint to navigating geopolitical earthquakes and the rise of artificial intelligence, these seven megatrends will transform many aspects of our lives over the coming decades.

Our future world

In 2012, CSIRO published a report called Our Future World, which delivered an evidence-based view of future megatrends to allow Australia to take early action in response.

The new report gives an update on where we’re at and where we’re going. It captures the impacts of the pandemic, among other trends and drivers.

Many of the issues we saw as possible or plausible in 2012 are now a lived reality.

Read more:
What are the future megatrends all Australians need to know about?

Australia, like many other countries, is grappling with flooding, bushfires and extreme heat associated with climate change. Pandemics and infectious diseases, which were a footnote in our earlier writings, have had inescapable impacts in recent times.

And the global economic restructuring we spoke of 10 years ago, mainly as an opportunity, has an increasingly important geopolitical dimension. These trends will have key implications for countries like Australia seeking to maintain peace and stability.

So, what does the future have in store?

What are the new megatrends?

The first and perhaps most concerning megatrend we identified is “adapting to climate change”. Weather-related hazards are becoming more frequent and more severe, and many communities, industries and societies are not prepared for what lies ahead.

Heatwaves in Australia could be more than 85% more frequent and last up to a month if global temperatures rise between 1.5°C and 3°C. Building resilience to extreme weather events will be critical over the coming decade.

Read more:
The world endured 2 extra heatwave days per decade since 1950 – but the worst is yet to come

The second megatrend is what we call “leaner, cleaner and greener”: innovative solutions to meet demand for the world’s finite food, water, mineral and energy resources.

Renewable energy and low-emissions technologies, synthetic biology, alternative proteins and advanced recycling all allow us to operate within much tighter envelopes. Recent estimates suggest Australia is on track to generate half its electricity from renewables by 2025.

Health at risk in a changing world

The third megatrend is “the escalating health imperative”: ageing populations, high rates of chronic illness, and a pandemic-driven surge in mental health issues are driving an unsustainable growth in healthcare spending. This spending is expected to grow faster than GDP in most OECD countries over the coming decade.

Infectious disease risks associated with pandemics, outbreaks and antimicrobial drug resistance will elevate into the future. There is an urgent need for innovation in the healthcare sector to find ways to do more with less.

Read more:
Remote village to metropolis: how globalisation spreads infectious diseases

The fourth megatrend is “geopolitical shifts”: disrupted patterns of global trade, geopolitical tensions and growing investment in defence.

While the global economy shrunk by 3.2% in 2020, global military spend reached an all-time high of A$2.9 trillion. This expenditure coincides with growing geopolitical tensions in the Asia-Pacific region.

At the same time, we have seen increased co-operation between democratic countries, including the recent expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to include Finland and Sweden.

The digital and the human

The fifth megatrend is “diving into digital”. While the digital economy has been growing rapidly for some time, the pandemic fuelled a boom in teleworking, telehealth, online retail, education and entertainment.

Around 40% of Australians now work remotely on a regular basis. The digital workforce is expected to increase by 79% from 2020 to 2025.

Read more:
So this is how it feels when the robots come for your job: what GitHub’s Copilot ‘AI assistant’ means for coders

The sixth megatrend we identified is “increasingly autonomous”. As the capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) have surged, it has found applications across practically all industry sectors.

AI research is taking a growing share of global research and development spending and peer-reviewed research publications. These developments are opening up opportunities to boost productivity and address some of humanity’s greatest challenges.

The final megatrend is “unlocking the human dimension”. Issues relating to trust, transparency and environmental and social governance are of particular importance.

While Australia saw a temporary boost in public trust in institutions in 2021, this trust bubble was short-lived. Societal trust in Australia dropped below the global average yet again in 2022.

The innovation imperative

Our study of the current state of global megatrends presents a sobering view of the future and the challenges ahead of us. But this knowledge also equips us with the power to shape this future, by understanding the ocean rips we want to ride or survive.

As we look to the future of this work at CSIRO, we will focus on working with industry, government and academia to tackle Australia’s greatest challenges. Using these megatrends, we can focus our science and technology on the big things that matter the most and create real value for all Australians.

Claire Naughtin works for CSIRO. She receives funding from the Australian Government for research and consulting projects.

Stefan Hajkowicz 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. ‘Like ocean rips’: CSIRO report identifies 7 ‘global megatrends’ shaping the 21st century – https://theconversation.com/like-ocean-rips-csiro-report-identifies-7-global-megatrends-shaping-the-21st-century-187433

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Stewart, John Bray Professor of Law, University of Adelaide

Australia’s controversial building industry watchdog is earmarked for the chopping block. But federal industrial relations minister Tony Burke has started by pulling a few of its teeth.

He’s used his ministerial powers to gut the code of conduct empowering the Australian Building and Construction Commission to wage war against everything from compulsory union agreements to workers displaying union logos.

The code of conduct applies only to contractors seeking or working on federally funded building projects – but they must comply with it on all their projects. So it has been a big stick for the ABCC.

Burke has likely moved to gut the code now because he can. Abolishing the ABCC will be harder, requiring Senate support to repeal the legislation establishing it.

Read more:
Government pulls teeth of Australian Building and Construction Commission

How the ABCC came into existence

The Howard government established the Office of the Australian Building and Construction Commissioner in 2005, following the 2003 final report of the Cole royal commission into the building and construction industry.

The royal commission had found “a culture of lawlessness” in the industry, in which participants

instinctively succumb to the exercise of industrial muscle in the interests of commercial expediency and survival.

Criminal activity such as physical violence and taking bribes was not unknown. The larger issue was workers and their union representatives using their collective power – threatening, say, to strike at a critical point – to achieve their demands.

Lawful or not, such behaviour got results, with many employers wary of taking the legal recourse open to them. The ABCC’s main job was to do this on their behalf by enforcing the rules relating to industrial action and freedom of association, among others.

The Gillard Labor government moved to abolish the ABCC in 2012 – though it still saw the value of a specialist regulator, replacing it with the Office of the Fair Work Building Industry Inspectorate.

But the Turnbull Coalition government found the Senate votes in 2016 to re-establish it (with a slightly different name, the Australian Building and Construction Commission).

Read more:
Bringing back building ‘watchdog’ helps a political agenda, but not concerns about union corruption

Since then the ABCC’s main target has been the Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union. Of 31 cases it now has before the courts, 27 involve the union.

Breaking the code

The union has certainly given the regulator reason to be active. Its officials have routinely been implicated in unlawful strikes, coercion and other misbehaviour, and the union has paid many millions of dollars in fines.

Read more:
Militant unionists are striking out: here are 4 things unions can do to stay relevant

But some of the powers given to the ABCC through the Code for the Tendering and Performance of Building Work (also introduced by the Turnbull government) were considered petty.

The code included incredibly detailed requirements on how contractors managed worksites, and on what they could agree on through collective bargains.

It banned union imagery because it might imply union membership was compulsory. Even a union’s logo on a safety poster was deemed unacceptable.

The code also precluded employers from agreeing to anything that limited their “right” to manage. As a result the ABCC ruled that many standard clauses in union-negotiated enterprise agreements breached the code, even though they would be lawful under the Fair Work Act and unremarkable in any other sector.

Burke’s ministerial powers

Like the ABCC, the code was mandated through an act of parliament, so it can only be abolished with a further act. But it can be amended by regulation, which is what the minister has done.

Burke’s amendments are mostly deletions, leaving just a handful of provisions specifically required by the governing act, and removing the ABCC’s oversight.

Business groups will oppose the changes, but contractors may well breathe a sigh of relief at less red tape. They will no longer have to submit their enterprise agreements or workplace relations management plans for the ABCC’s approval.

Parliament could overule Burke’s amendments. But the more likely argument will be in Senate about the ABCC itself.

Shifting responsibility to the Fair Work Ombudsman

With the Greens in support and the Coalition opposed, the government will need one cross-bench vote to abolish the ABCC.

The argument that workers in one industry should not be singled out for special restrictions is a powerful one.

On the other hand, there’s a strong case that CFMMEU officials will not stop breaching what they regard as unjust restrictions. In the absence of the ABCC, it will fall to the Fair Work Ombudsman to investigate alleged breaches of the Fair Work Act by union officials or workers.

Burke has said the ombudsman’s office will get more funding to do this, but not as much as the ABCC, because it won’t have as many cases to prosecute.

There is some danger the ombudsman will have to choose between diverting resources from other work (such as combating wage theft) and turning a blind eye to misbehaviour in the building industry, leaving it to those adversely affected to take court action of their own, as occurs in other sectors.

Read more:
Shocking yet not surprising: wage theft has become a culturally accepted part of business

To secure a Senate majority the government may have to commit to giving the Fair Work Ombudsman’s greater resources and priorities.

If that results in a special unit for the building industry, with dedicated resources, unions may well wonder how much has really changed.

Andrew Stewart 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. Killing off the building watchdog may not be the win unionists want – https://theconversation.com/killing-off-the-building-watchdog-may-not-be-the-win-unionists-want-187601

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Libby (Elizabeth) Sander, Assistant Professor of Organisational Behaviour, Bond Business School, Bond University

Telstra and Westpac are the latest companies to encourage staff to work from home, just a few months after some of them returned to the office.

Working from home for extended periods can leave employees feeling socially and professionally isolated. When people work from home, they have fewer opportunities to interact and acquire information, which may explain why remote workers feel less confident than their office-based counterparts.

Researchers also report working from home (WFH) is linked to negative physical health outcomes such as increased musculoskeletal pain and weight gain, as well as exhaustion.

If you are still working from home or your employer has just reinstated it, the good news is there are evidence-backed tips that can help overcome the challenges. Here are seven tips to navigating the coming weeks and months.

1. Maintain your connections

A chief complaint in surveys about working from home is social isolation. We miss connecting with our colleagues and friends.

Loneliness has significant implications for our work, with research showing work loneliness can result in emotional withdrawal, which ultimately leads to deteriorating performance and wellbeing, as well as poorer health.

Now lockdown restrictions have ended, maintaining connection is easier. Planning regular meet-ups with colleagues is an easy and effective way to overcome the social isolation felt working from home. Infection risks can be lessened by wearing respirators when you can’t socially distance. You should also stay home if you’re sick.

Some companies are now also implementing walking meetings. As well as connecting with others, it’s an easy way to get some exercise as well as the stress-reducing benefits of nature. In one study, walking was shown to increase creativity by 81%.

Read more:
Masks are ‘strongly suggested’ by health authorities as the winter COVID wave hits. Here’s how effective they are

2. Tidy up regularly

While a messy desk has helped win a Nobel prize and may be helpful for creativity, removing clutter is recommended for a lot of the other types of tasks we undertake in an average workday. A clutter-free desk may reduce the cognitive load on our brains, making us more productive.

Researchers have found clutter influences employees’ thinking, emotions and behaviours. These factors affect decision-making, relationships, stress, eating choices and even sleep.

3. Limit Zoom meetings and reduce ‘pings’

As technology platforms proliferate, so does the overload and distraction for our brains. After more than two years of WFH, the prospect of yet another Zoom meeting may well be uninspiring.

There are a few things we can do. Switch off notifications if possible, and ask whether each meeting really needs to happen. Using document sharing and email can sometimes replace meetings. A good old-fashioned telephone call may also be a good alternative. During a phone call, we only have to concentrate on one voice and can walk around, which can help thinking.

