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

With COVID cases surging in a new wave and half the winter still ahead, the news from Health Minister Mark Butler isn’t good.

“We haven’t reached the peak of the wave yet,” he tells the podcast. “Case numbers are going to continue to climb over the coming weeks […] and as a result, hospitalisations are going to continue to climb as well.”

The response, he says, is “a question of balance”.

People accept “that wearing a mask does reduce transmission”, but “we’re not going to move into lockdowns. We’re not going to see very broad-based mandates or government orders.”

Health authorities, as much as political leaders, recognise that “to get a balanced community response, you need to have a mix of targeted mandates”.

“We’ve had them all through the course of this year. So, for example, visitors to aged care facilities, to health facilities, public transport, aeroplanes – either where there is very high risk of transmission or where there is a population at high risk of severe illness.”

“You will continue to see those targeted mandates, I think, for some time. But beyond that, there is really strong advice, clear advice given to people about about using the common sense lessons that we’ve learnt over the last couple of years.”

“What we don’t want to end up with is a position where the community thinks government is being heavy handed or just continuing a situation which the community tolerated very well over [..] the first two years of the pandemic, but I think is starting to reach the end of their tether about.”

He defends not extending payments to workers forced to stay at home with COVID. “They are hard decisions for government not to continue those emergency payments. But as a number of us, from the Prime Minister to the Treasurer and myself, have made clear over the last few days, we’ve taken the hard view that we simply can’t continue emergency payments, very expensive emergency payments, forever with the budget that’s one trillion dollars in debt.”

“We’ve all hoped and maybe concluded that maybe this thing’s over. And every time that’s been the case, this virus has mutated again. It’s become more infectious. It keeps coming back. And so we are moving into a different phase of the pandemic where we recognise that the virus is endemic in Australia. It’s deeply established. We’ve got millions of people [who] have had it, hundreds of thousands of people have it today. And we need to find a response to the pandemic that reflects that, that we have moved out of an emergency phase.”

The pandemic has put huge pressure on already faltering hospital systems.

“We are going to have to have a good, long, hard talk to states about the position of the hospital system. The head of Prime Minister and Cabinet and his colleagues that head the premiers’ departments, are working on that right now.”

“But we also need to recognise that a lot of the pressure on our hospitals reflects the running down of general practice, the running down of aged care staffing arrangements, and as the Commonwealth has responsibility directly for those areas the best thing we can do in the immediate term to relieve pressure on our hospitals is to rebuild general practice, to strengthen Medicare and to put nurses back into nursing homes.”

Health ministers have agreed to meet on a monthly basis, and “to have a very early meeting dedicated just to these [health] workforce challenges”.

The problems facing the caring economy will be discussed at the September 1-2 jobs summit. “We know that the engine room of jobs growth really over coming years and decades will come from the health sector, the aged care, disability and early childhood sectors. So there will be a strong discussion, strong representation at the jobs summit around the care economy.”

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

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Health Minister Mark Butler warns COVID wave will worsen – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-health-minister-mark-butler-warns-covid-wave-will-worsen-186915

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Karl Glazebrook, ARC Laureate Fellow & Distinguished Professor, Centre for Astrophysics & Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology

Today we saw the release of the first batch of images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope. This is something we have both been waiting on for nearly 25 years. Back in those days, we were analysing the first Hubble images of the distant universe, and the details they revealed were shocking compared to anything we’d seen in ground-based images.

It seems the bar has been raised once again, and Webb is set to herald a new age for astronomy and space research. Its large mirror helps it produce images that are two to three times sharper than Hubble’s, and which go much deeper into space (which means it can see fainter sources).

Webb can also see far redder infrared wavelengths, opening up a new view on the universe. This is especially important to study the early universe due to “cosmological redshift”, a process which refers to the stretching of light (with the expansion of the universe) as it travels across cosmic space.

It’s also useful for studying fascinating sources such as planets going around nearby stars, and the regions where stars form.

We’ve written before about the tremendous technical challenges involved in the construction of Webb and its journey into orbit. Now, with the long-awaited first images in our hands, let’s take a look at what they show.

Read more:
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has reached its destination, 1.5 million km from Earth. Here’s what happens next

Intense clarity

In a sneak peak, US President Joe Biden yesterday presented the very first image of Webb’s “deep field”. This is the massive galaxy cluster SMACS-0723 that contains thousands of galaxies clustered around a central super-bright galaxy squatting at the centre.

You’ll immediately notice the many elongates arcs, representing background galaxies which have been “gravitationally lensed” as a result of the cluster’s mass. In other words, the huge forces of gravity at play have resulted in the light from the galaxies becoming distorted (stretched) and amplified, providing a highly enhanced image of the distant universe.

The clarity is astonishing, especially in terms of the structure of the lensed images. Here’s a zoomed-in look at one tiny region, compared with an image of similar exposure time from Hubble:

The enlarged images above portray a region in the deep field containing a spiral galaxy astronomers have affectionately been calling “The Slug”. It’s located several times further than the SMACS-0723 cluster.

But our eyes were drawn more to the very thin arc just above (marked with arrows). This little sliver demonstrates Webb’s power. This arc was barely detected by Hubble, but Webb sees the “beads on a string” clearly. They are likely individual star clusters in the extremely distant, tiny galaxy.

We can see similarly amazing details all over the deep field. For point-like objects, Webb is expected to be beyond 100 times more sensitive than Hubble, and this definitely demonstrates that.

The field is also scattered with some faint red objects, which are already attracting attention by experts. Some of these could potentially be the most distant galaxies, where the light has taken the longest to reach us.

Revealing hidden elements

Webb is also capable of extremely sensitive infrared spectroscopy, where light is broken down in wavelengths to reveal the composition of an object.

While Hubble is very poor at this, Webb manages to do this nicely – shown below by the spectrum of the massive planet WASP 96b. Located some 1120 light-years away, this planet weighs in at about half the mass of Jupiter.

The dips in the spectrum reveal the presence of water vapour in the planet’s atmosphere. Now, WASP 69b is unlikely to harbour life because of its proximity to its parent star. Yet this demonstration is very exciting since the same method can be applied to the 5,000 or so other known exoplanets.

With spectroscopy, we’ll eventually be able to detect potential signatures of life such as ozone and methane.

Seeing dust and gas

The third image is of the Southern Ring Nebula, about 2,000 light-years away in the Milky Way. This image shows off Webb’s mid-infrared capability (which is again well beyond Hubble’s range).

It’s a classic example of a “planetary nebula” (a misnomer since no planet is involved) in which the central star has transformed into a tiny white dwarf by blowing off its outer layer. This happens at a speed of about 15 kilometres per second, sending out rings of gas and dust.

The brightest star in the centre is actually a companion star, and the white dwarf is the fainter partner which can only be seen in the mid-infrared since it’s obscured by dust. The mid-infared also highlights the dust being formed in the expanding gas.

The fourth image below shows us Webb’s view of nearby galaxies. Here we see a famous galaxy group called Stefan’s Quintet, located about 290 million light-years away. The five galaxies are in close proximity. Four are interacting with each other and triggering abundant star formation.

The red streaks and clumps show the location of new star formation via the associated dust. The detail of the dust distribution and the tug-of-war taking place between the galaxies leaps out from the image. And the mid-infrared reveals light from a supermassive black hole in the centre of the top galaxy.

What also stands out is the vast sea of distant galaxies in the background. We expect to see this in every Webb image, even when Webb points to sources within the Milky Way. That’s because infrared light passes through dust. Webb’s infrared-detecting capabilities are so sensitive it will see right through objects within our galaxy.

This means distant background galaxies will be photo-bombing every Webb image. See if you can spot them in the Southern Ring and Carina images.

And finally, we have Webb’s homage to Hubble’s famous Pillars of Creation image.

This infrared view shows the Carina Nebula, a stellar nursery of gas and dust 7,600 light-years away where new stars are forming and destroying their birth cloud.

The image is extremely complex, and the intricate swirls of dust, gas and young stars are jaw-dropping. It will probably take astronomers many years of hard work to figure out exactly what’s going on here.

Just this handful of preview images, a few days work for Webb, have given astronomers tremendous amounts of new data that will drive years of research. And that’s just the beginning.

Karl Glazebrook receives funding from the Australian Research Council for research with the James Webb Space Telescope.

Simon Driver 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. Two experts break down the James Webb Space Telescopes’s first images, and explain what we’ve already learnt – https://theconversation.com/two-experts-break-down-the-james-webb-space-telescopess-first-images-and-explain-what-weve-already-learnt-186738

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Prue Vines, Professor, Law Faculty, UNSW Sydney

Actor Chadwick Boseman, star of Marvel’s Black Panther, died in 2020 aged 43 from colon cancer. It came to light last month his estate would be split evenly between his widow and his parents, following a legal process.

Although he knew for some time that he was dying, he did not make a will. This is why his estate (all his money and assets) passed by what’s legally called “intestacy” – the rules governing someone’s estate if they don’t have a will.

Boseman was one of around 66% of Americans who didn’t make a will before he died.

Australians are different. They have one of the highest rates of will-making in the world. For example, in Queensland in 2012, 79% of people over 35 had made a will and 54.5% of those over 18 had made one.

It’s possible this is a function of Australia’s high level of home ownership comparative to other countries, and that people often make their first will when they buy their first house.

But here’s what happens if you die without a will in Australia – and why you should make one if you haven’t already.

Read more:
Why families fight over inheritances – and how to avoid it

The law of intestacy

If you don’t leave a will, then the law of intestacy will apply.

Each state and territory in Australia has rules for intestacy. These set out who is to inherit, and in what shares, when the deceased hasn’t made a will. The rules are based on Western ideas of kinship, derived from English law. They focus on the nuclear family as it descends over time.

Although rules differ in each state, there’s a pattern that puts the spouse first (married, registered partner, de facto, same sex, heterosexual). The spouse gets a significant part – sometimes all – of the estate.

If there’s anything left after the spouse takes their share, then the children, and grandchildren, and so on share the remainder. If there’s no spouse and no children or grandchildren, then the estate may go to parents, then aunts, uncles and cousins. Some states extend this a little, but if none of these relatives survives, the estate goes to the government.

If you make a will, you can decide not only who will take particular parts of your estate, but also who is your “executor” – the person tasked with carrying out your wishes.

You can explain your wishes and trust they will carry them out after they have been granted “probate”. Probate gives them the right to deal with your body and property.

If you die intestate you get no choices – a court will decide who should administer your estate, and appoint someone (the administrator) to do that. This might be the Public Trustee or anyone the court thinks suitable.

The executor or administrator is supposed to pay debts, gather assets, do the last tax return for the deceased and manage the property until it’s clear who will benefit, and then distribute to the beneficiaries.

Who’s in the family?

In intestacy it’s assumed you think about your family in the same way the legal system does.

Intestacy may work very well where property held isn’t very complex, and for people whose idea of family matches the law’s view of family.

But many people in Australia do not, including some immigrants whose ideas of family may be more extended, and many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people whose ideas of family connections may be very different.

Where kinship ideas don’t match, intestacy can be problematic. For example, in many Aboriginal groups, children regard their aunt or uncle as “mother” or “father”. Aunts and uncles often have obligations to help take care of their siblings’ children, who they think of as their own children, according to my research into culturally appropriate will making.

But the intestacy scheme will ignore this. This can create ill-feeling and confusion.

This is why in the Northern Territory, New South Wales and Tasmania it’s possible to use customary law for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who die without a will.

You lose choice without a will

For the rare people whose property consists only of a house held in joint tenancy, a joint bank account and superannuation, you may not need a will because property will pass to the other owner by the mere fact of living longer.

But anyone with more complex property than this needs a will.

Intestacy has no room for individual differences. For example, without a will you cannot set up a special trust for a child who has an intellectual disability, or donate to a charity, or pick out the particular people you wish to get particular things.

Read more:
Want to do more for your favorite charity? Consider a planned gift

Death creates grief and sometimes grief overwhelms good sense and creates greed leading to disputes. Intestacy is a safety net, but where there has been no planning in the form of a will there may be greater grief and confusion because people do not know what to do.

The advantages of a will include that it can smooth the changeover of property from one person to another, and allows the individual to have their own wishes respected.

Prue Vines received funding from the NSW Trustee and Guardian for research contributing to this article.

– ref. What happens if you die without a will? – https://theconversation.com/what-happens-if-you-die-without-a-will-186384

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Karen Scott, Professor in Law, University of Canterbury

Ocean plastic pollution was a focus at the recent UN oceans conference, which issued a declaration in support of an earlier decision by the UN Environment Assembly to start negotiations for a global plastics treaty.

This initiative has been welcomed almost universally, but it must not distract from the fact we actually already have good international laws regulating ships that plastics overboard. We are just not enforcing them properly.

An estimated half of ocean plastic pollution comes from some 4.5 million fishing vessels operating in national and international waters. Recent research suggests more than 100 million pounds of plastic enters the oceans from industrial fishing gear alone.

Better implementation and enforcement of existing laws would be a much faster way of addressing ship-source plastic pollution than waiting for a new treaty to be adopted.

Plastic waste from fishing vessels includes lost and deliberately abandoned fishing gear such as nets, pots, floats, crates and fish aggregation devices (FADs).

Plastics have been found in the deepest part of the ocean in the Mariana Trench and in remote regions such as Henderson Island in the Pitcairn group.

Lost or abandoned fishing gear can result in “ghost fishing” where nets, FADs and other gear continue to “fish” for decades. Other impacts of ocean plastic pollution include entanglement, ingestion, transfer of invasive species and toxins, navigational hazards and beach fouling.

Read more:
How to get abandoned, lost and discarded ‘ghost’ fishing gear out of the ocean

Global rules on plastic pollution from fishing vessels

In contrast to land-based sources of plastic pollution, where global regulation is weak, the international rules relating to ship-source plastic pollution are robust, at least on paper.

Two principal regimes have been developed under the International Maritime Organisation (IMO). One is the London dumping regime, which regulates the deliberate dumping of plastic waste at sea from vessels and platforms. The other is the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL), which regulates both deliberate and accidental discharge of plastics from vessels.

Under the London dumping regime, plastic waste including fishing nets and FADs must not be dumped or discarded deliberately by any vessel in all maritime zones outside the internal waters of states. Although there is an exception for the disposal of material incidental to the “normal” operation of vessels, it cannot be argued this includes deliberate disposal of plastic waste, given the harm it causes to marine ecosystems.

This position was confirmed by the parties to the London regime in 2018, when they asserted that deliberate disposal of fishing gear is contrary to its goals.

Accidental loss overboard

While the London regime does not apply to accidental loss of fishing gear, MARPOL does by prohibiting the discharge into the sea of all plastics, including nets, FADs and other fishing gear, both deliberate and accidental.

There is, however, an important loophole: the prohibition does not apply to fishing vessels where “all reasonable precautions have been taken to prevent such loss” or where the discharge of fishing gear is necessary for the protection of the environment. Guidelines adopted in 2017 provide some indication of what constitutes reasonable precaution – for example, proper sorting and collection of plastic waste in a manner that avoids their loss overboard.

Read more:
Where does plastic pollution go when it enters the ocean?

Plastic pollution has also become an issue for regional fisheries management organisations (RFMOs). They collaborate with the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation on various initiatives to minimise the loss of fishing gear and the effects of ghost fishing.

For example, the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), which manages fisheries in the Southern Ocean, bans the use of plastic packaging bands on most vessels.

The problem with these rules is lack of enforcement. It is hard to monitor and enforce the prohibition on plastic pollution from vessels on the high seas. Flag states often lack an incentive to do so.

Practical measures such as the marking of gear and particular stowage technologies to reduce waste are often contained in non-binding guidelines rather than mandatory rules. And there are insufficient incentives to persuade vessels to retrieve abandoned gear they come across while fishing.

Plastic pollution solutions

States should use their legal powers under the international law of the sea to take action against vessels entering their ports if there is evidence they have abandoned or negligently lost fishing gear at sea.

Flag states should require their own vessels to mark their gear and create financial incentives so that floating fishing gear can be retrieved and safely disposed of.

The London regime has a robust compliance process that could be more regularly used to address the dumping of fishing gear and highlight this issue at an international level.

While the new plastics treaty may ultimately play an important role in addressing ocean plastics, we do not have to wait until then to better address plastics pollution from ships. We just need to better enforce the laws we already have.

Karen Scott 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 have international laws to stop plastic pollution from fishing vessels now. Why are we not enforcing them? – https://theconversation.com/we-have-international-laws-to-stop-plastic-pollution-from-fishing-vessels-now-why-are-we-not-enforcing-them-185951

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Patrick Taylor, Chief Environmental Scientist, EPA Victoria; Honorary Professor, Macquarie University

Come on, you know you do it.

Whether you’re in the trusted company of your spouse, or sneaking a quick one when you think nobody’s looking, we all pick our noses. Other primates do it too.

The social stigma around nose picking is widespread. But should we really be doing it – and what should we do with our boogers?

We’re scientists who have researched the environmental contaminants – in our homes, our workplaces, our gardens – so we’ve have some insight on what you’re really jamming up there when your finger is slotted satisfyingly into your sniffer.

Here’s what you need to know before you pick and flick.

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

What is in a booger?

Nose picking is an entirely natural habit — children who have not yet learned social norms realise very early on that the fit between their forefinger and a nostril is pretty good. But there’s lot more than just snot up there.

During the ~22,000 breathe cycles per day, the booger-forming mucus up there forms a critical biological filter to capture dust and allergens before they penetrate our airways, where they may cause inflammation, asthma, and other long-term pulmonary issues.

Cells in your nasal passage called goblet cells (named after their cup-like appearance) generate mucus to trap viruses, bacteria and dust containing potentially harmful substances like lead, asbestos and pollen.

Nasal mucus and its antibodies and enzymes are the body’s front line immune defence system against infections.

The nasal cavity also has its own microbiome. Sometimes these natural populations can be disturbed, leading to various conditions such as rhinitis. But in general, our nose microbes help repel invaders, fighting them on a mucus battlefield.

The dust, microbes and allergens captured in your mucus eventually get ingested as that mucus drips down your throat.

This is typically not an issue, but it can exacerbate environmental exposure to some contaminants.

For instance, lead – a neurotoxin prevalent in house dust and garden soils – enters children’s bodies most efficiently through ingestion and digestion.

So, you may worsen particular environmental toxic exposures if you sniff or eat boogers up instead of blowing them out.

What does the science say about the risks of booger-mining?

Golden Staph (Staphylococcus aureus, sometimes shortened to S. aureus) is a germ that can cause a variety of mild to severe infections. Studies show it is often found in the nose (this is called nasal carriage).

One study found:

Nose picking is associated with S. aureus nasal carriage. The role of nose picking in nasal carriage may well be causal in certain cases. Overcoming the habit of nose picking may aid S. aureus decolonization strategies.

Nose picking may also be associated with an increased risk of Golden Staph transmission to wounds, where it poses a more serious risk.

Sometimes, antibiotics do not work on Golden Staph. One paper noted:

growing antibiotic resistance calls for health care providers to assess patients’ nose picking habits and educate them on effective ways to prevent finger-to-nose practices.

Nose picking could also be a vehicle for transmission of Streptococcus pneumoniae, a common cause of pneumonia among other infections.

In other words, sticking a digit in your nose is a great way to jam germs further into your body, or spread them around your environment with your snotty finger.

There’s also the risk of gouging and abrasions inside the nostrils, which can allow pathogenic bacteria to invade your body. Compulsive nose picking to the point of self-harm is called rhinotillexomania.

Well, I picked. Now what?

Some people eat them (the technical term is mucophagy, meaning “mucus feeding”). Apart from booger eating being disgusting, it means ingesting all those inhaled mucus bound germs, toxic metals and environmental contaminants discussed earlier.

Others wipe them on the nearest item, a little gift to be discovered later by someone else. Gross, and a great way to spread germs.

Some more hygienic people use a tissue for retrieval, and dispose of it in a bin or toilet afterwards.

That’s probably among the least worst options, if you really must pick your nose. Just make sure you wash your hands extra carefully after blowing or digging in your nose, given that until mucus has completely dried, infectious viruses can remain on the hands and fingers.

No advice in the world will keep you from digging away

In secret, in the car or on napkins, we all do it. And truth be told, it is so very satisfying.

But let’s honour the tireless labour done by our remarkable noses, mucus and sinus cavities – such amazing biological adaptations – and remember they’re trying hard to protect you.

Your snoz is working overtime to keep you healthy, so don’t make it any harder for it by jamming your grubby fingers up there. Don’t be a grub – blow discreetly, dispose of the tissue thoughtfully and wash hands afterwards.

Read more:
New evidence shows blood or plasma donations can reduce the PFAS ‘forever chemicals’ in our bodies

Mark Patrick Taylor received funding via an Australian Government Citizen Science Grant (2017-2020), CSG55984 ‘Citizen insights to the composition and risks of household dust’ (the DustSafe project). He is also the recipient of Australian Research Council funding. He is an Honorary Professor at Macquarie University and a full time employee of EPA Victoria, appointed to the statutory role of Chief Environmental Scientist.

Michael Gillings receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Gabriel Filippelli 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. When you pick your nose, you’re jamming germs and contaminants up there too. 3 scientists on how to deal with your boogers – https://theconversation.com/when-you-pick-your-nose-youre-jamming-germs-and-contaminants-up-there-too-3-scientists-on-how-to-deal-with-your-boogers-185052

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alison Hutton, Professor, University of Newcastle

On Monday night, Splendour in the Grass, an annual three-day music festival in Byron, New South Wales, posted to social media the news that all patrons under the age of 18 “must be accompanied by a responsible adult at all times whilst at the event.”

The festival is due to begin on July 22. Prior to this new restriction from New South Wales Police, only people under the age of 16 had to be accompanied by an adult.

Changing the rules two weeks out from opening has the potential to be damaging to the livelihood of the event. Tickets start at $189 for a single day pass, and families will need to plan their days differently around the event, if they can afford additional tickets at all.

Festivals like Splendour have the opportunity to be a transformative event for young people: a unique experience with their friends, fostering social connectivity.

Events like Splendour help young people develop their own skills around healthy behaviour, but for this to happen we need to trust them – and their community.

What we talk about when we talk about safety

“Safety” has become increasingly significant in the vocabulary of researchers, public bodies, event managers and police. Social health, mental well-being, physical safety and experiences are all central to successful events – even more so now with COVID.

But there is a lack of psychological understanding in how different forms of safety can intersect.

Event managers, police and medical teams all have different views of safety within an event. Too often, event safety is considered in silos. The police are making decisions independently of event managers, medical teams and those tasked with occupational health and safety.

Experienced event managers will tell you events like Splendour are intuitively designed through many years of personal experience. This new decision demonstrates a real lack of trust on behalf of the police.

This poor communication between the event managers and police is exacerbated by the lack of consistency and tools used to maintain safety around events.

Risk assessment gets trapped in a legislative environment which bumps up against what we want an event to be. We want events to be a place where people come together and work towards one cause – this should be as true for planning the safety of an event as for the enjoyment of the event itself.

Unidirectional decisions like this from the NSW Police shut the door on creative ideas on health and safety. And without any formal evaluation, we won’t know the impacts of this on these young people, their families and the event as a whole.

There is a real opportunity for events to promote health for their audiences and the community. Part of this means there is an ownership of risk among the attendees: an agreement from everyone involved that they will work together to take care of each other.

Information sharing between onsite care providers can lead to more targeted and effective strategies, such as how to manage inebriated patrons, crowd control and drug use. All parties need to have a debrief post event and evaluate the good, the bad and the ugly, and identify and address any issues.

Read more:
When the coroner looked at how to cut drug deaths at music festivals, the evidence won. But what happens next?

Evaluation ensures we are not repeating mistakes, and good strategies are continued.

Splendour in the Grass actually has a strong track record in considering the health of attendees, offering free STI screenings on site. Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are a health issue for all sexually active people; young people are at an increased risk due to the exploration of their own sexuality, and other risk-taking behaviours such as drug and alcohol consumption.

The success of this program has shown events can successfully engage young people in their health.

Learning how to navigate the world

Young people learn a lot from their parents. For many young people, their family is their safety net. But at 16 and 17, young people are more attracted to their peer group. Events give young people a chance for freedom and experimentation in a controlled environment with established support.

Freedom doesn’t necessarily mean drugs and alcohol. Instead, it is about navigating a crowd, being safe and taking care of friends.

The event managers at Splendour in the Grass want their community to look out for each other. They want participants to drink water, recycle and get home safe. They have worked for years to establish a festival community which supports this.

This decision by the police creates turbulence around the event. Rather than tasking civic responsibility onto the community which gathers at Splendour, the police are announcing they have the responsibility – without creating an opportunity to create a shared space for risk reduction.

We should be asking festival goers to support young people. We want people to teach 16 and 17-year-olds how to behave safely at these events: how to make sensible choices around drugs, how to be safe around people who are drinking, when to ask for help.

By mandating these young people must be supervised, the impact the wider community can have is diminished.

Events like Splendour in the Grass can help young people develop their own skills around healthy behaviour. But messages need to be empowering. We can empower these young people by giving them knowledge and skills about navigating the world and giving them the space to make informed choices.

Saying they need to be accompanied by a “responsible adult” will undermine the independence young people are starting to feel, and they will miss opportunities to facilitate healthy behaviours when they go back out into the world.

Read more:
Three ways to help your teenage kids develop a healthier relationship with alcohol

Alison Hutton 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. Enforcing adult chaperones of teens at Splendour in the Grass actually undermines public health – https://theconversation.com/enforcing-adult-chaperones-of-teens-at-splendour-in-the-grass-actually-undermines-public-health-186831

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Arman Pili, PhD candidate, Monash University

Cane toads are invasive frogs that threaten the survival of several Australian wildlife species. Scientists and conservation managers have long grappled with how to stop the toad’s march across the continent.

That’s where our new research comes in. A paper just published describes a computer simulation program we developed to help test cane toad management in the virtual world before strategies are rolled out in real life.

The program, structured like a video game, answers questions such as: should toads be hand-caught or trapped? When is the best point in a toad’s lifecycle to eradicate it? And how best to balance effort and cost versus reward?

We hope the program will help guide scientists and conservation managers to get an edge over their poisonous amphibian foe.

The cane toad disaster

The cane toad is the ultimate invader, spreading up to 50 kilometres a year and breeding explosively.

What makes the cane toad truly devastating is its weapons of environmental destruction — poison packed in specialised skin glands on its shoulders. This weapon can quickly kill native predators that take a bite, such as goannas, quolls, snakes and even crocodiles.

The cane toad was brought to Australia from Hawaii in 1935 to control beetles that were damaging sugar cane plantations. While the toads had little impact on the beetles, they thrived in the wild.

Cane toads are now found across Australia’s north and they’re fast creeping southwest. Within a few years, cane toads are expected to reach the Kimberley-Pilbara corridor.

There, man-made waterbodies for livestock grazing are likely to provide cane toads with safe passage through arid landscapes and into the Pilbara region – an important refuge for many native species.

Managing cane toad invasions

The Kimberley-Pilbara corridor is now a crucial battleground between cane toads and conservation managers. But cane toads must also be suppressed in landscapes where the species is already established. And preventing the toads from invading Australia’s offshore islands, or eradicating them once there, is also imperative.

Achieving all this with limited resources is a struggle. We developed virToad to guide scientists and conservation managers in their decisions. virToad is a free and open-source program that builds on existing literature and models.

Unlike previous models, virToad simulates the vulnerabilities of cane toads at various stages of their lifecycle, and the management strategies that can exploit them. These nuances make virToad’s predictions more useful than previous models.