Read more:
5 reasons why Zoom meetings are so exhausting

4. Ask for feedback

Wondering how we are doing on the job undermines one of the key psychological drivers of our work, a sense of competence. It might be harder to gauge how your manager thinks you’re tracking with expectations, if you’re socially distant.

Obtaining feedback is vital for employees to develop this sense of competence, so make sure you ask for regular feedback.

Read more:
Why it’s more important than ever for workplaces to have staff well-being plans

5. Create a WFH space

Research suggests replicating what you might have in the office can be a good way to control or mark out a work space at home. Having a proper desk does actually matter.

While few of us will have something as incredible as a musical puzzle desk, we can start with a desk that is both functional and attractive.

A flat surface, ergonomic chair, and suitable lighting can reduce problems such as eye strain, muscular pain or stiffness and back injuries, as well as decreasing fatigue.

Read more:
Get a proper chair, don’t eat at your desk, and no phones in the loo – how to keep your home workspace safe and hygienic

6. Identify restorative spaces

Spaces that promote psychological and emotional detachment from work are also important. Restorative spaces, such as lounge areas, cafes, nature rooms and meditations spaces have begun to
emerge in office settings in recent years.

Such spaces have been shown to support mental and physical replenishment.

Taking a break on your favourite couch or in a sunny spot during the workday is an important part of maintaining wellbeing and productivity – not something to feel guilty about.

Read more:
Great time to try: travel writing from the home

7. Find ways to disconnect

It can be hard for employees who are working from home to switch off, particularly if we don’t have a dedicated home office space.

Around half of employees increase their work hours when WFH. Not being able to switch off can have implications beyond the work day.

A study from 15 countries found 42% of individuals who worked from home had trouble sleeping and woke up repeatedly in the night, compared to only 29% of individuals who always worked in the office.

Many workers enjoy not having to commute to the office, but there is a potential downside to losing the “transition time” involved in travelling from home. We might use this time to separate private issues from work ones, to prepare for the day ahead or process the one just passed.

In addition to practical considerations such as shutting down software and finalising tasks, research shows using defined end-of-day rituals can help achieve psychological detachment, emotional regulation of the nervous system and reduce physiological stress.

Instead of commuting, meditation, journaling, listening to music,
engaging in hobbies or pleasurable activities, or undertaking exercise can give us a mental break, so we aren’t still thinking about work hours later.

Read more:
As boundaries between work and home vanish, employees need a ‘right to disconnect’

More than two years into a forced global experiment, we now know a lot more about the benefits and challenges of working from home. Implementing these simple, evidence-backed strategies can make a big difference to our wellbeing.

Libby (Elizabeth) Sander 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. We are working from home (again). 7 tips to boost wellbeing and productivity – https://theconversation.com/we-are-working-from-home-again-7-tips-to-boost-wellbeing-and-productivity-187427

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Holly Cope, Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of Sydney

Every year, Australia’s wildlife volunteers devote time, effort and their own money to rescue, rehabilitate and release tens of thousands of native animals. Their efforts get a lot of media attention, particularly after huge disasters like the megafires of the 2019 Black Summer.

Readers will remember vivid images of koalas being rescued along with efforts to provide food to survivors in burnt habitats.

But little is known about what happens to these creatures after they’re released back into the wild. Our new research on hand-reared brushtail possums has found release back into the wild can be fraught with danger.

In our study, almost half were killed. The main culprit: foxes. But there are things we can do.

Rescue, rehabilitation and release

Brushtail possums are the fifth most rescued native species in New South Wales. When a mother possum is attacked by a predator, hit by a car or burnt in a bushfire, human volunteers will often artificially raise any orphaned offspring.

Rearing babies as well as rescue and rehabilitation are important. But the wild holds threats such as hungry predators. Not only that, but the reason an animal had to be rescued in the first place could still be present.

To find out the fate of rescued animals, we used radio-tracking collars to follow 20 hand-reared possums up to 40 days after release. Of these, only eight (40%) survived until the end of the study, while nine (45%) were killed by foxes or had to be returned to rehabilitation, and three possums had unknown fates, as they lost radio signal.

Foxes were responsible for all possum deaths, and most happened within three days of release. Unfortunately, hand-reared animals often haven’t learned the behaviours to detect and avoid predators.

You might think survival would be a game of chance. In fact, we found possums with more exploratory personalities and those which were less tame were more likely to survive. These qualities may have helped possums find food and refuge more effectively on their own in the wild.

That means the odds are stacked against orphaned, hand-reared possums. Because they’ve been raised by human carers, their personalities can be very different to those of wild possums. In short, captivity can alter the development of behaviours which might be important for survival in the wild. The longer animals spend with humans and the more tame they become, the less they seek refuge, recognise predators and find food effectively.

By contrast, it didn’t matter much whether the possums were released without further support, or whether carers left food supplies to get them started. It also didn’t matter much whether they were released in urban or rural areas.

The possums which had highest survival rates were those which retained their wildness and had not become tame.

What can we learn?

So what should Australia’s wildlife carers do? It’s not as simple as advising wildlife rehabilitation organisations to minimise how long animals spend in captivity. Animals have to remain in rehabilitation until their illness or injury is treated, they’re physically ready for release and a suitable release site has been found.

We believe we need to test and develop new ways of reducing tameness and encouraging exploratory behaviour during rehabilitation.

Read more:
3 billion animals were in the bushfires’ path. Here’s what the royal commission said (and should’ve said) about them

Wildlife rehabilitators could use databases like Feral Scan to gauge how often introduced predators have been seen at particular release sites. Rehabilitators could also talk to local land managers to take advantage of fox control efforts, and aim to release possums when fox numbers have been suppressed. We also need to continue developing effective methods to train possums to avoid predators, such as borrowing from successful antipredator training used for other marsupials.

Where to from here?

In our recent review, we analysed 112 studies on wildlife survival rates during rehabilitation or after release. We found factors affecting survival were often specific to species or contexts, such as the region of the world or the reason the animal needed rehabilitation.

Globally, we found human-related factors like collisions with cars and introduced predators were major causes of injury and death for rescued and released wildlife. Tackling threats in the environment must remain a priority to reduce the need for wildlife rescue in the first place.

We hope studies such as ours can improve guidelines for wildlife rescue, rehabilitation and release. To improve survival rates, scientists, government agencies and wildlife volunteers must develop evidence-based and species-specific protocols to give every rehabilitated animal the best chance at living a life in the wild.

As urbanisation fragments habitat and with natural disasters set to be more frequent and more severe due to climate change, we will need these protocols to enable quick, efficient rescue programs for wildlife.

Read more:
Simply returning rescued wildlife back to the wild may not be in their best interest

Holly Cope receives funding from the NSW Department of Planning and Environment, Morris Animal Foundation, and The University of Sydney Mabs Melville Bequest.

Catherine Herbert currently receives funding from the Morris Animal Foundation; NSW Department of Planning and Environment; ACT Road Safety Fund; ACT Government Environment, Planning and Sustainable Development Directorate; and RSPCA. The study cited in this article was funded by The University of Sydney NSW Industry and Community Seed Fund (#CT19595, awarded to CAH, CM and VM, in collaboration with the NSW Wildlife Information, Rescue and Education Service Inc.).

Clare McArthur receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Morris Animal Foundation, National Institute for Forest Products Innovation, New Zealand Endeavour Fund.

Valentina Mella currently receives funding from the NSW Department of Planning and Environment, and The University of Sydney Mabs Melville Bequest. The study cited in the article was funded by The University of Sydney NSW Industry and Community Seed Fund (#CT19595, awarded to CAH, CM and VM, in collaboration with the NSW Wildlife Information, Rescue and Education Service Inc.).

– ref. Saving burned or injured animals draws our sympathy. But some don’t survive after release. Here’s why – https://theconversation.com/saving-burned-or-injured-animals-draws-our-sympathy-but-some-dont-survive-after-release-heres-why-186063

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Turnbull, Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of Sydney

For the first time, the new State of the Environment report explicitly assessed the dependency of humans on nature. We, as report authors, evaluated trends and changes in the environment’s health for their impact on human society. This is described in terms of “human wellbeing”.

Wellbeing encompasses people’s life quality and satisfaction, and is increasingly being recognised in national policy. It spans our physical and mental health, living standards, sense of community, our safety, freedom and rights, cultural and spiritual fulfilment, and connection to Country.

For example, over 85% of Australians live near the coast, and beach activities – swimming, surfing, walking – are an important part of our coastal lifestyle. Such nature-based activities can relieve stress and connect with our individual and national identities. Healthy coastal ecosystems also provide our seafood and support many businesses.

Yet, these ecosystems are under great pressure from human activities. The Great Barrier Reef has suffered four mass bleaching events in the last seven years, kelp forests are in decline in southern Australia, storms are eroding beaches, and coastal fishing pressure is high.

Australia’s ecosystems are collapsing, and our unsustainable actions are threatening our own wellbeing. But there are signs of change, and it’s not too late to make a difference in your own community.

Good, but deteriorating

The State of the Environment report, released last week, contains several new wellbeing assessments, where data were available.

Overall, wellbeing as determined by the environment is graded as “good but deteriorating”. Examples of such assessments include:

• land management: graded partially effective as community participation is improving, but our sense of loss is mounting

• extreme events: graded good to date, but deteriorating as climate change impacts accelerate

• Antarctica: graded good but deteriorating, as its changing environment will negatively effect marine ecosystems and global climate.

Our urban spaces are ranked well in terms of livability, particularly in Australia’s capital cities. Air and water quality are good most of the time, and Australians can generally access adequate nutrition.

But these conditions are not universal, and they are changing. Remote and rural areas score lower on liveability and some social groups, such as Indigenous people, do not have fair and adequate access to essential resources like fresh water.

Indigenous people in Australia are also disproportionately impacted by extreme events.

Climate change is already hurting our wellbeing

Previous State of Environment Reports warned of future impacts of climate change. The new report documents impacts already here – and getting worse.

This includes many recent extreme events, from the 2019-2020 bushfires to the recent extreme floods. These have measurable impacts on both our environment and our lives.

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

While cyclones, floods and bushfires directly destroy our homes and landscapes, heatwaves kill more people in Australia than any other extreme event.

Heatwave intensity in Australia has increased by 33% over the last two decades, with at least 350 deaths between 2000 and 2018. And when heatwaves strike, we see flow-on consequences to, for instance, our hospital emergency departments.

Climate change is also exacerbating air quality issues through dust, smoke and emissions. For example, the 2019-2020 bushfires exposed over 80% of the Australian population to smoke. This exposure killed an estimated 417 people.

Other pressures to the environment – industrial pollution, land clearing, unsustainable water consumption, extraction of natural resources – also lower our wellbeing, due to their degradation to nature.

These pressures are, of course, often by-products of producing food, water and wealth. We need to find ways to more effectively monitor, manage and prioritise them to ensure they’re sustainable.

A sustainable future

The State of the Environment report, for the first time, links to the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals, which include good health, quality education, clean energy, and the health of life on land and in the water.

Sustainability means meeting today’s needs without compromising the needs of future generations. It is founded on effective ecosystem protection and environmental stewardship.