For example, cane toads need water to breed and rehydrate, so virToad simulates management strategies along freshwater shorelines. These include traps that lure tadpoles, juveniles and adults, by releasing chemical cues, mimicking toad calls or attracting insects (a food source) with UV lights.

virToad also simulates a promising new strategy of releasing chemical pheromones to suppress tadpole development.

virToad players can trial various management strategies, in any Australian landscape and over timescales of days to years. Each can be carried out in isolation or in combination:

• hand-capturing juvenile and adult toads
• building toad-proof fences to keep the animals out of waterbodies
• trapping cane toad tadpoles, juveniles and adults
• releasing chemical tadpole suppressants into waterbodies.

By playing around with different strategies, and understanding the effort needed to implement them, virToad allows conservation managers to calculate whether they have the people and budget to deploy a plan on the ground.

Read more:
What is a waterless barrier and how could it slow cane toads?

So what worked best?

Our simulations showed some actions worked better than others in managing cane toad invasions.

In the Northern Territory tropics, for example, hand-collecting and trapping juveniles and adults made the most significant and lasting difference. In fact, a daily effort over a year eradicated toads. But this strategy is expensive and labour-intensive.

The simulation showed similar results could be obtained when adults and juveniles were hand-captured or trapped once a week, for a year – that’s 85% less cost and effort than the daily strategy.

Unfortunately, hand-collecting toads for one day a year – as happens with community-led toad-busting activities – had no noticeable impact.

Likewise, fencing waterbodies and trapping or chemically suppressing tadpoles had no lasting impact in the NT tropics simulation. But these strategies may be more effective in other environments. For example, fencing waterbodies may be effective in the arid Kimberley-Pilbara corridor, where other water sources are scarce.

In perhaps our most significant finding, small-scale interventions had negligible long-term benefits. Our simulations showed local toad populations re-established a year after any localised strategy was implemented, regardless of its initial success or the effort expended.

This clearly indicates a landscape-scale approach is needed to manage cane toad invasions. And virToad is uniquely well-suited to guide managers on this undertaking.

Of course, our findings are only virtual. While we took steps to validate the realism of our model, real-world data on the impact of various management strategies is needed to confirm our simulated findings.

Read more:
How indigenous expertise improves science: the curious case of shy lizards and deadly cane toads

A new arsenal

We hope virToad gives scientists and conservation managers a new arsenal in the fight against cane toads, by helping ensure their decisions are both science-based and cost-effective.

While the design is based on Australian conditions, it can potentially be used in other parts of the world. And as the biodiversity crisis worsens globally, we hope virToad will inspire research into ways of managing other damaging invasive species.

We also plan to further develop virToad into a computer simulation “game” that the general public can play. Through this, we hope to spread the word that effectively fighting cane toads is vital to saving threatened wildlife.

Read more:
Pest plants and animals cost Australia around $25 billion a year – and it will get worse

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. ‘The ultimate invader’: high-tech tool promises scientists an edge over the cane toad scourge – https://theconversation.com/the-ultimate-invader-high-tech-tool-promises-scientists-an-edge-over-the-cane-toad-scourge-186542

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Bissell, Associate Professor, The University of Melbourne

The gig economy is in trouble. Rideshare drivers are cancelling in droves. Wait times for food delivery are ballooning out and driver shortages are leading to food waste.

So, what’s going on? To find out more, I interviewed 30 Melbourne gig workers who worked as rideshare drivers, food deliverers or for task-based platforms such as Airtasker.

I also spoke to 30 customers who use such services, and to 20 industry stakeholders. My colleague, Elizabeth Straughan from the University of Melbourne, conducted a further ten interviews with gig workers after the pandemic set in, to learn how they’d been affected.

Our five years of research reveals an industry facing pushback from both workers and customers. Many workers we spoke to sought to leave the gig economy.

Customers, meanwhile, often have complicated feelings – including guilt and shame – about using rideshare or food delivery services that rely on gig economy workers. Many have already quit them.

Read more:
‘Getting onto the wait list is a battle in itself’: insiders on what it takes to get social housing

‘It just felt really entitled and selfish’

One of our customer interviewees, “Mel” (all names are pseudonyms), reported feeling uneasy about food delivery:

It just felt really entitled and selfish and gluttonous and ashamed. So, I wouldn’t want people to see me doing it and then I’d close the door and it’d be my secret thing inside […] the packaging made me feel I want to cry because there was so much of it […] so much guilt.

Mel also worried she was robbing herself of skills such as food preparation or interacting with real people when ordering and collecting food herself:

It’s teaching me helplessness.

Others lamented poor service. Khalid said:

It’s kind of lost the sense of quality and customer service that they used to have that I really enjoyed […] it got to the point where, say I’d order twice in one week, both orders would come, and they’d be cold. Basically inedible. The drivers would literally have no idea where they’re going.

His household has since vowed not to use food delivery services.

Another customer, Li, found she was spending too much on food delivery:

There are times where I used it for like breakfast, lunch and dinner and I was spending like almost A$200 a day on it […] I stopped it and started cooking for myself now.

She’s also cut back on ordering rideshares, saying:

It’s so much better to walk, because there’s so many things going on that you miss from a car.

Workers looking for the exit

Many workers we interviewed said they’re looking to exit the gig economy.

James does rideshare and delivery work, but admits to feeling ashamed about it:

I actually don’t share with too many people that I’m doing rideshare. To most people, I just say ‘I’ve just stopped working’.

Lui does food delivery on a bike most nights. It’s punishing, low-paid, and he only drinks one glass of water so he doesn’t have to return home to use the bathroom. He told us:

In the future, I still have to get a full-time secure job because this delivery job is not enough for me.

Lui said he will leave this work off his CV.

Vijay, who has experienced racist abuse as a rideshare driver, says he’s also looking to get out:

There is no money in Uber anymore […] I’m desperately looking for work, to just jump into something else.

Recommendations for policymakers, customers, platforms and gig workers

The gig economy is facing twin challenges: cost-of-living pressures are forcing customers to cut costs, while the COVID-induced slowdown on migration has reduced the pool of gig workers to replace those leaving the industry.

Platform companies are constantly adapting the way they work, but, as our research shows, many workers and customers are growing tired of the gig economy.

Our report made several recommendations to a range of different stakeholders.

Our recommendations for policymakers include:

• enhance oversight and regulation of platform companies by ensuring these workers are recognised as employees
• invest in ways to help people working in industries being displaced
  by platform-based gig work to transition to new training and employment opportunities
• continue to invest in public transport, a vital public good for the future of cities; rideshare is not a sustainable or socially just replacement for public transport
• provide adequate facilities in urban centres for food delivery riders and rideshare drivers to wait between gigs
• raise public awareness of the hardships faced by many gig workers
• apply tougher penalties for abusive behaviour towards gig workers.

Platform companies should:

• offer fairer and more consistent rates of pay
• provide paid training for workers on how to better deal with challenging interpersonal situations
• better assist workers who have been abused by customers or involved in accidents
• organise social events connecting workers and make them feel part of a valued community.

Customers should:

• always treat gig workers with courtesy and respect – even small kind gestures
  can significantly improve their well-being
• consider how the use of gig work platforms might reduce the viability of similar established services
• tip gig workers, until regulation improves their pay
• choose more socially progressive options, such as platform cooperatives, where they exist.

We recommended gig workers:

• recognise the transferable “soft skills” they’ve developed doing gig work
• connect with other workers to foster a sense of collective endeavour and belonging
• work together to bring about positive change in the regulation of gig work.

Read more:
Growing up in a disadvantaged neighbourhood can change kids’ brains – and their reactions

David Bissell receives funding from the Australian Research Council. This article is part of The Conversation’s Breaking the Cycle series, which is about escaping cycles of disadvantage. The series is supported by a philanthropic grant from the Paul Ramsay Foundation.

– ref. Guilt, shame, dissatisfaction: workers and customers on the gig economy (and how to make it better) – https://theconversation.com/guilt-shame-dissatisfaction-workers-and-customers-on-the-gig-economy-and-how-to-make-it-better-185502

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew MacLeod, Visiting Professor, War and Security Studies/International Genetics, King’s College London

There is a growing antagonism towards China in Western commentary, provoked by its treatment of the Uighurs, Hong Kong and Taiwan, its activities in the South China Sea and its role in Sri Lanka’s debt crisis.

Some of this commentary is undoubtedly justified. But is the West sleepwalking to war with China – and would it be a just war, or a foolhardy act of declining powers?

In Western China, the Uighur people are being mistreated, no doubt about it.

Britain leased Hong Kong from the Chinese and gave its people almost no democracy. Complaining now about China’s behaviour there is like tenants asking for repairs to be done to an office building 25 years after they’ve left. We might not like what is happening to Hong Kong, but it is Chinese territory.

China’s claims in the South China Sea using its the semi-fictional “Nine-Dash Line” stand up to almost no historical scrutiny. They are largely false.

As for Sri Lanka’s debt, 9.8% is held by the Chinese. That’s not a typo: less than 10% of Sri Lanka’s debt is held by China. The rest is held by Japan, the Asian Development Bank and private lenders. How is Sri Lanka’s gross mishandling of its own economy somehow China’s fault, when it holds less of Sri Lanka’s debt than Japan does?

So far it’s a mixed report card for China.

But what of Taiwan? Voices are saying more loudly, especially since Russia invaded Ukraine, that Taiwan’s independence must be supported.

The problem, though, is that Taiwan is not independent, has not claimed independence, and indeed still claims to be the government of all of China.

That isn’t a typo either. Taiwan claims to govern all of China.

History matters

How could Taiwan make that claim?

Rival Chinese nationalists and communists united during the second world war to defeat Japan, then descended into a brutal civil war of their own.

Communist forces gained the ascendancy and nationalist forces fled to Taiwan, where they partly displaced and repressed the indigenous peoples. Nevertheless, the international community continued to recognise the nationalist forces in Taipei as the government of “all of China”, including by allowing them to hold the UN Security Council seat for China.

Chinese communists in Beijing played a long game and supported many pro-independence movements in Africa. This paid off big time in 1971, when many of the newly independent African countries pushed for UN General Assembly Resolution 2758, which changed the UN’s recognition of the government of all of China from Taipei to Beijing.

The resolution clearly states that the communist powers in Beijing are “the only legitimate representative of China to the United Nations” and removed “the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek” (Taiwan) from the UN.

When UN Resolution 2758 was voted on, Britain, Canada and European countries supported recognising Beijing rather than Taipei as the seat of Chinese government while keeping the sovereign territory as a single whole.

The US and Australia voted to keep recognising the government in Taipei. It was the first time Australia had voted against Britain and with the United States on a major issue.

Today, all members of the UN, bar 13 small countries, recognise the government in Beijing as the government of “all of China”. The US does, Britain does, all EU states do and Australia does.

Competing claims

So where is this independence that some want the West to go to war to defend?

The UN could perhaps have recognised Taiwan and China as two countries. But it didn’t. One of the reasons it didn’t is that the government in Taipei didn’t ask to be independent.

To this day, the constitution of Taiwan claims to govern all of China and even makes temporary provision in its constitution for voting in “free China” until “reunification”.

So, mainland China claims Taiwan to be a “renegade province”. Likewise, the Taiwanese constitution paints mainland China as the renegade.

Read more:
Is Australia in the firing line of a new Chinese campaign against the US?

The underlying truth in Taiwan is that the Chinese civil war, started in the 1940s, has never formally finished.

So, when people say the West should support Taiwan, what exactly do they mean?

Do they mean a status quo of what the Americans call “strategic ambiguity”?

Do they mean supporting independence when Taiwan hasn’t declared it?

Do they mean forcing the continuation of the civil war’s stalemate until a formal resolution?

Do they mean supporting the Taiwanese constitution’s claim to govern all of China – that is, continue the civil war until the communists are pushed out of Beijing?

High-risk talk

Words are increasingly important. The status quo can only be maintained while Beijing sees it in their best interest not to act. But the more people talk of Taiwan’s independence, or talk of going to war, the more China is pushed into a corner.

And while nothing can justify Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, nor his atrocities in Ukraine, we can see that sometimes “virtue signalling” has unintended consequences in international affairs.

Taiwan is not independent; nor has it claimed to be. Calling for “support to Taiwan”, like calling for “NATO expansion”, has clear dangers. Policy-makers need to tread very carefully: a conflict with China and Taiwan will make Ukraine and Russia look like the preview, not the war.

Andrew MacLeod 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. When people say the West should support Taiwan, what exactly do they mean? – https://theconversation.com/when-people-say-the-west-should-support-taiwan-what-exactly-do-they-mean-186744

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ashwin Swaminathan, Senior Lecturer, Australian National University

My glorious two and a half year run of negative COVID tests came to a shuddering halt last week, after receiving a text confirming I was among the pandemic’s latest catch.

My case adds to the rising slope of the third Omicron wave in seven months, currently rolling across Australia.

While shivering through my mild bout, I’d optimistically thought that at least I would have several months’ reprieve from isolation precautions and testing. But emerging evidence suggests the possibility of reinfection within a shorter timeframe for newer subvariants.

Experts have reduced the protective window of prior infection from 12 weeks to 28 days. This week, the New South Wales, Western Australia and Australian Capital Territory governments all announced those who’ve had COVID before will need to test after 28 days if they experience symptoms. If positive, they’ll be treated as new cases.

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

Reinfection – testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID) after having recovered from a prior infection – is on the way up. Reinfection made up 1% of all cases in the pre-Omicron period in England, but in recent weeks it comprised more than 25% of daily cases there and 18% in New York City.

We do not yet have comparative Australian data, but it will likely be a similar story, given the emergence of BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron subvariants here. These are more easily transmitted and able to cause breakthrough infection in those previously vaccinated or infected.

Understanding our risk of reinfection at an individual level is easier if we break it down into four key factors: the virus, each person’s immune response to past infection, vaccination status, and personal protective measures. There is not much we can do about the first two factors, but we can take action on the latter two.

Read more:
Got COVID again? Your symptoms may be milder, but this won’t always be the case

The virus

Much has been written about the immune system evading characteristics of the Omicron subvariants due to multiple new mutations of the SARS-CoV2 spike protein.

Pre-Omicron, infection with one variant of COVID (Alpha, Beta, Delta) gave long-lasting cross-variant immunity. This also gave effective protection against symptomatic infection.