The State of the Environment report contains a range of recommendations to tackle our sustainability challenges. Foremost is the need to strengthen and build connections: between people and Country, economics and environment.

Learning from and empowering Indigenous management of Country is a key part of this success, as is greater national leadership, reducing pollution, better monitoring, and long-term reliable funding for the environment.

Read more:
Caring for Country means tackling the climate crisis with Indigenous leadership: 3 things the new government must do

An important step is the environment minister’s recent announcement that Australia’s proposed wellbeing budget will include environmental factors.

Establishing more protected areas with higher standards of protection is another important part of the solution. The federal government’s recent commitment to expand Australia’s national estate to protect 30% of land and 30% of oceans by 2030 is a good start.

However, we must be careful to ensure this protection is effective and representative of all our precious ecosystems.

What can you do?

There’s much we can do at a personal level, too. You can become informed about the urgency of the twin climate and biodiversity crises – and getting familiar with the State of Environment Report is a great place to start.

Immersing yourself in nature, and encouraging children to do so as well, is also essential. Spending time in nature raises our understanding of its plight.

There are also opportunities to make a tangible impact on the wellbeing of our communities by getting involved in nature restoration, citizen science and other community programs.

We don’t lack the knowledge of what needs to be done. What we need now is urgent action by individuals, organisations and government. Our lives, and our environmental life support system, depend on it.

Read more:
From Kangaroo Island to Mallacoota, citizen scientists proved vital to Australia’s bushfire recovery

John Turnbull was a contributing author on the 2021 State of Environment Report, through a Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water funded Post-Doctorate position at the University of NSW.

Emma Johnston is contracted by the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water as an independent Chief author of the 2021 Australian State of Environment Report. She is a Director on the board of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority.

– ref. Nature’s deteriorating health is threatening the wellbeing of Australians, the State of the Environment report finds – https://theconversation.com/natures-deteriorating-health-is-threatening-the-wellbeing-of-australians-the-state-of-the-environment-report-finds-187437

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stewart Riddle, Associate Professor, School of Education, University of Southern Queensland

In a move that surprised political watchers, Liberal leader Peter Dutton says the school curriculum and education reform will be some of his key priorities in opposition.

Despite the Morrison government signing off on the latest version of the curriculum just before the election, Dutton argues a “broader discussion” is needed.

As he told The Australian earlier this month, “there is a lot of non-core curriculum that is being driven by unions and by other activists that parents are concerned about”.

NSW Liberal senator Hollie Hughes has also blamed her party’s election loss on “Marxist” teachers filling students’ heads with “left-wing rubbish”.

This may seem like an strange issue to prioritise after an election loss, with issues like climate change and cost-of-living front of mind for many voters. But there is a long tradition of “curriculum wars” in Australia, going back decades.

Parents concerned about this debate and what their kids may be “picking up” in the classroom should also understand this history.

Curriculum and the conservative culture wars

Dutton’s attempt to reignite the culture wars harks back to former Prime Minister John Howard, who railed against a “black armband” view of history, “political correctness” and the “divisive, phoney debate about national identity”. Howard argued:

The time has also come for root and branch renewal of the teaching of Australian history in our schools […] it has succumbed to a postmodern culture of relativism where any objective record of achievement is questioned or repudiated.

Following suit, as opposition leader in 2013, Tony Abbott claimed the national curriculum had become politicised by left-wing teachers with history underselling the contributions and heritage of Western civilisation. He said there was a

Lack of references to our heritage, other than an Indigenous heritage, too great a focus on issues which are the predominant concern of one side of politics.

Once in government, Abbott ordered a review of the national curriculum in 2014, claiming that schools needed to go “back to the basics”.

Abbott’s handpicked reviewers argued for greater emphasis on Western literature and Judeo-Christian heritage. The revised curriculum (version 8.0) was released in 2015 and has been in place until recently.

The American connection

Australia’s curriculum wars can also be linked to education debates in the United States.

For example, critical race theory has become a key battleground for conservative culture wars against public schooling, teacher autonomy and curriculum. These debates are designed to create moral panic for parents, who worry that they send their kids to school to learn the facts, but are instead indoctrinated by cultural Marxists dressed as teachers.

The rise of homeschooling and school choice in Australia and the US are driven in large part by concerns about curriculum.

Who gets to choose the curriculum in Australia?

It is important for parents to know that the curriculum – what gets taught in our schools – is not developed by unions nor activists.

While teachers have a say in how their lessons are taught, the curriculum is developed and monitored by state and territory education authorities.

Read more:
The Senate has voted to reject critical race theory from the national curriculum. What is it, and why does it matter?

Following their 2007 election, Labor promised an “education revolution”. This was the start of greater involvement by the federal government in curriculum development and assessment.

The newly created Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority released the first version of the Australian curriculum in 2010. This is the body that is also responsible for implementing the MySchool website and the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) tests.

Government schools are required to follow state and territory mandated curriculum guidelines, while Catholic, independent and other non-government schools have more curriculum flexibility. This includes offering alternative curriculum options such as Steiner, Montessori or International Baccalaureate programs.

The latest curriculum

The latest review of the curriculum (version 9.0) was undertaken with the aim to “refine, realign and declutter” the curriculum content within its existing structure.

There was an extensive consultation period during 2020–2021, with more than 6,000 surveys, 900 emails and 360 teachers and curriculum specialists involved in the review.

Even so, acting education minister Stuart Robert wrote to the chair of the Australian curriculum authority in February requesting extra changes to portray a “more balanced view of Australian history”. He specifically wanted to ensure

that key aspects of Australian history, namely 1750–1914 and Australia’s post World War II migrant history, are appropriately prioritised.

Following this, 55% of history curriculum content between Years 7 and 10 was removed.

Version 9.0 of the Australian Curriculum was then endorsed by federal and state education ministers in April, shortly before the federal election was called.

Where to from here?

New education minister Jason Clare has been quick to dismiss Dutton’s attempts to fire up the curriculum wars, telling The Sydney Morning Herald, “I’m not interested in picking fights”.

So, as the updated curriculum begins to roll out across Australian schools from 2023, it will be interesting to see how much momentum Dutton generates.

Granted, a proposed move to continuous curriculum updates instead of every five or six years will potentially make it easier to politically interfere with the curriculum.

But it is important to remember that education authorities determine the curriculum – not unions, not activists and ideally not the minister of the day.

Read more:
Australia is only one front in the history curriculum wars

Stewart Riddle has received funding from the Australian Research Council (LP210100098 Constructing a Rich Curriculum for All: ‘Insights into Practice’).

– ref. Why is Peter Dutton trying to start another political fight over the school curriculum? – https://theconversation.com/why-is-peter-dutton-trying-to-start-another-political-fight-over-the-school-curriculum-187021

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Casey, Program Coordinator: Bachelor of Communication, University of the Sunshine Coast

From its early days, Neighbours reinforced stereotypes of white Australian heteronormative suburbia. But it also evolved to push boundaries around representations of gender, sexuality and feminism.

As we farewell the residents of Ramsay Street, we are also saying goodbye to 37 years of a popular culture juggernaut and how it mirrored – or didn’t – social change since the mid-1980s.

Soap operas like Neighbours can be an important route for feminist ideas. Popular culture is a critical vector for challenging dominant understandings around gender and sexuality.

Was Neighbours a feminist triumph or a lucky dip grab bag of progressive concepts and representation? To assess its feminist success is to reckon with how gender and sexuality have been depicted over the past four decades, and how this was received by audiences.

Read more:
The loss of Neighbours is a loss of career pathways for Australia’s emerging screen professionals

Early strands of feminism

Like feminism, Neighbours has many forebears to thank.

Before Charlene, Madge and Izzy, there was Bea Smith on Prisoner (1979-86), Sister Scott on The Young Doctors (1976–83) and Pat the Rat on Sons and Daughters (1982-87). Characters like these were both archetypes and boundary pushers, with these inherent tensions contributing to their enduring popularity with fans.

When Neighbours started in 1985, Julie Robinson (Vikki Blanche) was a bank teller. Helen Daniels (Anne Haddy) was the wise matriarch. And Daphne Lawrence (Elaine Smith) was working unashamedly as a stripper before being “tamed”, experiencing ostensible upward social mobility navigating a career change to café owner.

During Neighbours’ peak in the later 80s, Mrs Mangel (Vivean Gray) was an older woman and busy body around Ramsay Street. Her status of ultimate disruptor is one shared with many feminists accused of being “out of turn” – to the point Gray left the show in 1988 due to the abuse she copped in public.

Charlene Mitchell (Kylie Minogue) was the mechanic defying gendered career expectations with the “girls can do anything” attitude.

Yet, anxiety over portraying teenage sex on primetime television was resolved through marrying her off to Scott Robinson (Jason Donovan) at age 17.

Women like Daphne, Mrs Mangel and Charlene might have been challenging stereotypes, but they would eventually submit to palatable norms.

Feminism enters more spaces

By the turn of the century, more explicit references to feminism were made, and the women became increasingly complex.

Flick Scully (Holly Valance) was a dedicated teen feminist, passionate about social justice – yet her storylines focused more on her romantic entanglements.

In 2004, single mother of six and unruly woman Janelle Timmins (Nell Feeney) parked her caravan on Ramsay Street, gambling, grifting and taking credit for writing The Bogan’s Tipped Hair, a riff on feminist novel The Bride Stripped Bare, Australia’s best selling novel of 2003.

From the 2010s, the women of Neighbours began holding their own in the corporate world. Therese Willis (Rebekah Elmaloglou), the most prominent, juggled a tempestuous relationship with Paul Robinson alongside running the Lassisters hotel.

Gender and sexuality

In August 2018, Neighbours broadcast the first same-sex – and mixed-race – wedding on Australian television, when David Tanaka (Takaya Honda) and Aaron Brennan (Matt Wilson) were wed by Magda Szubanski.

They were soon joined at the altar by Sky Mangel (Stephanie McIntosh) and Lana Crawford (MC Lyte), who had shared the first lesbian kiss on Neighbours back in 2004.

While familiar soap opera tropes see most marriages ending in death and divorce, same-sex marriage on Neighbours proved to be more stable and ultimately more traditional.

Since their wedding, David and Aaron have been depicted as the conjugal ideal when compared with the marriages between Neighbours stalwarts: the serial philanderer Karl Kennedy (Alan Fletcher) and his wife Susan (Jackie Woodburne), and three-times married Jarrod “Toadfish” Rebecchi (Ryan Moloney).

In 2019, Georgie Stone joined Neighbours as the show’s first trans character, Mackenzie Hargreaves. In 2022, Neighbours had its first non-binary character, Asher Nesmith, played by non-binary actor Kathleen Ebbs.

Work to be done

The word “feminism” was unlikely to be heard in Neighbours’ early days, but explicit references have been made in more recent times.

By 2017, the series was even making casual references to a popular Australian feminist. When teenager Xanthe Canning (Lilly Van der Meer) was working through a romantic problem she said: “the only thing I can think of is getting in touch with Clementine Ford”.

Right until the end the series was critiqued for lack of representation on screen, and in 2021 there were accusations of racism behind the scenes.

Neighbours was not a feminist triumph on or off screen. But it provided some entry points to feminist thinking and diverse ways of being that may not otherwise be accessible or sought out. And popularity procures broader audiences and hopefully understanding.