However, all that changed with the emergence of the Omicron BA.1 subvariant in late 2021, with studies demonstrating reduced cross-protection from prior infection that was linked to less robust antibody responses.

Fast forward several months, and we can see even infection with early Omicron subvariants (BA.1, BA.2) does not necessarily protect us from their newer siblings (BA.4, BA.5).

Read more:
Access to a second COVID booster vaccine has been expanded to people 30 years and over

Our response to past infection

How our immune system dealt with the previous COVID infection can influence how it negotiates a future exposure.

We know immune-suppressed individuals are at increased risk of reinfection (or indeed relapse from a persistent infection).

The large UK COVID Infection Survey shows that in the general population, people who report no symptoms or have lower concentrations of virus on their PCR swabs with their prior infection are more likely to be reinfected than those with symptoms or higher viral concentrations.

This indicates that when the body mounts a more robust immune response to the first infection, it builds defences against reinfection. Perhaps a slim silver lining for those who shivered, coughed and spluttered through COVID!

Read more:
Could I have had COVID and not realised it?

Vaccination status

When COVID vaccinations were being rolled out in 2021, they provided both excellent protection against severe disease (resulting in hospitalisation or death) and symptomatic infection.

Importantly, protection from severe disease still holds, due to our immune system responses against the parts of the virus that have not mutated from the original strain. But Omicron variants can infect people even if they’re vaccinated as the variants have found ways to escape “neutralisation” from vaccine antibodies.

A new study shows six months after the second dose of an mRNA vaccination (such as Pfizer and Moderna), the antibody levels against all Omicron subvariants are markedly reduced compared with the original (Wuhan) strain. That is, the vaccine’s ability to protect against infection with the subvariants drops off more quickly than it does against the original strain of the virus.

Antibody levels across all variants rose again two weeks after participants had a booster shot, but BA.4 and BA.5 showed the smallest incremental gains. Interestingly in this study (and relevant to our highly immunised population), there were higher antibody levels in subjects who had been both infected and vaccinated. Again, the gains were smaller for the newer Omicron subvariants.

Personal protection

Most of the discussion of late has been about the immune-evading prowess of COVID. But don’t forget the virus still has to get into our respiratory tract to cause reinfection.

SARS-CoV-2 is spread from person to person in the air by respiratory droplets and aerosols, and by touching contaminated surfaces.

We can disrupt transmission by doing all the things we have been taught over the past two years – social distancing and wearing a mask when we can’t (preferably not a cloth one), regularly washing our hands, improving ventilation by opening windows and using an air purifier for poorly ventilated spaces. And we can isolate when we’re sick.

Read more:
How accurate is your RAT? 3 scenarios show it’s about more than looking for lines

A reinfected future?

There is some hopeful recent data that shows while reinfection might be commonplace, it is rarely associated with severe disease. It also shows booster shots provide some modest protection.

While some (unlucky) individuals have become reinfected within a short time frame (less than 90 days), this appears to be uncommon and related to being young and mostly unvaccinated.

Plans for the rollout of mRNA booster vaccines to target the Omicron spike protein mutations offer the promise of regaining some immunological control of these variants. That said, it will only be a matter of time before further mutations develop.

The bottom line is it will be hard to outrun becoming infected or reinfected with a COVID variant in the years to come.

We can’t do much about the evolution of the virus or our own immune systems, but we can dramatically reduce the risk of severe infection in ourselves (and our loved ones) and disruption to our lives, by staying up to date with vaccinations and following simple infection-control practices.

Ashwin Swaminathan 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 soon can I get COVID again? Experts now say 28 days – but you can protect yourself – https://theconversation.com/how-soon-can-i-get-covid-again-experts-now-say-28-days-but-you-can-protect-yourself-185491

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Selwyn Jones, Research Fellow, Monash University

Alarming stories from Antarctica are now more frequent than ever; the ice surface is melting, floating ice shelves are collapsing and glaciers are flowing faster into the ocean.

Antarctica will be the largest source of future sea-level rise. Yet scientists don’t know exactly how this melting will unfold as the climate warms.

Our latest research looks at how the Antarctic ice sheet advanced and retreated over the past 10,000 years. It holds stark warnings, and possibly some hope, for the future.

The current imbalance

Future sea-level rise presents one of the most significant challenges of climate change, with economic, environmental and societal impacts expected for coastal communities around the globe.

While it seems like a distant issue, the changes in Antarctica may soon be felt on our doorsteps, in the form of rising sea levels.

Antarctica is home to the world’s largest single mass of ice: the Antarctic ice sheet. This body of glacier ice is several kilometres thick, nestled on top of solid land. It covers entire mountain ranges beneath it.

The ice sheet “flows” over the land from the Antarctic interior and towards the surrounding ocean. As a whole it remains a solid mass, but its shape slowly deforms as the ice crystals move around.

While the ice sheet flows outward, snowfall from above replenishes it. This cycle is supposed to keep the system in balance, wherein balance is achieved when the ice sheet is gaining the same amount of ice as it’s losing to the ocean each year.

However, satellites keeping watch from above show the ice sheet is currently not in balance. Over the past 40 years, it has lost more ice than it has gained. The result has been global rising sea levels.

But these historical observations span only four decades, limiting our understanding of how the ice sheet responds to climate change over much longer periods.

We wanted to look further back in time – before satellites – and even before the first polar explorers. For this, we needed natural archives.

Digging up Antarctica’s past

We brought together various natural archives to unearth how the Antarctic ice sheet changed over the past 10,000 years or so. These included:

• ice cores collected from Antarctica’s remote interior, which can show us how snow accumulated in the past
• rocks collected from exposed mountain peaks, which reveal how the ice sheet has thickened or thinned with time
• sediment cores collected from the seafloor, which reveal how the ice sheet margin – where the edge of the land ice meets the ocean – advanced or retreated
• lake mud and old beaches, which reveal how the coastline changed in response to the ice sheet growing or shrinking.

When we started our research, I wasn’t sure what to expect. After all, this period of time was long considered fairly dull, with only small changes to the ice margin.

Nevertheless, we studied the many different natural archive one by one. The work felt like a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle, full of irregular-shaped pieces and seemingly no straight edge. But once we put them together, the pieces lined up and the picture was clear.

Most striking was a period of ice loss that took place in all regions of Antarctica about 10,000 to 5,000 years ago. It resulted in many metres of sea-level rise globally.

In some regions of Antarctica, however, this ice loss was then followed by ice gain during the past 5,000 years – and a corresponding global sea-level fall – as the ice sheet margin advanced to where it is today.

A warning

Understanding how and why the Antarctic ice sheet changed in this fashion offers lessons for the future.

The first lesson is more of a warning. The period of ice loss from 10,000 to 5,000 years ago was rapid, occurring at a similar rate to the most dramatically changing parts of the Antarctic ice sheet today.

We think it was likely the result of warm ocean water melting the underside of floating ice shelves – something that has also happened in recent decades. These ice shelves hold back the ice on land, so once they’re removed the ice on the land flows faster into the ocean.

In the future, it’s predicted ice loss will accelerate as the ice sheet retreats into basins below sea level. This may already be under way in some regions of Antarctica. And based on what happened in the past, the resulting ice loss could persist for centuries.

Bouncing back

The second lesson from our work may bring some hope. Some 5,000 years ago the ice sheet margin stopped retreating in most locations, and in some regions actually started to advance. One explanation for this relates to the previous period of ice loss.

Before the ice began melting away, the Antarctic ice sheet was much heavier, and its weight pushed down into the Earth’s crust (which sits atop a molten interior). As the ice sheet melted and became lighter, the land beneath it would have lifted up – effectively hauling the ice out of the ocean.

Another possible explanation is climate change. At Antarctica’s coastal fringe, the ocean may have temporarily switched from warmer to cooler waters around the time the ice sheet began advancing again. At the same time, more snowfall took place at the top of the ice sheet.

Our research supports the idea that the Antarctic ice sheet is poised to lose more ice and raise sea levels – particularly if the ocean continues to warm.

It also suggests uplift of the land and increased snowfall have the potential to slow or offset ice loss. However, this effect is not certain.

The past can never be a perfect test for the future. And considering the planet is warming faster now than it was back then, we must err on the side of caution.

Read more:
Scientists in Antarctica discover a vast, salty groundwater system under the ice sheet – with implications for sea level rise

Richard Selwyn Jones receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. We studied how the Antarctic ice sheet advanced and retreated over 10,000 years. It holds warnings for the future – https://theconversation.com/we-studied-how-the-antarctic-ice-sheet-advanced-and-retreated-over-10-000-years-it-holds-warnings-for-the-future-185505

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah O’ Shea, Professor and Director, National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education, Curtin University

The proportion of Australian university students from under-represented backgrounds has “barely moved” in more than a decade, federal Education Minister Jason Clare noted last week. About 15% of undergraduates came from low-socieconomic-status (SES) backgrounds in 2008, he said, and a target of 20% by 2020 was set. Today the figure is around 17%.

Since 2010, the Australian government has invested nearly A$1.5 billion in higher education equity programs. Yet participation and retention rates for the various equity groups remain stubbornly lower than for other students. Equity groups include students from low-SES backgrounds and regional and remote areas as well as Indigenous students and students with a disability.

Read more:
Bridging programs transform students’ lives – they even go on to outperform others at uni

The new minister’s commitment to improving outcomes for students from disadvantaged backgrounds is welcome. The challenge is to identify exactly how to achieve that goal. Reasons for the lack of progress to date are both “big” (macro) and “small” (micro).

At a macro level, the systemic issues include:

• finance – on average, students now takes 9.4 years to repay their university debt, but the perceived financial risk increases for those from less wealthy backgrounds

• distance – students from rural and remote areas often must relocate for their studies, adding complexity to educational choices

• prior education – students don’t have equal access to the knowledge they need to succeed at university. They might have attended a school where going on to university is unusual or be the first in their family or community to do this.

All these issues mean attending university is a more complicated endeavour for students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Read more:
Why first-in-family uni students should receive more support

What needs to be done instead?

Achieving more equitable participation in higher education requires fundamental shifts.

The first shift relates to how universities consider diverse students. Current equity group definitions do not adequately capture the diversity of learners within equity groups.

Students should not be characterised only in terms of “binary” groups – for example, low socio-economic status or not. We need far more nuanced understandings of students’ individual circumstances than postcode identifiers or outdated classifications can provide.

The lack of progress on equity points to the need to avoid a “one size fits all” approach. Targeted support attuned to students’ individual needs is essential.

Technology can be used to provide support at critical stages of students’ academic journey, pre-empting decisions to quit their studies. An example of this would be using data analytics to check that students are regularly accessing online content. Checks like these should be followed up with in-person support via telephone or email.

Read more:
Odds are against ‘first in family’ uni students but equity policies are blind to them

Disruption has created opportunities

The timing for such change is perfect. The pandemic has caused a major disruption to higher education delivery. At the same time, the global move to blended learning – combining electronic or online learning with face-to-face options – offers huge flexibility to better focus on students as individuals.

Students with a disability or who are older, have family or work responsibilities or live a long way from campus need this flexibility. Designing learning that works for students amid the realities of the pandemic particularly favours those from equity groups. The lack of flexibility in traditional on-campus offerings often excluded them.

Carefully embracing the possibilities of technology can lead to inclusive practices being “embedded” across the institution, rather than being an add-on or an afterthought. However, this is expensive work that requires adequate resourcing.

Recent research found full-time students from financially disadvantaged backgrounds are four to six times more expensive to support. Smaller regional campuses are often the ones that bear these costs.

The researchers called for more transparent and realistic funding models that cover the hidden investment by some institutions. They found the “opaque” nature of equity funding is a problem.

For example, a student may belong to more than one equity group and so receive funding from various schemes. Or the services provided for equity students are used by all students for much broader benefit. These complexities mean a realistic cost analysis is difficult.

Read more:
We can put city and country people on more equal footing at uni — the pandemic has shown us how

And what can each institution do?

Such big changes need to be accompanied by actions at an institutional and individual level. The mantra “you can’t be what you can’t see” challenges universities to reconsider how their marketing and recruitment portray “being a student”.

Nearly one in four students are older than 24 when they start university. Marketing and images that assume a younger school-leaver cohort need to be discarded.

This is important from an equity perspective. If you already have a lower sense of belonging or feel like an “imposter” at university, depictions of youthful student “homogeneity” only confirm this.

Equally, small but important gestures can make a big difference to learners’ achievements in higher education. Using an “equity lens” to look at all facets of the university is key. Begin with things like:

• providing clear and simple explanations instead of obtuse university terminology

• scrutinising timetables to avoid unintentional exclusion – this might include specific options for parenting students or those who work to support their studies

• ensuring inclusive design principles underpin decisions on assessment and program design

• highlighting the diversity of staff.

These are simple but effective ways to promote feelings of belonging not only for equity groups but also students in general.

To realise the minister’s laudable ambition, all these changes need to be co-ordinated and based on solid evidence. An overarching equity roadmap is needed.

Any change should be informed by significant research in this field and key stakeholders. They include not only those working at the equity coalface but also the people most affected by greater inclusion: the students, families and communities that our higher education institutions serve.

This article is part of The Conversation’s Breaking the Cycle series, which is supported by a philanthropic grant from the Paul Ramsay Foundation.

Sarah O’ Shea receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Department of Education. She is affiliated with University of Wollongong (Honorary Fellow), the Churchill Trust and the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education. This article is part of The Conversation’s Breaking the Cycle series, which is about escaping cycles of disadvantage. The series is supported by a philanthropic grant from the Paul Ramsay Foundation.

– ref. $1.5bn has gone into getting disadvantaged students into uni for very small gains. So what more can be done? – https://theconversation.com/1-5bn-has-gone-into-getting-disadvantaged-students-into-uni-for-very-small-gains-so-what-more-can-be-done-186630

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Bartos, Professor of Economics, University of Canberra

Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers has confirmed Australia will follow Aotearoa New Zealand’s example and put wellbeing at the centre of the national budget.