Was it enough? No. As the till rings for the last time at Harold’s and the streetlights fade over Ramsay Street, there remains significant work to be done.

Read more:
I easily clocked 10,000 hours working on Neighbours. Its loss will leave a huge hole in Australian TV – and UK hearts

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

– ref. From Charlene the mechanic to Australian TV’s first gay marriage: was Neighbours feminist? – https://theconversation.com/from-charlene-the-mechanic-to-australian-tvs-first-gay-marriage-was-neighbours-feminist-187539

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

As well as her interviews with politicians and experts, Politics with Michelle Grattan includes “Word from The Hill”, where she discusses the news with members of The Conversation politics team.

Politics editor Amanda Dunn and Michelle talk about the opening of the 47th Parliament, the prospects for the climate legislation that seeks to enshrine the 43% emissions reduction target, and Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ economic statement, which will come hard on the heels of another bad inflation number. They also ask: should Scott Morrison be in the House this week?

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. Word from The Hill: Is Morrison’s absence from parliament disrespectful to his voters? – https://theconversation.com/word-from-the-hill-is-morrisons-absence-from-parliament-disrespectful-to-his-voters-187703

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susan Hester, Associate Professor, University of New England

Passengers arriving in Australia from Indonesia will be directed to wash their shoes after the federal government ramped up efforts to prevent foot-and-mouth disease entering the country.

But effective biosecurity involves more than just what happens at the airport. Australia operates one of the most comprehensive biosecurity systems in the world, however, there’s more we can do.

Biosecurity is also not just an agricultural issue. It’s essential to protecting human health, societies and the environment.

Unfortunately, good biosecurity doesn’t come cheap. Adequate funding is vital. That includes ensuring those who cause the problems contribute to fixing them – something that doesn’t happen now.

The foot-and-mouth threat

Foot-and-mouth disease (unrelated to hand, foot and mouth disease in humans) is a highly contagious viral infection that affects livestock such as cattle, sheep and pigs. It causes painful blisters on the feet and in the mouth, preventing the animal from eating, drinking or even standing up.

The disease was detected in mainland Indonesia in May – 40 years since the last outbreak there – before spreading to Bali earlier this month.

Foot-and-mouth disease is endemic in many countries. But its arrival in Indonesia makes it more likely the disease could reach Australia, given the significant travel and trade between the two nations.

Australia exports more than two-thirds of its livestock products. Official estimates put the economic cost of a major outbreak in Australia at A$80 billion.

In the United Kingdom, a 2001 outbreak of the disease cost the economy around $13 billion and more than 6 million animals were destroyed.

There have been calls for Australia to close the border to Indonesia following the current foot-and-mouth outbreak. But farmers say the radical move would not remove the risk entirely and would do more harm than good.

Read more:
What is foot and mouth disease? Why farmers fear ‘apocalyptic bonfires of burning carcasses’

Where does shoe-washing come in?

We can think of biosecurity as a bit like Swiss cheese. Every slice of Swiss cheese has holes. But when the slices are lined up, the block is solid and impenetrable.

Biosecurity, done well, involves figuring out how to line the slices up.

Catching diseases at the border is one slice of the cheese. That’s why the federal government is now directing passengers who’ve flown in from Indonesia to clean their shoes and walk over disinfectant mats at airports.

Travellers will also be asked to declare any contact with farms and livestock. Those with visibly contaminated shoes will be taken to a biosecurity area.

Research has shown these measures are not always effective. But having said that, it’s good practice to clean your shoes any time you’ve been off the beaten track.

The soles of shoes contain any number of contaminants. In 2008, for example, a survey at Christchurch Airport found bacteria and fungi on 99% and 78% of footwear, respectively.

A good scrub, then a wipe with disinfectant, is usually enough to reduce the contamination to acceptable levels. Even a rinse with water is better than nothing.

Read more:
Wearing shoes in the house is just plain gross. The verdict from scientists who study indoor contaminants

What else can we do?

Good biosecurity extends far beyond shoe-cleaning. It involves other activities at the border and within Australia, as well as efforts overseas.

The greatest risk of foot-and-mouth disease entering Australia comes from meat products from an affected country. It’s easy to declare these when you arrive in Australia – or better still, don’t bring them in at all.

This is why extra detector dogs have been stationed at Australia’s airports – to detect unauthorised meat brought into Australia.

Farmers must practice good biosecurity on their properties, such as maintaining hygiene, keeping records and rigorous monitoring of livestock health.

Preventing the infection at source countries is a highly cost-effective way to protect Australia from imported diseases.

Labor this month announced $5 million to help Indonesia, Timor-Leste and Papua New Guinea combat livestock diseases. It includes personnel and logistic support to distribute vaccines.

However, because these vaccination programs take months to complete, the risk of foot-and-mouth disease in Indonesia will remain high for some time.

Where to now

The threat of foot-and-mouth disease is not new. Australia has detailed, well-rehearsed response plans and arrangements in place. But more is needed.

In 2017, an independent review found budgetary and other constraints were making it hard for Australia to meet its biosecurity commitments.
At the same time, biosecurity risks were increasing. The review said substantial new investment was needed to strengthen the national system.

Currently, the costs of managing and controlling new diseases is borne by those affected by their entry and spread – such as farmers and taxpayers. Those who create the risks – such as importers, vessel owners and travellers – are generally not called on to contribute to response costs.

But this not need be the case. Recent research has suggested a solution whereby importers would have to purchase biosecurity risk insurance and premiums would be used fund clean up costs.

Shoring up Australia’s biosecurity requires us all to accept shared responsibility. That means everyone adhering to the rules – and yes, washing your shoes at the airport.

Read more:
VIDEO: Should Australia close its border to Bali in the fight against foot and mouth disease?

Susan Hester works for The Centre of Excellence for Biosecurity Risk Analysis (CEBRA). CEBRA receives research funding from the Australian Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, and New Zealand’s Ministry for Primary Industries, as well as the Queensland, New South Wales, Victorian, South Australian and Tasmanian governments. Susan acknowledges the efforts of Andrew Robinson and Tom Kompas in reviewing this article.

Aaron Dodd is a Chief Investigator of The Centre of Excellence for Biosecurity Risk Analysis (CEBRA), which receives research funding from the Australian Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF), and New Zealand’s Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI), as well as the Queensland, New South Wales, Victorian, South Australian and Tasmanian governments.

– ref. Yes, wash your shoes at the airport – but we can do more to stop foot-and-mouth disease ravaging Australia – https://theconversation.com/yes-wash-your-shoes-at-the-airport-but-we-can-do-more-to-stop-foot-and-mouth-disease-ravaging-australia-187602

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Catherine Renshaw, Professor, School of Law, Western Sydney University

The execution of four political prisoners in Myanmar is further confirmation of what was already well known. The regime of Commander-in-Chief Min Aung Hlaing will stop at nothing to maintain its grip on the country.

Since its coup in February last year, the military has used terror to assert control: extrajudicial killings, torture and the arbitrary arrest and detention of protesters. It has murdered civilians, tortured children and condemned the country’s elected leaders to long terms of imprisonment following farcical show trials. More than 1,600 people, including at least 75 children, have been killed.

The executions make a political solution to the crisis, already dim, virtually impossible. Opponents of the military, the People’s Defence Force, have renewed their commitment to using whatever means they have – including attacks, assassinations, and bombings – to overturn military rule. Peaceful protest, once championed by Aung San Suu Kyi, is no longer the modus operandi of many dissidents.

Of the country’s many armed ethnic groups, some have reportedly begun negotiating peace talks with the military. However, many others have aligned themselves with the Peoples Defence Force, and are providing weapons, protection and training to those fighting against military rule.

The country trembles on the brink of civil war. Its existing problems – poverty, sickness, a lack of fuel, food and medicine – have brought the country to crisis point.

Western powers seemed shocked by the suddenness of Myanmar’s return to brutal military dictatorship after almost a decade of a seemingly promising new quasi-democracy. In truth, although Myanmar adopted some of the trappings of multi-party democracy in the nationwide elections of 2015 and 2020, the military retained its role as the central political player.

After 2011, the military waged a brutal campaign of civil war against the Kachin in the North of the country. In 2016 and 2017, it carried out deadly clearance operations against the Rohingya in Rakhine state. In both cases it used devastating violence against civilians. No one ought to have been surprised when it applied the same methods to protesters following last year’s coup.

Strong words, little action

The response of Western governments has been weak. Bewilderingly, and almost alone among Western countries, Australia has still not sanctioned Min Aung Hlaing.

Early images from Myanmar after the coup showed crowds of people holding placards begging for the Security Council to implement the UN’s principle of Responsibility to Protect by authorising humanitarian intervention to protect the lives of civilians. But the Security Council is hamstrung by China and Russia’s support for Myanmar’s generals.

The UN General Assembly passed a strong resolution in June 2021 calling for an arms embargo and other measures. But the General Assembly has no power to enforce its resolutions. Unlike in Ukraine, the people of Myanmar have not been provided with weapons to fight for their lives.

Two months earlier, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), of which Myanmar is a member, attempted to negotiate an end to the crisis. It was not successful. ASEAN’s Five Point Plan called for an immediate end to violence in the country, dialogue among all parties, the appointment of a special envoy to immediately visit Myanmar, and humanitarian assistance.

Having agreed to the plan, Min Aung Hlaing almost immediately announced the military would continue using violence until the protests stopped. There is no platform for building trust between the parties.

The executions confirm to those opposing the military that Myanmar’s “Spring Revolution” is a battle they must win. The cost to Myanmar will be very high and will be paid by generations of Burmese people. And countries in the region, including Australia, will also pay a price.

What Australia must do

War creates the conditions in which the gravest of human rights abuses flourish. When the level of suffering inside a country becomes intolerable, the result is a flow of refugees and even greater exploitation of those vulnerable to practices like human trafficking. These problems will arrive on Australia’s doorstep. For that reason alone, Australia should do much more to assist the people of Myanmar.

First, it should impose targeted sanctions on the coup leaders, including Min Aung Hlaing. Other countries imposed targeted sanctions in response to atrocities carried out against the Rohingya back in 2017. If Australia’s failure to follow suit was part of a strategy to facilitate the repatriation of Australian economist Sean Turnell, who has been held in Insein Prison since the coup, then an urgent rethink is needed.

Read more:
Can the world stop Myanmar from becoming a failed state?

Second, the Australian government should consider recognising the National Unity Government, which represents the democratically elected parliament and those who oppose the coup. The execution of a member of the former parliament confirms, if confirmation was necessary, that the military has no claim to legitimate rule.

Finally, Australia should ensure its humanitarian response to a crisis in a country in the region at least matches the generosity of its response to Ukraine, and that funds for aid and relief are channelled through the National Unity Government.

Catherine Renshaw previously received funding from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, the Community of Democracies and Rotary International, for work connected to Myanmar.

– ref. Will the Myanmar executions force Australia to act decisively at last? – https://theconversation.com/will-the-myanmar-executions-force-australia-to-act-decisively-at-last-187688

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Janet Hoek, Professor of Public Health, University of Otago

Imagine a society where tobacco does not kill nearly 5000 people every year in New Zealand, and more than eight million worldwide.