So what is a wellbeing budget? To understand that requires a short explanation of how Australia budget works now, and how wellbeing goals will change the process.

Read more:
Beyond GDP: Jim Chalmers’ historic moment to build a well-being economy for Australia

How the budget has worked till now

Governments around the world budget in different ways. Some deliver little more than a statement of economic policy aspirations. Others, like Australia and New Zealand, publish detailed and useful information.

The standard Australian budget since the 1980s has included an economic outlook, official estimates of likely revenue and expenses, and details on proposed changes to taxes and spending. There are sections on risks, estimates of debt, and much else besides.

Preparing the budget is a mammoth undertaking by bureaucrats, ministers, and ministerial offices.

Nevertheless government decisions actually only affect the budget at the margins.

The bulk of spending is locked in to programs that roll on year after year – such as aged pensions, health and defence. Budgeting is incremental. Cabinet’s key budget decision-making body, the Expenditure Review Committee, will work for months to shift just 2-3% of spending.

There are exceptions. When a major new tax such as the GST is introduced, for example. Or when a government spends big in response to a global financial crisis or pandemic. But these are rare.

Government budget decisions at the margin are, however, what the media and political debate focuses on, because they show the government’s priorities.

These priorities typically change each year, reflecting political imperatives.

The grab-bag of disparate spending increases in the Morrison government’s last budget, for example, reflected an impending election. Its 2021-22 budget reflected the pandemic. Its 2019-20 budget reflected its long-term plan to deliver a surplus.

New Zealand makes the shift

Until 2019 and its first wellbeing budget, New Zealand’s process was so similar to Australia’s that observers lumped them together as the “Antipodean” model of budgeting.

No longer. The New Zealand government’s policy decisions still remain mostly at the margins. But the way those marginal decisions are made has changed.

Read more:
Australia vs New Zealand. You can tell a lot about a country by the way it budgets

Priorities are no longer just set according to the government’s whim but are more constant – reflecting long-term goals identified as important to national wellbeing. These priorities aren’t meant to change significantly between years, or terms, or even decades.

Setting national priorities

New Zealand first wellbeing budget in 2019 set out five priorities for budget funding:

1. transition to a sustainable and low-emissions economy
2. social and economic opportunities
3. lifting Maori and Pacific peoples’ opportunities
4. reducing child poverty
5. improving mental health.

These priorities have stayed the same over four wellbeing budgets – albeit with some minor changes, such as adding physical wellbeing to the mental health objective.

Extra funding has been allocated to these priorities in each of the four years. The 2022 budget, for example, had an extra NZ$580 million (about A$525 million) for health, social and justice program contributing to Māori wellbeing.

Has it made a difference?

It is not yet apparent what wellbeing budgeting has achieved for New Zealand. But that’s to be expected.

Challenges such as child poverty, greenhouse emissions or mental health need decades of sustained effort, not four years of the standard budgeting cycle. These are areas that have often been neglected precisely because they can’t provide some “announceable” outcome in time for an election.

Criticisms of the New Zealand process for not yet improving outcomes) thus fail to appreciate the point of the reform. They are even more unfair given the context of the past two years, with the challenges of COVID-19, supply chain disruptions and global inflation.

Evidence from Scotland

A sense of the long-term benefits of wellbeing measures comes from Scotland.

It has not yet gone as far as New Zealand with a wellbeing budget, but for 15 years it has had a “well-being framework” helping to shape spending priorities.

Read more:
5 charts on Australian well-being, and the surprising effects of the pandemic

The National Performance Framework was adopted in 2007 with a ten-year vision to measure and improve wellbeing outcomes.

Updated in 2018, it covers 11 major outcomes – from “a globally competitive, entrepreneurial, inclusive and sustainable economy” to children growing up “loved, safe and respected” – with 81 measures of improvement (such as social and physical development scores as measures of child well-being).

Public policy researcher Jennifer Wallace (and current director of the Carnegie UK Trust) says the Scottish experience:

tells a strong story of how a focus on wellbeing can reorientate government by creating a shared language for public services and a sense of unity of purpose.

Not perfect, but a step in the right direction

New Zealand’s wellbeing budget is not a complete departure from a standard budget. It still has economic content and, like any set of papers produced by a government, cannot escape politics.

Nonetheless it puts wellbeing spending at the forefront of the government’s most important policy statement of the year. It is working on measuring progress in more sophisticated ways than standard indicators such as GDP.

It encourages departments and their ministers to prepare policy bids with a view to these priorities. It makes wellbeing a benchmark by which to judge the budget – even by critics.

New Zealand has long been a budget innovator. It led the world in introducing outcomes and outputs budgeting – categorising spending according to desired results rather than inputs such as staff and buildings. This is now considered standard good practice for a developed country.

In Australia the wellbeing budget could turn out to be an equally useful model – though there will always be more work to be done.

Stephen Bartos 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. Australia is getting a wellbeing budget: what we can – and can’t – learn from New Zealand – https://theconversation.com/australia-is-getting-a-wellbeing-budget-what-we-can-and-cant-learn-from-new-zealand-186725

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael P. Cameron, Associate Professor in Economics, University of Waikato

New Zealand’s unemployment rate hit a low of 3.2% in the fourth quarter of 2021 and again in the first quarter of this year. That’s the lowest the rate has been since at least 1986, both overall and separately for men (3.1% in both quarters) and women (3.3% in both quarters).

However, that low unemployment rate still represents over 90,000 people without jobs who are actively seeking work. So, why are some commentators starting to talk about “full employment” when it is clear that not everyone who wants a job has one?

Also, if businesses are struggling to fill positions, does this mean all workers will be able to flex their muscles in negotiations on pay and work conditions?

To understand New Zealand’s current labour market, we first need to understand the concept of full employment.

So what is full employment?

Economists define full employment as the absence of any “cyclical unemployment”, which is unemployment related to the rise and fall of the economy – also known as the business cycle.

As the economy reaches a peak in the cycle, employers increase production, requiring a high number of workers. The availability of these extra jobs reduces the number of unemployed, eventually reaching full employment.

But that doesn’t mean that when there is full employment there is no unemployment at all. There will still be some employment that is “frictional” (because it takes time for unemployed workers to be matched to jobs) and “structural” (because some unemployed workers don’t have the right skills for the available jobs).

Read more:
Why income inequality is the policy issue to make or break governments

Rather than “full employment”, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) prefers to use the term “maximum sustainable employment”, which they define as “the highest amount of employment the economy can maintain without creating more inflation”.

Maximum sustainable employment reflects the RBNZ’s “dual mandate” to maintain low and stable inflation (between 1% and 3%) while “supporting maximum levels of sustainable employment within the economy”.

Clearly, in imposing the dual mandate on the RBNZ, the government believes full employment is an important goal. “Work, care and volunteering” is one of the domains of individual and collective well-being in Treasury’s Living Standards Framework, because these “are three of the major ways in which people use their capabilities to contribute to society”. Full employment means more people are contributing to their own and society’s well-being.

A worker’s job market?

So, what does full employment mean for low-income workers?

When there is full employment, it starts to become more difficult for employers to find workers to fill their vacancies. We are seeing this already, with job listings hitting record levels.

A tight labour market, where there are relatively more jobs than available workers, increases the bargaining power of workers.

Read more:
Job guarantees, basic income can save us from COVID-19 depression

But that doesn’t mean workers have all of the power and can demand substantially higher wages, only that workers can push for somewhat better pay and conditions, and employers are more likely to agree.

This shift in bargaining power is why some employers are now willing to offer significant signing bonuses or better work conditions and benefits, including flexible hours or free insurance.

Low-wage workers will still feel the pinch

If you look closer at the types of jobs where signing bonuses and more generous benefits packages are being offered, however, you will quickly realise those are not features of jobs at the bottom end of the wage spectrum.

Many low-income workers are in jobs that are part-time, fixed-term or precarious. Low-wage workers are not benefiting from the tight labour market to the same extent as more highly qualified workers.

Nevertheless, a period of full employment may allow some low-wage workers to move into higher paying jobs, or jobs that are less precarious and/or offer better work conditions. That relies on the workers having the appropriate skills and experience for higher-paying jobs, or for increasingly desperate employers to adjust their employment standards to meet those of the available job applicants.

Read more:
Not just a number: Defining full employment

Overall it is clear that not all low-wage workers benefit from full employment. Those who remain in low-wage jobs may even be worse off in a full-employment economy. If wage demands from other workers feed through into higher prices of goods and services it will exacerbate cost-of-living increases.

The RBNZ is already implementing tighter monetary policies to address high inflation, leading to higher mortgage interest payments for home owners. Renters will likely face higher rents as landlords pass on the increased interest rates. These higher housing and living costs will hit low-wage workers particularly hard.

Although a full employment economy seems like a net positive, not everyone benefits equally, and we shouldn’t ignore that some low-wage workers remain vulnerable.

Michael P. Cameron receives funding from Te Hiringa Hauora/Health Promotion Agency.

– ref. NZ has reached ‘full employment’ – but not all workers will benefit from a tighter labour market – https://theconversation.com/nz-has-reached-full-employment-but-not-all-workers-will-benefit-from-a-tighter-labour-market-186717

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 discuss the rising number of COVID cases, and state governments’ reluctance to bring back mandates such as for mask-wearing. These governments know many of the public have COVID fatigue, when it comes to restrictions. And even the “health advice” doesn’t count for quite what it used to.

Amanda and Michelle also canvass the challenges of the Albanese government’s September 1-2 jobs summit. More immediately, there is the Prime Minister’s latest foreign summitry, in Fiji, where he will be attending the Pacific Islands Forum.

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: ‘Pandemic fatigue’ takes its toll of mandates and even the expert health advice – https://theconversation.com/word-from-the-hill-pandemic-fatigue-takes-its-toll-of-mandates-and-even-the-expert-health-advice-186832

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bruce Mountain, Director, Victoria Energy Policy Centre, Victoria University

Earlier today, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese gave his first major climate change speech, touting Australia’s future as a renewable superpower and promising Labor’s ambitious new renewable target would “unlock $52 billion of private sector investment.”

This follows Labor’s pre-election commitment to cut Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions by 43% below 2005 levels by the end of the decade, while boosting renewable electricity production to 82% of our electricity supply.

These goals are entwined. To cut emissions, we have to rapidly switch to renewables. That’s because the largest and cheapest emissions reductions are found by shifting electricity production to renewable sources. Since winning office, the Labor government has left no doubt about its commitment to these goals.

While the Greens have called for more rapid action, the goal to get to 82% renewables is much bigger than it seems. For the first time in a decade, the federal government is well out ahead of the states. Making this a reality, however, means tackling key missing parts of the clean energy shift: storage and grid modernisation. To galvanise change, my colleagues and I propose setting targets (and supporting policy) for storage as well as ramping up the renewable energy target.

Is the new government target really that big?

The government’s target isn’t plucked from thin air. It comes from the future scenario that Australia’s energy market operator, AEMO, said was deemed most likely by experts and stakeholders among all scenarios modelled in its 2022 Integrated System Plan.

If this 82% target is achieved, it really will be a step change. This target is four-fifths bigger than the targets of any of the coal-dependent eastern states, home to most of our population.

Victoria and Queensland are aiming for 50% renewables by 2030, while the New South Wales electricity roadmap is also consistent with a target of around 50%. Getting an extra 32% of renewables beyond this is ambitious, but entirely possible.

Tasmania hit 100% renewables last year and South Australia is well on its way to 100% renewables. But these successes are partly offset by the fossil fuel dependence of Western Australia, the Northern Territory and smaller grids elsewhere.

To reach 82% nationally, this means we will require roughly the same proportion of renewable electricity in the three big coal states. While the coal states are making progress, the federal government clearly wants them to go much faster.

How can we get there? Modelling by the market operator shows we need to build 45 gigawatts more wind and solar generation, plus 15GW of storage by the end of the decade. That will cost an estimated $115 billion for renewable energy and storage. Victoria and NSW in particular envisage private capital driving this investment.

In Australia, we have had policies encouraging renewable energy for 22 years. That’s given us about 32GW of renewable generation, of which about two-thirds is solar on the roofs of homes and businesses. Over this period, just 1GW of storage has been added – all of it from chemical batteries.

In short, this means we are set for a great acceleration. To achieve the 82% target means building renewables around five times faster than we have over the past two decades, and building storage at about ten times the rate of the past five years.

Undertaking this massive transformation so quickly will require serious policy support. To that end, we’ve proposed a Renewable Electricity Storage Target, to accelerate the storage build.

Read more:
Tasmania’s reached net-zero emissions and 100% renewables – but climate action doesn’t stop there

We believe this would work, as it is based on the highly successful Renewable Energy Targets supported by successive federal Labor governments, and it can be developed and implemented quickly.

To supercharge the renewable expansion will also require policy support. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Greatly expanding the Renewable Energy Target is one proven way to do this.

Producing the power is useless if we can’t transmit it. Modernising our grid is crucial too. Here, too, all three coal states are making good headway in innovative arrangements to improve transmission and grid access.

Power prices are likely to be a stumbling block

There’s no obvious financing issue for transmission. The challenges here are about connection, regulatory approval and community support. The Albanese government can help by letting a thousand flowers bloom rather than constraining developments through centrally imposed uniformity.

Before the election, Labor promised to cut household power bills by $275 per year by 2025. Wholesale electricity prices climbed to stratospheric highs before the May election, and have stayed there ever since. Unless these prices drop – and it is increasingly uncertain they will – households will be facing huge retail electricity price increases.

This is likely to pose serious problems for many low-income households. The federal government will be pressured to do something about it. But this, too, will be hard, given there are much tougher budgets flagged.

Does this mean the 82% target is unattainable? No, but arcane debates on market design must play second fiddle to decisive storage and renewable electricity policy. And the government will have to plan very carefully how it directs public money to achieve its goals – while helping the states to put out menacing energy price spot fires as well.

Read more:
A 21st-century reinvention of the electric grid is crucial for solving the climate change crisis

Bruce Mountain 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’s renewable target is much more ambitious than it seems. We need the best bang-for-buck policy responses – https://theconversation.com/labors-renewable-target-is-much-more-ambitious-than-it-seems-we-need-the-best-bang-for-buck-policy-responses-186302

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Harriette Richards, Lecturer, Fashion Enterprise, RMIT University

Last Friday, actor Florence Pugh attended the Fall/Winter 2022 Valentino couture show in Rome. She wore a frothy pink gown that, being sheer, exposed her breasts. Posting photos of herself on Instagram looking radiant at the show, Pugh cheekily claimed of her nipples: “Technically they’re covered?”

The show itself, entitled The Beginning, was an exuberant celebration of the history and future of the Valentino brand. An assertively diverse catalogue of models traversed the Spanish Steps draped in flowing red silk, glittering silver sheaths and billowing pink feather capes.

As extravagant as the show was, it was the appearance of celebrity guests such as Pugh that captured the attention of the mainstream. Even those who have not seen images of the show have likely seen a photograph of Pugh, whose image quickly went viral.

Why is an image of a beautiful actor in a pink dress at a luxury fashion event in Rome causing such controversy? As Pugh herself puts it, it’s “all because of two cute little nipples…” In 2022, visible nipples on social media remain a point of contention.

Fashion statements

Celebrities frequently make statements with what they wear. Just two days before the Valentino show, all eyes were on Kim Kardashian at the Jean Paul Gaultier show in Paris, where she wore a replica of the iconic pinstriped dress famously worn by Madonna to the 1992 American Foundation for AIDS Research (amFAR) Gala.

Yet, rather than being breast-baring like Madonna’s famous look, the gown was a modest version, with the bust cups in-filled with nude fabric. On Kardashian, the radical political statement made by Madonna thirty years ago somehow felt kitsch and staid.

The pink confection Pugh wore in Rome, defiantly feminine in its colour and silhouette, was not a statement in itself. It was not until she posted the images on Instagram that it became a lightning rod. Even then, it was not the dress that was the statement, it was what the dress revealed.

Instagram and #freethenipple

Upon posting, Pugh immediately became the recipient of two different responses. There were those who, in opposition to Instagram’s famously strict no female nipples policy, were quick to comment on the beauty of Pugh’s look and to praise her for eschewing long outdated policing of women’s bodies. And then there was the influx of toxic comments on Pugh’s body.

Pugh has since uploaded a second post, in which she responds to the misogynistic comments she received on the initial post. In the caption Pugh provokes: “Why are you so scared of breasts?” She directed this question to the swathe of men who posted negative comments about her body, but it could equally be directed at Instagram’s controversial content moderation practices.

The caption not only draws attention to how “easy it is for men to totally destroy a woman’s body, publicly, proudly, for everyone to see…” but also how the mechanisms of social media contribute to unrealistic beauty standards. It is precisely these expectations Pugh rejects, proudly proclaiming:

It has always been my mission in this industry to say “fuck it and fuck that” whenever anyone expects my body to morph into an opinion of what’s hot or sexually attractive.

Pugh isn’t the first celebrity to make a political statement about the experience of misogyny online and the ways that women’s bodies and self expression through nudity is disproportionately policed. In 2015, Naomi Campbell’s contribution to the digital #freethenipple campaign was removed for violating Instagram’s Terms of Use. Since then, Miley Cyrus, Lena Dunham and Cara Delevingne have all made their own claims to Free the Nipple.

However, despite the longstanding campaign to change attitudes toward women’s bodies, Instagram’s community guidelines continue to penalise femme-presenting nipples.

Doubling down on double standards

At present, Pugh’s post is still on Instagram. This is positive and suggests the dial may be shifting slightly. However, Pugh is young, white, cis-gendered and conventionally attractive. She is a successful movie star with vast quantities of cultural capital. Many Instagram users who do not fit into these categories would likely have an equivalent photograph quickly removed.

In 2020, Instagram’s nudity policy came under fire when an image of model Nyome Nicholas-Williams, semi-nude and with her arms wrapped around her breasts, was repeatedly removed. The take down of the photo reignited claims of racial bias and fat-phobia in Instagram’s content moderation processes.

Notably, the photograph did not show any nipples, but fell foul of an Instagram policy prohibiting images depicting “breast squeezing”. This was called out for penalising fat and plus-sized users by not taking into account how those with larger breasts are able to hold themselves. Instagram has since attempted to improve its policy on this specific type of nudity to allow for breast “holding” or “cupping.”

Due to a lack of transparency in content moderation practices, research into the impacts and potential biases of content governance on Instagram remains a challenge.

Some community-based research suggests that the removal of posts on Instagram disproportionately targets women, people of colour, plus-sized users, and members of LGBTIQ communities. The harmful impact on sex workers, even when not posting in capacity as a sex worker, has also been documented.

Yet other research also found images of “underweight” women to be removed from Instagram at a higher rate, suggesting that while content moderation is applied inconsistently across body types, a perceived bias towards thin women may be overstated.

Read more:
Kim Kardashian’s Met Gala Marilyn moment shows how good she is at her job: being famous

Political fashion

Displaying breasts on the catwalk is far from noteworthy. Indeed, several models walking at the Valentino show wore sheer garments through which their breasts could be seen. It was in Pugh’s Instagram post that the knowing political statement was made. As she notes in the caption of her second post: “we all knew what we were doing.”

Regulation of bodily autonomy has, of course, become a particularly volatile issue in recent weeks, since the overturning of Roe vs. Wade. The policing of bodies online can be seen as a mirror of more dangerous policing offline.

While Instagram’s guidelines state that in some cases photographs of “female nipples” are allowed “as an act of protest,” in such an environment, it’s hard to see how any image of women’s breasts can be anything other than an act of protest.

That a post such as this could elicit such vehement responses surely tells us it is high time we #freethenipple.

This article was co-authored with Samantha Floreani, Program Lead at Digital Rights Watch.

– ref. ‘Why are you so scared of breasts?’: how Florence Pugh’s sheer Valentino gown provoked a discussion about misogyny and women’s bodies – https://theconversation.com/why-are-you-so-scared-of-breasts-how-florence-pughs-sheer-valentino-gown-provoked-a-discussion-about-misogyny-and-womens-bodies-186746

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Ward, Chair of Veterinary Public Health and Food Safety, University of Sydney

Foot and mouth disease – usually referred to by its acronym FMD – is the most feared livestock disease in the world. It can cripple the livestock sector, cause immense animal suffering, destroy farmer businesses, create food insecurity and has massive trade impacts for Australia.

It’s little wonder Australian farmers, rural communities, consumers and governments have reacted to the incursion and spread of FMD through Indonesia with dread.

This high impact livestock disease has not been on our doorstep since the 1980s. Keeping it out is a new challenge and a national priority.

What is foot and mouth disease?

This disease is caused by a viral infection. It’s present in many areas of southeast Asia, and most recently in Indonesia, where it has so far spread eastwards to Bali. Papua New Guinea, Australia and the South Pacific are historically FMD-free.

What makes FMD virus so remarkable is its environmental resistance. It can persist on many inanimate objects, such as equipment used with livestock, people’s clothing and shoes, on the tyres of vehicles and in livestock transport.

It can also persist in livestock feed and livestock products, such as meat and hides. It can even remain infectious on the hands and within noses of those in contact with infected livestock.

This means everything associated with infected livestock can become contaminated. On the positive side, FMD is not a disease that readily infects humans, and meat and milk from infected livestock are considered safe to consume.

Still, despite human safety, countries free of FMD would not buy Australian meat or milk if we became infected because of the fear of importing the disease.

The nature of this virus is what scares agricultural industries. FMD virus could plausibly be introduced via a tourist’s contaminated shoes, or through smuggled meat products in a passenger’s bag or the mail. There is a plethora of incursion pathways.

How does FMD affect animals?

FMD affects cloven-hoofed animals, such as cattle, sheep, goats, pigs and deer. FMD is one of the most contagious diseases known – it’s at least as contagious as the Omicron variant of COVID-19 in some situations, for example.

The characteristic sign in FMD infected animals is blisters. These are apparent in the mouths and hooves of infected animals – especially in the soft tissue immediately above the hoof, and between the two toes that form the hoof.

Rupture of these blisters produce ulcers. FMD lesions are very painful: animals stop walking, stop eating and drool. The severity of signs vary with different strains of FMD virus and different species.

Another remarkable characteristic is that within an infected herd or flock, nearly all animals become infected and sick, yet few will die from the disease in normal circumstances. It is a high morbidity, low mortality disease with a massive economic impact.

Why FMD is so hard to control

FMD is globally distributed and globally feared. Infected countries are isolated from the global livestock trade.

There are a large number of FMD virus strains. This is important because one measure to prevent economic and welfare impacts is to vaccinate susceptible livestock.

However, the vaccine needs to match closely with the strain in a region that is causing FMD. Also, the protection period is generally short-lived, perhaps 12 months or less.

Maintaining high levels of vaccination and herd immunity is challenging in livestock populations, especially in developing countries. It requires an advanced system of livestock identification, and advanced vaccine manufacture and delivery infrastructure.

Another problem is the host range of FMD. Besides managed livestock, in Australia FMD virus could infect feral pigs, feral goats and wild deer.

Once the infection enters these unmanaged populations, disease control becomes exponentially more difficult.

Read more:
‘One of the most damaging invasive species on Earth’: wild pigs release the same emissions as 1 million cars each year

For example, we haven’t been able to successfully manage feral pigs, despite the massive damage they inflict to our environment, such as degrading our waterways and threatening native species.

If Australia’s feral population gets infected, it might mean we can never eradicate FMD, should an incursion occur.

The response

When responding to an FMD incursion in developed countries such as Australia, the goal is eradication. Based on the economic impacts of the disease, it’s less costly in the long run to eradicate than to live with the disease.

Perhaps the best example of such a response is when FMD entered the United Kingdom in 2001. How it entered is unknown, but a theory is the virus entered from illegally imported infected meat fed to Northumberland pigs.

There was a delay in detection. By the time authorities recognised the problem, the infection had spread widely. The response involved identifying both infected premises and those likely to be infected because of possible contact with the virus, and then culling all livestock on those premises.

This devastated the UK’s agriculture and tourism sectors, resulted in the death of more than 6.5 million livestock and cost £8 billion. The media coverage presented images of apocalyptic bonfires of burning carcasses and soldiers digging mass graves.

Even if a country demonstrates that elimination has been successful, it still won’t be able to trade again for many months, as its trading partners respond. This is why it’s so important to get on top of any incursion rapidly.

Read more:
Hear me out – we could use the varroa mite to wipe out feral honey bees, and help Australia’s environment

The closest analogy to an FMD response we’re familiar with is the incursion of equine influenza (“horse flu”) in New South Wales and Queensland in 2007.

Although culling isn’t part of the response for to equine influenza, the bans on horse movements and equine events, the mobilisation of a large veterinary workforce, and the creation of disease “zones” would be repeated, with the same disruptive effect on communities.

To Australia’s advantage, because FMD is such a high profile and high impact disease, federal, state and territory governments have well-developed response plans and have “war-gamed” FMD scenarios over many decades.

And more recently, other animal pest and disease incursions such as varroa mite in honey bees and Japanese encephalitis in pig herds have helped test our response systems for an FMD incursion.

However, we shouldn’t underestimate the cost and challenge of confronting this disease that has arrived just this month on our doorstep. So much depends on it.

Michael Ward receives funding from Meat & Livestock Australia, World Organisation for Animal Health.

– ref. What is foot and mouth disease? Why farmers fear ‘apocalyptic bonfires of burning carcasses’ – https://theconversation.com/what-is-foot-and-mouth-disease-why-farmers-fear-apocalyptic-bonfires-of-burning-carcasses-186741

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daryl Sparkes, Senior Lecturer (Media Studies and Production), University of Southern Queensland

James Caan, who died last week at 82, was one of those actors who wouldn’t attract mass audiences to a movie just because he was in it. He wasn’t a “star” in the same way we see his contemporaries such as Jack Nicholson, Jane Fonda, Al Pacino or Robert De Niro.

In essence, Caan was an actor’s actor. He never cared for the trappings of stardom or desired the celebrity status so many other actors craved. He was into acting for one thing: the craft.

In the 1960s, actors were experimenting with their craft just as much as the youth culture around them was experimenting with drugs, art, music and writing. A new generation of actors was emerging who were wildly different from their predecessors, influenced by Lee Strasberg’s method acting. Caan signed up for classes at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theatre in New York, where he learned the Method and stayed for five years.

Caan’s years at the Playhouse School developed in him the urge to be seen as a serious actor, rather than a “star”. When offered a leading role in a television series in 1965 he turned it down, fearful the role would make him rich and diminish his love of acting.

This was the thing with Caan. He couldn’t be typecast. De Niro has always traded on his tough-guy image; Pacino, the outsider; Nicholson, crazy and cool. But Caan couldn’t be put in a box. You had the volatile, violent son in The Godfather (1972), the zany comedy police detective in Freebie and the Bean (1974), the passive victim in Misery (1990), and the uptight, reserved father in Elf (2003).

He was a prolific actor, but rarely the lead. This took nothing away from his performances, but it highlights how uninterested he was in stardom. His quality as an actor lies in how he was able to turn these smaller roles into his own. When he was on screen, you knew he was there. He demanded attention.

He owned those characters. No role was too small for his light to shine through.

Even when playing a smaller role, he had the ability to eclipse the leads. Perhaps nothing shows this better than his role as Sonny Corleone in The Godfather. Caan is explosive. He almost jumps out of the screen with his frenetic energy, and deservedly gained a best supporting actor Oscar nomination along with Pacino – although Caan had much less screen time.

Read more:
The Godfather at 50: set among the American Mafia of the 40s, Coppola’s film is unmistakably a film of the disillusioned 70s

Life imitates art

Caan’s personal life was as dramatic as his on-screen characters.

Linked to Mafia groups and periods of drug addiction, he had phone calls tapped by the FBI and had numerous run-ins with the law.

The death of his sister – also his manager – affected him greatly. The theft of his money by a dodgy accountant left him penniless for a while.