The New Zealand government’s new legislation, which had its first reading in parliament today, aims to create a smokefree nation by introducing a unique measure to protect young people from the many harms smoking causes.

Smoking eventually kills two thirds of people who smoke long-term, which means tobacco companies face a stark choice. They can either continue to recruit new users or go out of the smoked-tobacco business. To date, they have chosen the former option.

By positioning smoking as a sophisticated adult behaviour and designing youth-oriented brands, tobacco companies have lured many thousands of young people into a lifelong addiction that most came to regret.

Governments elsewhere have narrowed the pipeline of replacement smokers by increasing the purchase age of tobacco, which is now an R21 product in some jurisdictions.

But Aotearoa plans to adopt a different approach with the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Smoked Tobacco) Amendment Bill, which will introduce a smokefree generation.

Read more:
Smoking age: here’s what effect raising it to 21 could have in England

The bill proposes disallowing the sale of tobacco products to people born in 2009 or later. Over time, this measure would create a smokefree cohort – a group of young people protected from smoking.

In combination with other proposed policies – reducing the nicotine content in tobacco products and far fewer retail outlets selling tobacco – the smokefree generation would see tobacco use virtually end.

But why move from extending age restrictions to creating a smokefree generation? Here are six key reasons.

A measure to protect freedoms

The vast majority of people who smoke come to regret it and say they would not smoke if they could live their lives again.

The smokefree generation addresses the burden addiction places on people. It puts in place age-appropriate restrictions, in the same way the government restricts other risky activities, such as drink driving.

However, unlike drink driving, tobacco products cause the premature death of two thirds of the people who smoke long-term. These risks greatly outweigh any potential perceived “benefits” at all ages.

A smokefree generation is a proportionate response to managing a highly dangerous product.

Smoking is not an ‘informed choice’

Tobacco companies have conveniently forgotten how strenuously they once denied the harms smoking causes. They now acknowledge the health risks associated with tobacco.

This stance enables them to claim smoking is an “informed choice” and thus blame people who smoke for harms they experience later. The smokefree generation challenges this rhetoric and recognises nobody can willingly embark on a lifelong addiction before they understand and accept the price it will extract.

Right to protection from lethal products

Although tobacco companies have done their best to position smoking as a socially accepted practice and tobacco as a normal consumer product, no other product kills its users when consumed exactly as intended.

The smokefree generation recognises people’s right to protection from a uniquely harmful product and addresses the historical anomalies that have allowed tobacco to be sold.

Age restrictions do not provide sufficient protection

Age-restriction policies mean that, as each year passes, some young people “graduate” beyond the age limit, which may inadvertently frame smoking as a rite of passage.

The smokefree generation challenges misperceptions of smoking as a coming-of-age ritual and makes it clear there is never a safe age to start smoking. By clearly signalling that smoking is always harmful, it offers much greater protection than age-restriction measures.

Read more:
Tobacco killed 500,000 Americans in 2020 – is it time to control cigarette-makers?

Reducing inequities caused by smoking

Modelling studies estimate the smokefree-generation policy could halve smoking prevalence within 14 years among people aged 45 and younger.

Importantly, it is predicted to achieve a more than five-fold health gain to Māori, compared to non-Māori. These estimates mean the smokefree generation will help address disparities in smoking prevalence and reduce the health inequities they cause.

The public is ready to bring an end to smoking

Surveys have reported very strong support for the bill’s approach. A New Zealand survey of people who smoke or had recently quit found more than three quarters supported this policy.

Support for a smokefree generation was about 10% higher than for increasing the legal purchase age for tobacco from 18 to 21. Support among the general population is likely to be higher still, making the smokefree generation an overwhelmingly popular policy.

The policy will protect young people’s freedoms and safeguard their future wellbeing by removing access to a product engineered to addict them as quickly as possible. By framing smoking as socially unacceptable and preventing youth sales over time, the smokefree generation will help ensure smoking prevalence can never rise again.

Janet Hoek receives funding from the Health Research Council of New Zealand and Cancer Society of New Zealand; she has previously held grants from the Royal Society Marsden Fund. She co-directs ASPIRE 2025, A University of Otago Research Centre whose researchers work to support the Government’s Smokefree 2025 goal. She has served on government, crown entity and NGO advisory groups to support public health policy goals and is currently a member of the Health Coalition Aotearoa’s Smokefree Expert Advisory Group.

– ref. New Zealand is introducing law to create a smokefree generation. Here are 6 reasons to support this policy – https://theconversation.com/new-zealand-is-introducing-law-to-create-a-smokefree-generation-here-are-6-reasons-to-support-this-policy-186283

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Blakely, Professor of Epidemiology, Population Interventions Unit, Centre for Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne

With the first reading of a new bill in parliament today, Aotearoa New Zealand’s plan to be smokefree by 2025 takes another tangible step forward.

The Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Smoked Tobacco) Amendment Bill will now go to the Health Select Committee for submissions and review, and (presumably) return to the House in late 2022 to be passed into law.

Assuming the final legislation looks similar to what is being proposed, it will mean Aotearoa New Zealand leapfrogs all other countries to be at the vanguard of tobacco control, with policy settings aimed at getting smoking prevalence beneath 5% of the adult population within years (not decades).

The bill provides for three key strategies:

• drastically reducing nicotine content in tobacco so it is no longer addictive (known as “denicotinisation” or “very low nicotine cigarettes” (VLNC))

• a 90% to 95% reduction in the number of shops that can sell tobacco

• making it illegal for people born in 2009 or later to ever buy tobacco (thus creating a “smokefree generation”).

If implemented effectively this is anticipated to have a profound impact on smoking.

Projected declines in smoking

Reducing Māori health inequity

If successful, this would be a monumental achievement for generations of tobacco-control advocates and researchers. The concept of a “tobacco endgame” will move beyond aspiration and into reality.

We’ve got to this point after decades of Māori leadership, research and advocacy, with the proposed legislation having its roots in the aim of reducing health inequities between Māori and non-Māori. This kaupapa (principle or policy) has driven the process and is supported by Māori communities.

Much more will be written in coming months about this groundbreaking legislation. Here we focus on the modelling we were commissioned to provide by the New Zealand government in 2021-2022 on the potential health and cost impacts of the Smokefree Aotearoa 2025 Action Plan.

Our findings underpinned the regulatory impact statement that set out the options to regulate tobacco products as part of the action plan, which Cabinet considered in early 2022.

Large reductions in mortality rates

In our work at Otago University’s BODE3 program and the University of Melbourne’s Scalable Health Intervention Evaluation (SHINE) we model many potential public health interventions, from dietary counselling and reducing salt in bread to the evaluation of screening programmes and drug treatments.

We tally the likely health gains from these interventions, and how much they might reduce inequities in health. When we do this for the government’s tobacco endgame strategy, the forecasts are breathtaking.

Consider reductions in health inequities between Māori and non-Māori. First, we forecasted what Māori and non-Māori mortality rates will be in 2040 (and beyond) given trends we have seen in recent decades (business as usual in the graph above).

Read more:
The FDA and Juul are fighting over a vape ban, but the role of e-cigarettes in the world of tobacco abuse is not clear-cut

Second, we estimated how much smoking (and vaping) rates would change into the future for the combined endgame policy (denicotinisation, retail reduction, smokefree generation regulations, augmented by some media promotion of the policy).

Third, allowing for time lags, we modelled future disease rates (for example, lung and heart disease) and then the overall impact on mortality rates.

We then compared the gap between Māori and non-Māori mortality or death rates in 2040 if there were no major policy changes, and under the combined tobacco endgame strategy. For those aged 45 and over, the gap was reduced by a staggering 22.9% for Māori females compared to non-Māori females, and a still very large 9.6% for males.

Projected decline in gap between Māori and non-Māori mortality rates

Longer, healthier lives

In all our previous research, we have never seen a single health intervention with the potential to reduce health inequities this much.

Why is a tobacco endgame so powerful at reducing Māori and non-Māori health inequities? Because smoking is so bad for health, smoking rates are particularly high among Māori, and Māori also have higher smoking-related disease rates.

Therefore, Māori see more health gains from the dramatic falls in tobacco smoking that will result from the policy. (Non-Māori also see large gains – just not as much per capita as Māori.)

What about overall health gains? Our modelling suggests that, over the remaining lifespan of the New Zealand population alive in 2020, the tobacco endgame strategy will result in an extra 600,000 “health-adjusted life years” lived (a measure of the impact of those interventions on life expectancy, adjusted for quality of life).

To put this in perspective, this amount of health gain – accruing just to those people quitting smoking earlier or not taking it up, a minority of the population – is equivalent to the health gains that would result from a policy taxing sugar, fat and salt in all foods and removing the GST on healthy food.

Read more:
How can we reverse the vaping crisis among young Australians? Enforce the rules

Major health system savings

Not only is this endgame policy increasing the health of the nation, it is also reducing future health expenditure.

We estimated NZ$1.3 billion of health system costs would be avoided in the next 20 years. These savings can be used for other things, such as mental health and dementia care.

And while the government will lose tax revenue from drastically reduced tobacco sales, the overall health of the population increases, meaning more people are in work for longer. We estimated an income gain to the New Zealand population of $1.4 billion in the next 20 years, which means more tax revenue as well.

All modelling of the future is uncertain. But even allowing for that uncertainty, the health gains, the health inequity reductions, the savings in health expenditure, and the increased income productivity of New Zealanders that will result from this tobacco endgame strategy will be large.

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

– ref. New Zealand’s ‘tobacco endgame’ law will be a world first for health – here’s what the modelling shows us – https://theconversation.com/new-zealands-tobacco-endgame-law-will-be-a-world-first-for-health-heres-what-the-modelling-shows-us-187075

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Giancaspro, Lecturer in Law, University of Adelaide

The rental e-scooter craze is sweeping the globe, with millions of the vehicles dotting pavements in more than 600 cities. Studies predict there will be 4.6 million shared e-scooters in operation worldwide by 2024.

While e-scooters have been praised as a greener form of transport, they have also caused scores of injuries and even deaths. Australia’s e-scooter fleet is comparatively small at around 10,000 units, yet major hospitals in Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth are reporting “daily” presentations with e-scooter related traumas to both riders and pedestrians.

Worse, according to media reports at least seven Australians have been killed through falls or collisions since their introduction in 2018, including a 15-year-old Queensland boy last week.

Although the National Transport Commission recommended in 2020 that e-scooters be limited to a speed of 10 km/hr on footpaths and 25km/hr on roads or bike lanes, most states have allowed higher speeds on footpaths.

Many riders also shun the helmet requirement imposed by the e-scooter terms of use and the Australian Road Rules. It therefore seems that more carnage is on the horizon.

We need a uniform regulatory framework balancing the risks and benefits of e-scooters, and clarifying avenues for compensation.

Who’s liable for e-scooter injuries?

The Australian Road Rules empower the states to prohibit e-scooters on public roads and footpaths. Most states have banned them by default, but many local councils have authorised temporary trials, which are still in effect.

Obviously, if you crash due to your own misuse or recklessness, you are personally responsible for your injuries or those you cause to others.

But if the accident is caused by a fault with the e-scooter, that might be different. Some of the e-scooter companies, such as Neuron, state that they exclude liability for injury except where it’s caused by their negligence.