As a result of his ongoing troubles, especially into the 1980s, Caan’s career faltered. There are large gaps in his acting resume where little happened for him. Hollywood didn’t lock him out, but it didn’t go looking for him either.

It is interesting to think of the roles Caan could have had and what he would have brought to them.

He was considered for or offered the leads in Kramer Vs Kramer, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Blade Runner, Star Wars and even the 1970s Superman. But for all he either refused or was passed over.

The 1990s and 2000s saw him return to steady work. Supporting roles in features and starring roles in lesser television movies became more prolific.

In these later productions, you could still see the glimmer of greatness in the ageing Caan’s work. Occasionally, in dramas such as The Yards (2000), City of Ghosts (2002) and Dogville (2003), we witness a resurgence of Caan’s energy and intensity back on the screen.

His longevity as an actor, rather than as a “star”, through his six-decade career came down to his versatility. He was noticeable, without having that star recognition.

Perhaps that was a blessing in disguise and his secret weapon as an actor. When we see a famous actor we see the “star” first and the actor second. With Caan we see the actor – and acting – first. He was able to transform into whatever character he was playing and make his audience believe he was that role, free from the artifice of stardom.

Caan did not have a particularly stellar career compared with some of his contemporaries. But that is immaterial. He was a remarkable actor who, at his best, could hold his own among the greats.

Read more:
From the Moscow stage to Monroe and De Niro: how the Method defined 20th-century acting

Daryl Sparkes 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. James Caan was rarely a star. But he was a remarkable actor’s actor who could hold his own among the greats – https://theconversation.com/james-caan-was-rarely-a-star-but-he-was-a-remarkable-actors-actor-who-could-hold-his-own-among-the-greats-186635

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Spencer Zifcak, Allan Myers Chair of Law/Professor of Law, Australian Catholic University

Last week Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus put an end to Canberra lawyer Bernard Collaery’s criminal prosecution.

Collaery was prosecuted in 2018 and was facing five charges, including allegedly conspiring with his client, “Witness K”, to disclose confidential information about the Australian government’s spying operation in Timor-Leste.

The prosecution was a scandal and should never have been commenced.

So how did we get here?

In 2004, at former foreign minister Alexander Downer’s behest, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) planted surveillance devices in the Palacio Governo, the building that housed the offices of Timor-Leste’s prime minister and the national cabinet conference room.

The purpose of this intelligence-gathering enterprise was to listen in to Timor-Leste’s cabinet deliberations concerning a legal dispute between the two countries over the location of the maritime boundary between them.

The outcome of that dispute would determine the share of lucrative oil and gas revenues that Timor-Leste and Australia would each receive from prospective drilling in the Timor Sea.

Through this secret surveillance activity, the Australian government obtained crucial information regarding Timor’s case about the maritime boundary before the International Court of Justice (ICJ). This provided Australia with an unfair advantage in the oil and gas dispute.

In the end, to evade the court’s judgement, the Australian government withdrew from its jurisdiction.

Read more:
The shaky case for prosecuting Witness K and his lawyer in the Timor-Leste spying scandal

“Witness K” had been an ASIS officer involved in the surveillance operation. He was troubled by it, so he lodged a complaint with the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security suggesting that the surveillance may have been illegal.

The Inspector-General agreed Witness K could disclose relevant information as evidence in any related legal proceedings. Information regarding the secret surveillance operation made its way progressively into Australia’s and Timor-Leste’s media.

In 2013, Timor-Leste sought to reopen proceedings with respect to the maritime boundary issue in the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague. It briefed Collaery to represent its interests, as he had a long history of representing the interests of the country.

Then, in an extraordinary action in late 2013, the Australian Federal Police raided Witness K’s and Collaery’s homes and offices.

At Collaery’s office, the police uncovered a detailed legal memorandum containing his advice to Timor-Leste’s government with respect to the location of the maritime boundary.

Criminal prosecution

Things went quiet for five years. Then, in late 2018, out of the blue and for reasons that remain unclear, former Attorney-General Christian Porter approved the criminal prosecution of Witness K and Collaery. Porter alleged they had disclosed classified information illegally.

Legal argument with respect to the conduct of the prosecution continued for four years, to Collaery’s great personal and financial detriment.

There are several matters concerning the prosecution that warrant close consideration.

It’s highly likely the Australian government itself acted unlawfully. ASIS undertook an act of criminal trespass in Timor-Leste by planting surveillance devices to monitor the Timor-Leste’s Cabinet’s deliberations.

As in every other democratic country, Timor Leste’s cabinet deliberations are, by law, secret.

Under a United Nations convention (the Convention on Jurisdictional Immunities of States and their Property), states and their property are immune from the domestic jurisdiction of another country.

Australia clearly broke international law by raiding Witness K’s and Collaery’s offices and confiscating documents that were the property of the government of Timor-Leste.

In Australia, the law protects communications between lawyer and client. By effectively stealing Collaery’s extensive legal advice to the Timor-Leste government, ASIS transgressed the confidentiality of lawyer-client communications.

Next, Porter made application after application to the ACT Supreme Court to ensure Collaery’s trial would be conducted in secret.

The government argued that should documents revealing ASIS operations become public, foreign intelligence agencies into whose hands such documents fell may be able – when combining them with other sources of information – to construct an intelligible mosaic from which the processes and methods of Australian secret surveillance activities could be ascertained.

In this case, however, the documents in question related to a single intelligence operation conducted in a tiny country 18 years ago. It would come as a surprise to any informed lay observer, and probably to any capable intelligence analyst, if historical methods of surveillance used in 2004 could cast even the remotest light on the technological methodology of contemporary intelligence practice.

A secret trial constitutes a radical attack on the fundamental principles of open justice and fair trial.

Everything turned upside down

There was a certain Alice in Wonderland quality about all this. Everything had been turned upside down.

The two people who acted in the national interest by disclosing unlawful activity undertaken by Australia’s overseas intelligence service in bugging East Timor’s Cabinet were the defendants in the criminal case.

Those in government who initiated the unlawful, covert operation, through their successors in government, had become the prosecutors. Something had gone very wrong.

Had Collaery’s case proceeded to trial, the ramifications of the case for freedom of expression, journalism and governmental accountability would have resonated through Australian law and society for years.

It was a direct assault on freedom of political communication, and it intimidated whistleblowers.

It discouraged investigative journalism, undermined press freedom, involved criminal trespass and contractual fraud, invaded legal privilege, violated UN Conventions, and denied fair trial. It was a blot on the conduct of Australia’s foreign relations and was a grievous attack on individuals of conscience.

Dreyfus should be highly commended for drawing this scandalous legal proceeding to a close.

Spencer Zifcak is the Chair of the Accountability Round Table. He worked with the United Nations in Timor-Leste betweem 1999 – 2004.

– ref. The unconscionable prosecution of Bernard Collaery was an assault on the values Australia holds dear – https://theconversation.com/the-unconscionable-prosecution-of-bernard-collaery-was-an-assault-on-the-values-australia-holds-dear-186560

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Angelique Nairn, Senior Lecturer in Communication Studies, Auckland University of Technology

When it was first revealed that Natalie Portman was to become the “female Thor” in Marvel’s latest superhero instalment, Thor: Love and Thunder, fans were quick to condemn the decision on social media.

Portman was lambasted as not “swole” enough, too petite, and generally not what people imagined the character to be. Ten months of intensive workouts and a high-protein diet later, and Portman is being applauded for arms that “could actually throw giant hammers at baddies’ heads”.

Yet that early reaction to Portman’s casting attests to how the representation of female superheroes can be difficult for movie-makers when the established audience is often perceived to be young, white, cisgender and male.

It seemingly doesn’t matter that the number of women consuming superhero content has increased. Offering feminist depictions of characters that could challenge the defining masculinity of the genre remains a problem.

What does this mean for Portman and the female superheroes who have come before (and will follow) her? The answer seems to be that the makers of superhero movies inevitably subvert some gender stereotypes while maintaining others.

In short, they offer token female representation so as not to ostracise audiences. So while she might now be more muscular, Portman is still subordinated to Chris Hemsworth’s Thor by highlighting that she is first and foremost his love interest.

Too few female superheroes

Granted, the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) franchise has at least attempted to cast female leads and to advocate for women’s issues. For example, Black Widow’s standalone film was in part intended to contribute to the dialogue around the #Timesup and #MeToo movements.

And the latest Thor offering explores the value of female friendships, with co-star Tessa Thompson attesting to her character Valkyrie being “happy to have found a new sister”.

There’s no doubt female viewers can identify with these powerful women and their stories and as a result form positive attitudes to the superhero genre in general. But that means more superhero films need to be made with the female viewer in mind.

Read more:
The witch treatment: What Dr. Strange’s Wanda tells us about representations of female anger

Such offerings are few and far between, however. Let’s not forget it took Marvel ten years to give Black Widow her own film after her original introduction to the franchise (in 2010’s Iron Man 2).

In many ways, Marvel’s films continue to depict women as auxiliaries – damsels in distress, love interests, or subordinate in some way to their male counterparts. In fact, actress Scarlett Johansson criticised the earlier “hyper-sexualisation” of her Black Widow character.

Similarly, Scarlet Witch, one of the most powerful of the Avengers characters, is often defined by the male relationships in her life. In the recent Dr Strange: The Multiverse of Madness, she typifies many unfavourable female tropes, including the “hysterical woman” and “monstrous mother”.

The hyper-sexualised stereotype

Treating even powerful female characters as subordinate or dependent might reassure male fans that superheroines aren’t a threat to the masculine undertones of the genre, but it does a disservice to the female audience.

Asked to assess superhero graphic novels and films, most women in one study said they disliked and avoided the DC Comics character of Catwoman because she was presented as manipulative and emotional.

Read more:
Captain Marvel: why female superheroes are not just for International Women’s Day

Other research has found that exposure to messages of powerlessness can lead girls to feel demoralised and dissatisfied with their own identities, and the overly sexualised depiction of female superheroes can result in lower body esteem in women.

On the other hand, some also rebel against the stereotypes. The Hawkeye Initiative, for example, parodies the male gaze within the comic book genre by depicting men in the same absurd costumes and poses normally reserved for female characters.

Male backlash and box office risk

The real issue, though, is whether women should even have to challenge such depictions. If more films and comics were made by women for women, perhaps there would be fewer tokenistic portrayals to begin with.

Marvel has rejected criticism of its female characters, with its president saying the studio has always “gone for the powerful woman versus the damsel in distress” and pointing to the recent release of female-led superhero films and TV programs such as She-Hulk and Ms Marvel.

Read more:
Superman’s not the first hero to be portrayed as bisexual, but he’ll bring hope to LGBTQ+ fans

Trouble is, it’s hard to keep everyone happy. Marvel has felt the backlash from die-hard male fans to a supposed feminist agenda underpinning the studio’s direction. 2019’s Captain Marvel, for example, was touted as bringing feminism to the Marvel universe, but poor reviews and audience ratings were attributed in part to perceived political correctness and a narrative based on female agency.

Researchers such as Stephanie Orme have contended that the dominance of men in the superhero genre leaves many female fans feeling alienated and unable to change the gender stereotypes, precisely because they’re not seen as the target audience.

It seems that without more and better film and comic female superheroes telling women’s stories, these male-centric genres will continue to alienate female audiences – and to fall short of their creative and commercial potential.

Angelique Nairn 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. For the love of Thor! Why it’s so hard for Marvel to get its female superheroes right – https://theconversation.com/for-the-love-of-thor-why-its-so-hard-for-marvel-to-get-its-female-superheroes-right-186639

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matt Killingsworth, Senior Lecturer in International Relations, University of Tasmania

When the International Criminal Court began operating 20 years ago this month, its existence reflected a unique historical and political epoch. Buoyed by the successful creation of war-crimes tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, delegates to the conference in Rome that created the court were optimistic for the future of international law.

They believed the new post–cold war political order could be underpinned by widely observed international laws and a form of global justice that wasn’t decided by powerful states.

Remarkably, all the countries of South America and large numbers of African states signed the Rome Statute establishing the ICC. They did this knowing they were likely to be the focus of its investigations, but encouraged by the hope that justice would extend to the powerful global north. Crucially, the UN Security Council was not given a monopoly on referring cases to the court.

Once the ICC became operational, however, this optimism quickly dissipated. The court took until 2006 to start its first trial and a further six years to announce its first conviction. Indeed, in its 20 years of operation, with a total budget of nearly €1.5 billion (A$2.2 billion), it has made only ten convictions and four acquittals.

Over that period, African countries became increasing disaffected with the court, not only accusing it of “hunting Africans” but also expressing frustration at its inability and lack of will to hold the United States and other major powers to account.

Frustrating performance

Some of the critics misrepresented the ICC’s institutional and jurisdictional limitations. But the fact it took until 2016 to open an investigation outside Africa (in Georgia) reinforced the view that the court is a neo-colonial, Western-influenced institution.

Further frustration arose from the ICC’s focus on “low hanging fruit” and its failure to pursue sexual and gender-based crimes in particular. More recently, the decision by the court’s appeals chamber to reverse the ICC’s conviction of Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo, commander-in-chief of the Mouvement de Libération du Congo, raised concerns about the court’s ability to prosecute high-ranking public officials.

But perhaps the critics’ greatest frustration with the ICC is its perceived failure to hold the United States (and Israel, to a lesser extent) to account. However, much of this frustration represents a misunderstanding about the court’s legal reach. Neither the US nor Israel is a signatory to the Rome Statute, and the US could veto any attempt to initiate a referral through the UN Security Council.

Critics gained some satisfaction when it was announced the ICC prosecutor’s office would investigate American military and intelligence personnel who allegedly used “torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity, and rape” in Afghanistan. That hope evaporated when a new prosecutor, Karim Khan, announced the investigation would no longer focus on those alleged crimes.

Great expectations

These concerns about the ICC are the result of two factors outside the ICC’s control: the refusal of some countries to sign the Rome Statute and the increased expectations generated when the court was created.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the current Ukraine–Russia conflict. Almost as soon as Russia invaded Ukraine, questions were being asked about how the instigators of the war might be investigated, and ultimately punished, for committing a crime of aggression.