Where you’ve crashed due to uneven pavement or damaged road, the disrepair will generally need to be known or otherwise significant to prove the local council breached its duty of care to you. You would then seek compensation through the council’s public liability insurer. You would likely have to try to do the same if you trip over a dormant e-scooter that has been dumped in random locations, as they often are.

Third parties who are injured by an e-scooter rider are in a difficult position. This is because only parties to a contract can incur rights and obligations under the contract. E-scooter contracts are between the user and the respective company, so those who are struck by e-scooters, or trip over a dormant one, have no contractual rights against the company.

An injured third party would have to sue the rider directly. But attaining the rider’s personal details could be difficult if they drive off or are evasive, and they will likely be unable to pay compensation.

Complicating matters is the fact minors also ride e-scooters. Lime and Neuron forbid minors from using their vehicles, but Beam allows people under 16 to ride with parental consent. E-scooters are colourful, funky, and marketed in a manner appealing to young and likely inexperienced riders.

Each of the e-scooter companies’ terms warn that breaching the terms of use, such as riding as an unauthorised minor, can void insurance entitlements, meaning many unwary parents or caregivers may be left to foot hefty medical and legal bills.

Read more:
Limes not lemons: lessons from Australia’s first e-scooter sharing trial

Excluding liability through the fine print

When a user downloads and accesses the relevant app to activate an e-scooter, they agree to the terms of service. The law states that you’re bound by the terms you sign (physically or digitally), even if you don’t read them – and most people don’t.

Australia’s biggest e-scooter companies – Lime, Beam, and Neuron – all have lengthy user agreements, each containing exclusion clauses. These clauses restrict or exclude the companies’ liability if you’re injured while using them.

But are they watertight?

It depends on wording. Beam’s agreement, for example, states that the company isn’t liable to users “for any death, disability or personal injury […] howsoever caused” arising directly or indirectly in connection with use of its e-scooters. Such statements, though broad, are generally sufficient to exclude negligence liability. The reference to “indirect” injury also implies a user being injured by a third party (such as an errant rider, driver, or pedestrian) would have no recourse against the company.

However, the courts have also said that where liability can arise on two or more different bases – such as negligence and breach of contract – then you need to use more specific wording in your exclusion clause. Lime, Beam, and Neuron all mention negligence, so they would likely be covered.

Insurance as a panacea?

Compulsory third-party insurance is required with motor vehicle registration in Australia. But this isn’t so with e-scooters, as they’re not classified as registrable vehicles. Extending the compulsory third-party insurance scheme to e-scooters might help resolve some of the liability questions that linger.

However, the South Australian Government has observed this isn’t possible because e-scooters don’t meet national standards that govern registrable vehicles.

While some home and contents insurance policies may offer some coverage for e-scooter injuries, this hasn’t been tested and young victims almost certainly won’t have this insurance.

Workplace insurance might also apply if the accident occurred on the way to, or during, work. Again, this will depend on the relevant policy and whether the rider was obeying all road rules and the e-scooter’s terms of use.

If a rider is hit by a car, the driver’s compulsory third party insurance would cover any resulting injury or death.

The e-scooter companies have started introducing third party liability insurance schemes which might protect riders from claims brought by, for example, injured pedestrians. However, the policies generally have numerous exclusions, such as where riders breach the terms of use (for example for not wearing a helmet or being underage).

The need for a unified approach

Multiple stakeholders are involved in rental e-scooter arrangements. From a regulatory perspective, state and local governments have a duty to consider and protect all members of the community when they allow and control e-scooter trials. The chosen approach can also impact redress mechanisms for those injured by e-scooters.

At the moment, there’s different approaches across Australia. So it’s essential that all levels of government work together to craft a uniform regulatory framework.

Additional safety measures can help curb the injury and death count, such as more precise “geofencing” to restrict e-scooters to certain areas and remote deactivation for breach of safety rules. Ensuring only those with a driver’s licence are authorised to ride e-scooters could also help, and this could be implemented by linking e-scooter app sign-up to state government licence databases.

In the meantime, law enforcement is critical to ensure riders are riding e-scooters in a safe and legal manner.

David Brown is a member of the Greens.

Mark Giancaspro 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. Who’s liable if you’re injured or killed riding an e-scooter? – https://theconversation.com/whos-liable-if-youre-injured-or-killed-riding-an-e-scooter-187436

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

Who could even question a requirement that super funds act in the best financial interests of their members?

Labor’s new assistant treasurer Stephen Jones, that’s who.

While the treasurer himself has been working on Thursday’s major economic statement, Jones has asked the treasury to consider concerns relating to the “regulatory complexity” of a requirement that funds act in their members best financial interests – a requirement that on the face of it is straightforward.

Oddly, he titled the announcement “Review to strengthen super,” a title he might need to rework if the review finds the duty should be weakened.

The Coalition strengthened the requirement a year ago as part of a suite of reforms called “Your Future, Your Super”, changing it from a duty to act in the “best interests” of members to the best “financial” interests of members.

The difference between the two is that whereas spending members funds on things such as corporate hospitality or wellbeing services or news websites might arguably be in the best interests of members, it need not be in the best financial interests of members.

And that’s what superannuation funds are meant to be for – to grow rather than spend the trillions entrusted with them for workers’ retirements.

To make sure the funds do it, the Coalition reversed the onus of proof. If questioned, fund directors needed to be able to demonstrate that their spending was in the best financial interests of their members, or at least in what they thought at the time would be their members best financial interests.

‘Best financial interests’ up for review

That might be the “regulatory complexity” the assistant treasurer is referring to –a requirement directors use their members funds to grow their members funds, and be able to demonstrate that’s what they were attempting if asked.

It’s good news for members, whose compulsorily-acquired funds the directors are managing, but troubling for some directors (in industry funds most directors are union and employer representatives), and Jones listened to the directors.

He has backed them on another concern.

The Coalition’s regulations require funds to itemise their spending on political donations and payments to related parties and industrial bodies, as well as their spending on marketing, in a statement to members before each annual meeting.

Transparency up for review

Jones has drafted regulations that remove the requirement for itemisation while leaving in place the requirement for funds to report the totals to members.

It won’t save the funds work (they still have to itemise each payment in order to prepare the totals), but it will save them embarrassment.

And he is tampering with perhaps the most important super reform of them all.

Last year for the first time each of the 80 MySuper funds (the funds into which new employees can be defaulted) was graded on its performance.

Performance test up for review

Thirteen failed. They weren’t being graded on absolute returns. That would have been unfair. They were graded on returns over the past seven years given their stated investment strategy.

If their strategy had been to (say) invest all of their members funds in shares, and shares did badly, that would be fine so long as the fund’s shares didn’t do significantly worse than the share market as a whole over seven years, which is a way of saying it is a hard test to fail.

Under the Your Future, Your Super rules the 13 funds that failed were required to write to their members telling them they had performed badly and suggesting they switch to a better-performing product.

Read more:
My super fund just failed the APRA performance test. What’s next?

The second test will be this year. Any funds that fail two years in a row get banned from accepting new members.

Not that it’s likely to come to that. Eleven of the 13 have merged or are in the process of merging with better funds, which is how the system is supposed to work. It is weeding out dud funds, advancing members interests.

Even the fear of failing is advancing members interests. Industry observers say funds likely to fail are cutting their fees to ensure that they don’t. The performance test is on returns net of fees.

Twelve month pause

From next year the test was to be extended to all super funds, whether default or not, so it could really weed out the duds. The Productivity Commission found non-default funds performed notably worse than default funds.

But Jones says he’ll stop the extension – “pause” is his word – for 12 months while the treasury rechecks the system for “unintended outcomes”.

Hundreds of funds (some of them bad) will be given a reprieve, something that was itself unintended when the system was set up.

Read more:
Super funds have been working for themselves when they should have been working for us. That’s about to change

There are genuine concerns about the test. It is backward looking, as it has to be, and funds in difficulty will have it made worse by an exodus of members when the results are published.

But these are concerns for the directors of the funds, not their members. And Australians put more of their money into super than anything other than housing.

A landmark 2018 Productivity Commission inquiry found much of the system was a “mess” that allowed poorly performing funds to produce $660,000 less in retirement than well-performing funds.

Your Future, Your Super was the government’s response to that. It’s already achieved a lot. Until the new minister hit pause, it was about to achieve more.

Peter Martin 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. Labor is winding back reforms meant to hold super funds accountable to their members – https://theconversation.com/labor-is-winding-back-reforms-meant-to-hold-super-funds-accountable-to-their-members-187594

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tomás I. Fuenzalida, Postdoctoral Fellow, Research School of Biology, Australian National University

How do you tell if your plants need water? Recently, I asked this question of a group of about 40 biologists at the Australian National University.

Most of them said they would stick their fingers into the soil. If you want to be more scientific about it, most horticulturalists would argue it is best to weigh the pot to determine how much water it contains.

I took a different view. After building special tools to measure the “pulse” of plants, I am more inclined to feel the leaves.

Not only can touch provide a new way to follow the flow of water through plant cells, it may also deliver new possibilities for plant monitoring and care.

The rhythm of plants

Plants have a natural rhythm, like a very slow heartbeat, caused by changing water pressure inside their cells.

Plants only beat around once a day, dehydrating during the day and rehydrating during the night. This process is too slow to watch for all but the most patient observers.

The pressure inside plant cells is called “turgor” and is usually between five and 20 atmospheres (up to 10 times the pressure inside a car tyre!). But while this pressure is large, plant cells are only a fraction of a millimetre in size.

For this reason, measuring turgor pressure has been traditionally been difficult and only done in lab settings. Put simply, we do not have a plug-and-play method to monitor the beating of plants.

Squeezing leaves

Measuring plant water status is pretty important. On a global scale, more water flows through plants than through rivers, and a great part of this flux is regulated by changes in leaf turgor pressure.

Similarly, agriculture uses about 70% of all the water managed by humans, and many forests around the world are succumbing to drought. It is a key time to study the beating of plants. But where to start?

While doing my PhD studying water movement in plants, I was trying to find a simple way to measure turgor pressure and water content.

Although turgor is a property of single cells, I thought I could monitor a group of cells by carefully squeezing a leaf.

My ideas were simple. Leaves are thicker when they contain more water, so I could monitor the water content by measuring the thickness of the leaf, which I would do by squeezing it with a constant amount of force.

And to monitor the water pressure inside a leaf’s cells, I could measure the force exerted by the leaf when constrained to a given thickness.

As it turned out, these two ideas were not new – only new to me, and perhaps new to plant science. Materials scientists use tests like these all the time: a constant-force test is called a creep experiment, while a constant-thickness test is called a stress relaxation experiment.

How it works

A year of tinkering and thinking about this problem allowed me to test my ideas in a very simple way. I bought a micrometer (a workshop tool used to measure distances very accurately), coupled it with a motor, a force sensor and some computer controls, and devoted myself to squeezing leaves.

Preliminary tests worked well, and then I couldn’t stop doing it!

Within the next six months, I had replaced the last chapter of my PhD with this serendipitous project. Colleagues and I successfully validated and published this simple method to monitor plant water status.

In the figure below, you can see the changes in the leaf thickness and turgidity of a grey mangrove (Aviennia marina) measured under changing light conditions.

Touching plants

Measuring the beating of plants is important, but this is not the only exciting aspect of this project.

More broadly, touch-based measurements could uncover a new wealth of information about plant life. This venture may help us understand climate, save water, and hopefully help us in addressing “plant blindness”.

Plants are very adaptable organisms. Much of their adaptability comes from the ability to modify their body plan to suit different conditions.

Read more:
Botanists are disappearing – just when the world needs them most

Being modular organisms made up of a collection of different cells, plants often modify the structure of cells and tissues, the strength of their walls, and the concentration of water-retaining compounds inside the cells. All of these properties, like turgor, are difficult to measure.

Touch provides scientists with a simple tool to study these mechanical properties of plant tissues.

A simple robotic system that could stay on a tree and continuously “feel” how the properties of its leaves (and stems, fruits and roots) change over time would have vast applications in research and industry.

Tomás I. Fuenzalida 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. I spent a year squeezing leaves to measure their water content. Here’s what I learned – https://theconversation.com/i-spent-a-year-squeezing-leaves-to-measure-their-water-content-heres-what-i-learned-187460

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate D’Cruz, Senior research fellow, La Trobe University

It is nearing ten years since the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) was legislated in the dying days of the Gillard government. Not only was there bipartisan support for the NDIS, the reform came about on the back of a grassroots campaign from the disability community. People with disability – with family, friends, and service providers – backed the principles behind the scheme and took to the streets in support.

There are now more than half a million Australians with disability who are NDIS “participants” (meaning they receive individual funding for disability services and equipment).

However, the optimism of the early days of the scheme has waned. Research by the Summer Foundation and La Trobe University suggests that despite gratitude for the NDIS, participants have lost trust and confidence in the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA), which administers the scheme.

Read more:
With a return to Labor government, it’s time for an NDIS ‘reset’

‘Down a suck hole of desperation’

Roy*, who has multiple sclerosis, was one of the 12 NDIS participants interviewed for our research. He moved to a regional area in 2016 in the hope of becoming an NDIS participant when the scheme began rolling out nationally.

We were going down a suck hole of desperation up until that point. So, on the most foundational level, the NDIS has been an absolute fucking boon for us.

Despite still believing in the scheme’s ideals, Roy’s relationship with the NDIA has soured. For example, he shared his frustration with a process of requesting funding for a replacement power wheelchair that he described as gruelling and adversarial.

This wheelchair I’m in is six years old. As great a chair as it is, parts have been falling off of it for the past year […] And people with no clinical expertise at the NDIS completely rejected a clinically and factually sound submission for it to fund a replacement chair. A like-for-like replacement. And the subsequent eight months was a constant and all-consuming battle, which took up our days and nights and weekends […] We did [recently] succeed, [but] at no small cost. The emotional toll and mental toll was insane.

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

Losing trust and confidence

People we interviewed in the months before the last election (between November and January 2022) shared experiences that eroded their trust in the NDIS to make consistent and fair decisions about funding for support, housing and equipment. All interviewees agreed to participate in the study anonymously. They represent varied disabilities, ages and backgrounds.

Participants described long wait times for approval of funding, with a lack of feedback from the NDIS. Many shared their experiences about approval delays and their fears for the continuation of their services.

Hannah* described feeling anxious each time the NDIA reviews her daughter’s funding to live in Specialist Disability Accommodation.

I think it’s crap that we’ve got this year-to-year worry, and for these older parents, it worries me enough. Imagine how, if you’re in your 80s, and you had a 50-year-old or a 60-year-old [child] […] they’ve still got no peace of mind […] I just don’t understand how they can be so cruel to people.

Sue* said she felt left in the dark when her circumstances changed and she needed a new funding plan.

We need to [be] aware of where the plan is, how long is it going to be, to be approved. What’s the hold-up? […] If you put in for a whole new plan, I think we should get regular emails where the plan is at.

Legislation requires the NDIA only to approve funding for services or equipment if it is “value for money”. Participants expressed frustration when they perceived the NDIA denied requests on cost grounds yet appeared to waste money in other ways.

Andy* shared his experience of cost inefficiency.

I had to wait more. I think a bit over two years to actually have my own wheelchair. We were hiring a wheelchair at $160 a week for a period of two years [at NDIS expense].

Read more:
Workforce shortages are putting NDIS participants at risk. Here are 3 ways to attract more disability sector workers

Having an ally

Having lost trust in the NDIA, participants identified the need for an ally outside the scheme.

Allies were described as someone who understands you and your disability and who is ready and skilled to give advice, assistance or support. Examples of allies include support coordinators, family or friends, and allied health workers.

Brent* described what he values in having a support coordinator as an ally.

You need to get a good support coordinator. But it is very important that you get along with your support coordinator and they understand your needs and what you need for your plan […] It’s all about supporting you as a person.

In response to the frustrations expressed in this story, Minister for the NDIS and Government Services Bill Shorten said:

I am committed to working with people with disability and the sector to restore trust, empathy, and ensure there are better outcomes for NDIS participants. We will empower people with a disability to have a bigger say in how the Scheme is run, by putting participants at the centre and ensuring they are included in genuine co-design.

Read more:
From glasses to mobility scooters, ‘assistive technology’ isn’t always high-tech. A WHO roadmap could help 2 million Australians get theirs

Rebuilding trust

Despite misgivings about NDIA processes, people with disability want trust to be restored. Participants in the study remained positive about the concept of the scheme and expressed gratitude for the possibilities it opens when it operates as intended.

Andy* said it had made “an incredible difference” to his life. “I never anticipated such a thing would exist.”

“The NDIS has improved my life amazingly,” said Harmony*. “Like just the fact that I get to go out and I get what I need and things like that. And part of me just wanted to take a full page ad out in one of the papers just saying, ‘Thank you, Australia’.”

NDIS participants’ relationship with the NDIS is one they can’t opt out of. They want and need the relationship to work. For a healthy alliance to be developed, there is a need for stability, timely communication and an understanding of each other’s needs. Time will tell whether a new government can deliver on promises to rebuild trust in the scheme.

In response to concerns raised by participants, an NDIA spokesperson said:

The National Disability Insurance Scheme provides individualised funding packages, allowing participants choice and control over the use of disability-related supports deemed reasonable and necessary to achieve good outcomes.

In March this year, the NDIA introduced the refreshed Participant Service Improvement Plan to renew the NDIA’s focus to deliver a Scheme that meets participants’ expectations. The Agency’s work is also supported by the Participant Service Charter and the newly legislated Participant Service Guarantee.

As part of our commitment to our Service Improvement Plan and our obligations under the Participant Service Guarantee, the NDIA has updated its guidelines to ensure participants, families and the wider sector have a better understanding of the supports they can expect the NDIS to cover.

*Names have been changed for anonymity.

Kate D’Cruz is a Senior Research Fellow employed at the the Summer Foundation.

Mark Brown is a Research Fellow employed at the Summer Foundation and is currently an NDIS participant.

– ref. What the NDIS needs to do to rebuild trust, in the words of the people who use it – https://theconversation.com/what-the-ndis-needs-to-do-to-rebuild-trust-in-the-words-of-the-people-who-use-it-185880

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrea Waling, ARC DECRA Senior Research Fellow in Sex & Sexuality, La Trobe University

“Vabbing”, while not a new trend, is taking social media sites like TikTok by storm.

Vabbing is the act of taking one’s vaginal secretions and using it as a perfume. People dab the secretion on various erogenous zones such as the elbow, wrist or behind the ear. The practice is believed to increase a person’s sexual attractiveness.

Vabbing became popularised recently by TikToker Mandy Lee. She argues, in a now-deleted video, it can help people get dates. Mandy encourages her followers to try it, recommending places such as the gym and crowded bars. Since her original video, there’s been thousands of responses, with the #vabbingtrend hashtag having over 1.5 million views.

How does vabbing work?

Vabbing is premised on the science of pheromones, a form of olfactory communication. In other words, communicating via smell.

Bodily secretions such as vaginal fluids contain pheromones that can convey a range of information about a person, including their genetic makeups. In the animal kingdom, different pheromones can do different things, such as incite a behavioural response.

While pheromones play an important role in how animals communicate with each other, research is divided as to whether pheromones play a significant role in sexual and romantic compatibility for humans. The science is inconclusive as to whether humans can sense pheromones, and if this has any impact on dating or sexual behaviour.

Read more:
From odor to action – how smells are processed in the brain and influence behavior

Despite this uncertainty, companies marketing the use of pheromones to attract potential partners is big business. There are plenty of colognes and perfumes that use pheromones promising to increase one’s sex appeal. Whether they work, however, is still in question. Journalist Tayrn Hill, for example, tried them out and anecdotally did not find that her sex appeal increased.

Pheromone perfumes and colognes are considered cosmetic under FDA regulations, meaning that, while companies can claim they use pheromones, there is no regulation as to whether the product actually contains them.

Vabbing has been touted by TikTokers as a more effective form of using pheromones to attract partners than purchasing perfumes. This is, as Mandy Lee claims, based on using one’s own pheromone makeup, rather than an artificially created one.

While scientists argue vabbing does not work and others question if it is a hoax, vabbing practitioners insist on its effectiveness. Several people have tried and documented their vabbing experiences. They claim it has helped them have hotter sex and flirty interactions with others.

Vabbing as a feminist act?

Vabbing has been criticised as an act of desperation. Vabbing is also seen as another tool of patriarchal oppression in which women are taught to value their self-worth by their ability to sexually attract men. It has also been regarded as unhygienic and disgusting, and has become fodder for many comedians.

However, there is a long history of disdain for the vagina’s smell. Vagina’s are viewed as unhygienic, dirty or contaminating. This has been regarded as something shameful and to be disguised, making it a breeding ground for capitalist markets to create insecurities and develop products as a response, such as the development of vaginal cleansing products, marketed to help women “feel fresh” and “confident”, and to mask natural vaginal odours.

More recently, there has been a rise in there has products that promise to not only cleanse the vagina but lighten the vulva. The lightened colour of the skin is not only linked with hygiene, but also racism and privileging whiteness.

Concerns and shame associated with the smell and appearance of genitalia can also result in other practices like Brazilian waxing and anal and vulva bleaching.

The consequences of stigma associated with vaginal smell range from a negative impact on peoples’ comfort with sexual experiences to concerns about sexual health. This can include discomfort in receiving oral sex to encouraging hygiene practices that present the potential for increased health risks.

The trend of vabbing, and those taking it up, could herald a new direction where the vulva and vagina are embraced. These build on public attempts to celebrate the vulva and vagina, such as Gwyneth Paltrow’s vagina scented candle, artistic exhibits that showcase a diversity of genital appearance, or even Aimee Gibbs’s (Aimee Lou Wood, from the television series Sex Education,) labia-themed cupcakes.

Some argue vabbing may be less about attracting others, and more of a form of bodily awareness. Writer Tracey Duncan found that when they vabbed for a week they felt more sexually confident in themselves and began to embrace their natural musk:

This week, I thought more consistently about how much I’ve bought into the misogynist sanitisation of pussy than I ever have before, and I purposefully opted out.

While some may mock the trend of vabbing, take it as ironic, or argue it does not work, it nevertheless indicates the vulva and vagina and their functions are now out and proud.

Andrea Waling receives funding from the Australian Research Council and Commonwealth Department of Health.

Alexandra James receives funding from the Commonwealth Department of Health.

– ref. Vaginas, pheromones and TikTok: what is the strange new trend of ‘vabbing’? – https://theconversation.com/vaginas-pheromones-and-tiktok-what-is-the-strange-new-trend-of-vabbing-187431

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist), The Conversation

Under compulsory preferential voting, all formal votes must eventually preference one of the major parties over the other. The electoral commission has released preference flow information for all minor parties, This means we can tell, for example, how many Greens voters preferred Labor and how many the Coalition.

Analyst Kevin Bonham said changes in minor party preference flows from 2019 added one point to Labor’s national two party vote of 52.1%. Changes in flows to Labor occurred across the board, with the Greens (12.2% of overall vote) at 85.7% preferences to Labor, up 3.5% from 2019 and a record high.

One Nation (5.0% of overall vote) was at 35.7% to Labor, up 0.9%. UAP (4.1% of votes) was at 38.1%, up 3.3%. Independents (5.3% of votes) were at 63.8% to Labor, up 4.4%. All others (5.1% of votes) were at 45.3% to Labor, up 0.6%. The Coalition’s percentage share of preferences is 100 minus Labor’s share.

I previously published a critique of the polling at this election, which said the polls overstated Labor’s position on primary votes, but understated their share of preferences. These two errors roughly cancelled, so the overall average of Labor’s national two party vote in the five pre-election polls was 52.4%, close to the actual result of 52.1%.

Read more:
How did the polls perform in the 2022 election? Better, but not great; also a Senate update

Close “three candidate preferred” contests

Richmond, Brisbane and Macnamara were in doubt for some time after election night as it was not known which of Labor or the Greens would finish second and benefit from the other’s preferences. In Brisbane, the Greens were in third place, just 0.01% behind Labor on primary votes. They easily overtook Labor by 30.1% to 28.4%, then beat the LNP on Labor preferences.

In Macnamara, Labor held off the Greens by 33.5% to 32.8% from primary votes of 31.8% Labor and 29.7% Greens. In Richmond, Labor was 2.5% ahead of the Greens when the Greens were excluded.

I previously covered Groom, where independent Suzie Holt made the final two on just 8.3% of the primary vote. Labor had 18.7% primary, and Holt edged out Labor by 24.6% to 24.3% with the LNP already over 50%.

Neither One Nation nor the UAP made the final two in any seat, despite a combined 9.1% of the national primary vote. The closest they came was in Maranoa. Labor had a primary vote lead of 15.3% to 11.9% over One Nation, but this dropped to just 20.2% to 20.0% when One Nation was excluded.

Electoral reform proposals

The Guardian reported on July 10 that special minister of state Don Farrell said Labor would attempt to legislate spending caps, truth in political advertising and adherence to the “one vote one value” principle.

The Australian Constitution guarantees each state an equal number of senators, so Tasmania and NSW have 12 senators each, despite NSW having over 15 times Tasmania’s population. There are 12 senators from each state and two each in the ACT and NT, for a total of 76 senators.

The Guardian article reports ACT chief minister Andrew Barr advocated more senators for the NT and ACT. But Bonham said this would make malapportionment worse: while the ACT is underrepresented compared to Tasmania, it is already overrepresented nationally.

Giving the ACT more senators would skew the overall Senate result towards the left. Until David Pocock’s breakthrough win at this election, ACT and NT senators had always split 1-1 between Labor and the Coalition. But the ACT is very left compared to nationally, so extra ACT seats would normally assist the left.

Changing the Constitution requires an overall majority at a referendum, and a majority in a majority of states (so four of the six states). Bonham says there is a further clause in the Constitution that protects each state’s representation; that needs the affected state to vote in favour. Tasmanians are unlikely to vote to reduce their state’s disproportionate seat share in the Senate.

There is also slight malapportionment in the House of Representatives, as each state is guaranteed a minimum five of the 151 seats. Tasmania’s population should only entitle it to 3.3 seats. Bonham said expanding the House to 226 seats (a 50% increase) would fix this issue.

If the house is expanded, the Senate must also be expanded by the same percentage as the house. Bonham said expanding the Senate in this way would justify extra senators being added in the ACT and NT.

At the election, there were over 17.2 million eligible voters, an average of 114,000 per seat. Bonham said Australia’s population has increased by 66% since the last major expansion of parliament in 1984, so a 50% increase in parliament could be justified. However, adding more politicians is likely to be unpopular with voters.

Essential: Albanese’s approval down but still high

In an Essential poll taken in the days prior to July 11, 56% approved of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s performance (down three since June) and 24% disapproved (up six), for a net approval of +32, down nine points. Before the May election, Albanese was at +1 net approval as opposition leader.

68% said they haven’t had COVID, 17% have had it, and it felt like a bad cold, 7% have had it, and it felt way worse than any cold they’ve previously had, and 8% say they currently have COVID (4% mild, 4% serious). A question that was last asked in August 2021 had more COVID deaths thought acceptable to “live with”.

Respondents were asked whether they thought Australia had been better, worse or about the same in handling COVID as other countries. 53% thought Australia had been better than the US and 19% worse. For the UK, this was 50% better, 16% worse. China was 49% better, 22% worse. New Zealand was 24% better, 23% worse.

63% said they did not have a vegetarian or meat-reduced diet (up six since March 2021).

Two months since the election, Newspoll has still not returned. Perhaps they were waiting for the preference flow data that was released last Thursday; this will allow them to use 2022 flows.

With federal parliament resuming this week, Labor has a House majority, but will need the Greens and one of the six other Senate crossbenchers to pass legislation opposed by the Coalition through the Senate. Their most likely crossbench allies are David Pocock and the Jacqui Lambie Network.

Read more:
Final Senate results: Labor, the Greens and David Pocock will have a majority of senators

Liz Truss likely to be UK’s next PM

I covered the early rounds of the UK Conservative leadership contest and the final MP rounds for The Poll Bludger. Liz Truss was in third place, but overtook Penny Mordaunt in the July 20 final MP round to qualify for the Conservative membership vote against Rishi Sunak.

The membership vote is conducted by mail, with the result to be announced September 5. A YouGov membership poll gave Truss a 62-38 lead over Sunak. Truss has promised to slash taxes if elected, including corporate taxes and green levies.

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

– ref. Record 85.7% of Greens preferenced Labor at federal election; electoral reform proposals – https://theconversation.com/record-85-7-of-greens-preferenced-labor-at-federal-election-electoral-reform-proposals-187081

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicola St John, Lecturer, Communication Design, RMIT University

The latest draft report from the Productivity Commission on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander visual arts and crafts confirms what First Nations artists have known for decades: fake art harms culture.

Released last week, the report details how two in three Indigenous-style products, souvenirs or digital imagery sold in Australia are fake, with no connection to – or benefit for – Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

This is a long-standing problem. As Aboriginal Elder Gawirrin Gumana (Yolngu) explained in 1996:

When that [white] man does that it is like cutting off our skin.

The Productivity Commission has proposed all inauthentic Indigenous art should be labelled as such. But we think a much bolder conversation needs to happen around protecting the cultural and intellectual property of Indigenous artists.

Australia has no national licensing or production guidelines to protect Indigenous cultural and intellectual property within commercial design and digital spaces. Our work hopes to see this change.

Read more:
Indigenous cultural appropriation: what not to do

‘This is storytelling’

Our research focuses on supporting and representing First Nations artists within design and commercial spaces, understanding how to ensure cultural safety and appropriate payment and combat exploitation.

Many First Nations artists we spoke to told us stories of exploitative business models. They were blindly led into licensing agreements and client relations that were not culturally safe. Clients thought commissioning a design equated to “owning” the copyright to First Nations art, culture and knowledge.

Gudanji/Wakaja artist and winner of the 2022 NAIDOC poster competition Ryhia Dank told us:

We need clear recognition, structures and licensing guidelines to protect all of what First Nations ‘art’ represents. I know a lot of us, as we are starting out don’t know how to licence our work […]

One of my first designs was for a fabric company and I didn’t licence the design correctly, so that company is still using my design and I only once charged them $350 and that was it. Having legal support from the start is critical.

Arrernte and Anmatyerre graphic novelist Declan Miller explained how many clients and businesses are misguided in thinking commissioning a design equates to owning the copyright to First Nations knowledges.

“Our art is not just art,” he said.

Clients need to be aware this is storytelling. This is culture. We will always own that. But we are happy for clients to work with us, and use our art and pay us for it, but we have to keep that integrity. This is our story, this is where we are from, this is who we are and you can’t buy that or take that from us.

Protecting property

Transparent labelling of inauthentic art is a great start, but there is more work needed.

Intellectual property laws and processes should adequately protect First Nations art.

“Indigenous cultural and intellectual property” refers to the rights First Nations people have – and want to have – to protect their traditional arts, heritage and culture.

This can include communally owned cultural practices, traditional knowledge and resources and knowledge systems developed by First Nations people as part of their First Nations identity.

First Nations products should be supplied by a First Nations business that protects Indigenous cultural and intellectual property, with direct benefits to First Nations communities.

The outcomes of our research have resulted in the recent launch of Solid Lines – Australia’s only First Nations illustration agency to be led by First Nations people. An integral part of this agency is the Indigenous cultural and intellectual property policy designed specifically for the design and commercial art industry.

The agency hopes this policy, created with Marrawah Law, will help create and support culturally safe and supportive pathways for First Nations creatives.

For First Nations artists represented by Solid Lines, our policy also means obtaining culturally appropriate approval to use family or community stories, and knowledges and symbols that are communally owned.

Read more:
How Indigenous fashion designers are taking control and challenging the notion of the heroic, lone genius

Recognition and protection

The report from the Productivity commission focuses on fake art coming in from overseas, but fake art also happens in our own backyard.

In our research, we have spoken to Elders, traditional custodians, and community leaders who are concerned that Western and Central Desert designs, symbols and iconography are now used by other First Nations across Australia.

This work often undermines customary laws and limits economic benefits flowing back to communities.

Community designs, symbols and iconography are part of a cultural connection to a specific land or country of First Nations people. Embracing Indigenous cultural and intellectual property policies will mean designs, symbols and iconography can only be used by the communities they belong to.

The Productivity Commission calculated the value of authentic Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander arts, crafts, and designs sold in Australia in 2019-2020 at A$250 million. This will only continue to grow as Australia’s design and commercial industries continue to draw upon the oldest continuing culture in the world.

Visible recognition and protection of First Nations cultural and intellectual property will allow for new creative voices to respectfully and safely emerge within Australian art and design industries.

Through embracing guidelines around Indigenous cultural and intellectual property, First Nations artists will be supported in cultural safety, appropriate payment and combat exploitation. This is the next step beyond labelling inauthentic art.

Read more:
Friday essay: how the Men’s Painting Room at Papunya transformed Australian art

Nicola St John has received research funding from Creative Victoria and The Australia Council for the Arts, Australian Government’s principal arts investment, development and advisory body.

Emrhan Sultan 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. Labelling ‘fake art’ isn’t enough. Australia needs to recognise and protect First Nations cultural and intellectual property – https://theconversation.com/labelling-fake-art-isnt-enough-australia-needs-to-recognise-and-protect-first-nations-cultural-and-intellectual-property-187426