The Ukraine conflict is not a straightforward matter for the ICC. It has the power to investigate Russia for crimes it commits in Ukraine because Ukraine has accepted the ICC’s jurisdiction (though without signing the Rome Statute). But it can’t prosecute Russia for the crime of aggression because the Russian government hasn’t signed the statute.

More broadly, the fact that an unprecedented number of countries have referred the Ukraine invasion to the ICC is evidence of the court’s ongoing importance.

The atrocities committed by the Syrian government (also a non-signatory, and a close ally of Russia) during the conflict in that country also fall outside the ICC’s jurisdiction.

But courts in France, Germany and Sweden, under the principle of universal jurisdiction, have investigated and prosecuted Syrian individuals. This includes regime intelligence officers, suspected of serious crimes.

Read more:
Russia’s Ukraine invasion is slowly approaching an inflection point. Is the West prepared to step up?

Indeed, the existence of the ICC and other new international mechanisms has encouraged an unprecedented collation of evidence about atrocities committed in Syria. This has been done in the hope that those responsible will one day be held to account.

The ICC has had one other important effect. The spectre of a possible ICC investigation into crimes allegedly committed by Australian SAS troops in Afghanistan was a clear factor in the Australian Defence Force’s decision to launch its own investigation. Before the ICC was created, no such incentive existed for national defence forces to investigate the behaviour of their own personnel.

The ICC isn’t perfect. Created in a unique period of cooperation, its operations now reflect the more state-centric and less cooperative world we inhabit. To condemn it solely because of its low prosecution rate would be short-sighted. Instead, we should appreciate the central role it has played in creating expectations that global justice can be realised.

Matt Killingsworth 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. Twenty years on, the International Criminal Court is doing more good than its critics claim – https://theconversation.com/twenty-years-on-the-international-criminal-court-is-doing-more-good-than-its-critics-claim-186382

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert Cameron, Associate Lecturer/Researcher, The University of Western Australia

Home ownership among young people is falling sharply, while renters face worrying insecurity. Nowhere is this more pronounced than for the 4.4 million Australians living with a disability and, in particular, the 660,000 plus Australians with an intellectual disability.

For the majority of these people, owning a home is impossible without financial support from their families. With the loss of this support, they can find themselves in precarious or even abusive situations. Stuck in a cycle of temporary accommodation or forced into group homes (or even nursing homes) with little control over where and who they live with.

If the entire premise of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is to give people more choice and autonomy over their lives, then that must extend to people’s fundamental needs for appropriate housing. To uphold the access and inclusion rights of people with a disability, their housing needs must be a priority.

One alternative gaining traction in Australia is the co-design, co-living model which could offer a range of benefits for people living with a disability.

Read more:
‘It’s shown me how independent I can be’ – housing designed for people with disabilities reduces the help needed

Living at the end of the road

People in Australia living with a disability have less access to services, social activities, and green spaces compared to people without a disability.

Over the last decade, market-driven approaches to disability housing in Australia have favoured cost effectiveness and replication, leading to limited design diversity, innovation and choice.

At a planning level, this has produced socially isolated dwellings with inadequate consideration of mobility, access to nature, and access to community spaces and services.

We know the built environment around us can have positive and negative effects on our health – from determining activity levels, to food access, to our contact with nature and social spaces. It also affects the air we breathe, water we drink and shelter from the elements.

Residents of highly green neighbourhoods, for instance, have 1.37 and 1.6 times greater odds of better physical and mental health than those who perceive their neighbourhood as less green.

Profit-driven design

In general, commercial housing developments are not accessible. Designs are driven by costs and wide scale trends.

When required, housing may meet the minimum accessibility requirements but almost never considers the end-user needs. This can create inappropriate environments, which then require modification for individuals – a wasteful and costly approach.

Even housing with the express design purpose of being accessible can fail. A recent survey found only 44% of accessible housing complied with the Liveable Housing Design Guidelines.

Conversely, when we focus on successful housing projects for people living with a disability, we see common architectural features: inviting communal spaces; private individual dwellings; commercial opportunities for residents; and on-site support.

Well-designed buildings “speak” to their environments too – be it the footpath or the grove – and foster community connection.

Read more:
Labor vows to tackle the NDIS crisis – what’s needed is more autonomy for people with disability

Could co-housing be the answer?

Many recipients of the NDIS would like to live independently in their own home but with easy access to onsite support.

A connected model could be the answer. Co-housing is the idea of semi-communal living that includes shared facilities and public space, self-governance, and design input from potential residents.

Studies show how health and well-being is improved by living in deliberate and dedicated co-housing. This may be explained by greater social inclusion and less loneliness.

People in co-housing also have reduced care needs compared to those living in conventional circumstances – 13% of residents compared to 22%, a gap which widens significantly with age. More research is needed, but there also seems to be a link between less chronic disease and lower impairment and co-housing.

Read more:
With a return to Labor government, it’s time for an NDIS ‘reset’

These ideas in practice

We were involved as designers of a proposed co-housing project in Perth’s south-east in Western Australia. The idea was instigated by the clients and families of Building Friendships, a disability service provider that facilitates social outings and short trips to assist with developing life skills through community interactions.

The project uses co-site selection and co-design sessions with end-users to create better design outcomes and build social capital from the beginning.

The design includes 20 private pod houses with a central hub where residents gather, cook, socialise, and learn new skills including gardening in an existing and successful veggie growing enterprise. There are also on-site support services.

The project draws inspiration from domestic projects such as Walumba Elders Centre in Warman, WA, and international examples such as the Group Home on Hilltop in Hachioji, Japan.

At the heart of these examples lies good locations, good buildings, and opportunities to live alongside others: community, amenity and quality of space. This shouldn’t really be unusual or remarkable. Fundamental to this approach is simply raising the bar for people living with a disability to that of everyone else.

Rob Cameron, Emily Van Eyk, and Dan Martin are the designers of the Perth Hills co-housing project mentioned in this article.

This article has been produced with the assistance of the Alastair Swayn Foundation – alastairswaynfoundation.org

– ref. Not just ramps and doorways – disability housing is about choosing where, how and who you live with – https://theconversation.com/not-just-ramps-and-doorways-disability-housing-is-about-choosing-where-how-and-who-you-live-with-183523

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susan Hespos, Psychology Department at Northwestern University Evanston, Illinois, USA and Professor of Infant Studies at MARCS Institute, Western Sydney University

In a world rife with opposing views, let’s draw attention to something we can all agree on: if I show you my pen, and then hide it behind my back, my pen still exists – even though you can’t see it anymore. We can all agree it still exists, and probably has the same shape and colour it did before it went behind my back. This is just common sense.

These common-sense laws of the physical world are universally understood by humans. Even two-month-old infants share this understanding. But scientists are still puzzled by some aspects of how we achieve this fundamental understanding. And we’ve yet to build a computer that can rival the common-sense abilities of a typically developing infant.

New research by Luis Piloto and colleagues at Princeton University – which I’m reviewing for an article in Nature Human Behaviour – takes a step towards filling this gap. The researchers created a deep-learning artificial intelligence (AI) system that acquired an understanding of some common-sense laws of the physical world.

The findings will help build better computer models that simulate the human mind, by approaching a task with the same assumptions as an infant.

Childish behaviour

Typically, AI models start with a blank slate and are trained on data with many different examples, from which the model constructs knowledge. But research on infants suggests this is not what babies do. Instead of building knowledge from scratch, infants start with some principled expectations about objects.

For instance, they expect if they attend to an object that is then hidden behind another object, the first object will continue to exist. This is a core assumption that starts them off in the right direction. Their knowledge then becomes more refined with time and experience.

The exciting finding by Piloto and colleagues is that a deep-learning AI system modelled on what babies do, outperforms a system that begins with a blank slate and tries to learn based on experience alone.

Read more:
Artificial intelligence can deepen social inequality. Here are 5 ways to help prevent this

Cube slides and balls into walls

The researchers compared both approaches. In the blank-slate version, the AI model was given several visual animations of objects. In some examples, a cube would slide down a ramp. In others, a ball bounced into a wall.

The model detected patterns from the various animations, and was then tested on its ability to predict outcomes with new visual animations of objects. This performance was compared to a model that had “principled expectations” built in before it experienced any visual animations.

These principles were based on the expectations infants have about how objects behave and interact. For example, infants expect two objects should not pass through one another.

If you show an infant a magic trick where you violate this expectation, they can detect the magic. They reveal this knowledge by looking significantly longer at events with unexpected, or “magic” outcomes, compared to events where the outcomes are expected.

Infants also expect an object should not be able to just blink in and out of existence. They can detect when this expectation is violated as well.

Piloto and colleagues found the deep-learning model that started with a blank slate did a good job, but the model based on object-centred coding inspired by infant cognition did significantly better.

The latter model could more accurately predict how an object would move, was more successful at applying the expectations to new animations, and learned from a smaller set of examples (for example, it managed this after the equivalent of 28 hours of video).

An innate understanding?

It’s clear learning through time and experience is important, but it isn’t the whole story. This research by Piloto and colleagues is contributing insight to the age-old question of what may be innate in humans, and what may be learned.

Beyond that, it’s defining new boundaries for what role perceptual data can play when it comes to artificial systems acquiring knowledge. And it also shows how studies on babies can contribute to building better AI systems that simulate the human mind.

Susan Hespos 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. Researchers trained an AI model to ‘think’ like a baby, and it suddenly excelled – https://theconversation.com/researchers-trained-an-ai-model-to-think-like-a-baby-and-it-suddenly-excelled-186563

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert Horvath, Senior lecturer, La Trobe University

No concept is more central to Vladimir Putin’s propaganda today than “Russophobia”. Internationally and on the home front, his propagandists claim they are fighting “Russophobes”, enemies motivated by a visceral hatred of Russia’s culture and people. Last month, the Russian foreign ministry sanctioned 121 Australians (including me) for “forming the Russophobic agenda in this country”.

According to Putin, Russophobia is nothing less than an existential threat. Ukrainian Russophobia, he claimed last December, is a first step towards an anti-Russian genocide. On the eve of the war, he denounced “extreme nationalism’ for taking the form of “aggressive Russophobia and neo-Nazism”.

Then, as missiles began falling on Ukrainian cities, and Bucha and Mariupol became synonyms for atrocities, the spectre of Russophobia became both a justification for war and an explanation for international sanctions.

What is obscured by Putin’s conflation of Russophobia and neo-Nazism is the sinister lineage of his own vocabulary. Even as he was claiming to de-Nazify Ukraine, Putin was using terms that had been coined, shaped and popularised by the Russian far right.

What’s in a word?

The modern usage of the term Russophobia can be traced to Igor Shafarevich, a Soviet-era dissident. Shafarevich’s long 1982 essay, Rusofobiya, was a response to a debate raging in samizdat (underground dissident literature) about the connection of the Soviet regime to the pre-revolutionary past. What incensed Shafarevich was how some participants in this debate depicted Russian history as a continuum of despotism stretching back via Stalin to Ivan the Terrible.

Shafarevich’s rebuttal of these “Russophobes” drew on the work of French conservative historian Augustin Cochin, who portrayed the French Revolution as a struggle between the “Small People”, the radical thinkers inhabiting salons and masonic lodges, and the “Great People”, the vast majority of the population.

In Shafarevich’s account, Russophobes were analogues of Cochin’s “Small People”. But he also added an anti-Semitic smear. On the basis of a misleading selection of texts, he alleged that Russophobia was dominated by Jewish intellectuals whose hatred of Russia was inflamed by the Talmud and guilt about the role of Jews in the Bolshevik Revolution.

Shafarevich’s essay attracted little attention until the collapse of censorship during Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms. When a nationalist journal published Rusofobiya in 1989, it triggered an acrimonious debate between pro-Western liberals and Russian nationalists about the safest road out of totalitarianism.

This debate intensified after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Boris Yeltsin’s new democratic government was opposed by a “red–brown” coalition of neo-Stalinists and radical nationalists. Shafarevich was their leading ideologue. In the streets and in parliament, red–brown leaders used “Russophobia” as a rallying cry to denounce liberal reform and spread an anti-Semitic message about prominent reformers.

A grievance and a weapon

This struggle culminated in “Bloody October” in 1993, a constitutional crisis and the defeat of a red–brown uprising. The carnage ended Shafarevich’s political career, but Russophobia remained a powerful mobilising cause for anti-Western extremists of the left and the right.

On the left, the Communist Party expanded its definition of Russophobia to include hostility towards the Stalinist past. On the right, radical nationalists, traditionalist culture warriors and conservative clerics built reputations by fulminating against Russophobes.

Despite their political defeat in 1993, red–brown forces influenced the ideological agenda of the Putin regime. On the one hand, they waged a war of attrition against “systemic liberals”, advocates of market reforms and legislation targeting neo-Nazis. On the other, they became enablers of Putin’s crackdowns, vilifying pro-democracy campaigners in return for funding and access to the state media.

This collaboration intensified during the crisis that stretched from the massive pro-democracy protests in 2011–12 to Russia’s first attack on Ukraine in 2014.

In a bid to divide its opponents, the Kremlin posed as a defender of traditional values and focused popular anger on the anti-Putin performance by Pussy Riot in Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral. That transgression of sacred territory was misrepresented as a blasphemous assault on Russian traditions.

In the process, “Russophobia” was transformed from a grievance of radical extremists into a tool of state power. This shift was consecrated by a major conference on “Russophobia and the Information War against Russia” in September 2015 at Moscow’s Kremlin-owned Presidential Hotel. Never before had such a cross-section of Russia’s elite assembled to discuss Russophobia as a matter of political consequence.

Read more:
Russia’s Ukraine invasion is slowly approaching an inflection point. Is the West prepared to step up?

What attracted less attention was that this forum was the brainchild of Aleksei Kochetkov, a militant whose career had begun in the red–brown opposition, as a member of a neo-Nazi party Russian National Unity (RNU). At the time, he boasted that RNU had chosen the swastika because it was a symbol of struggle “against world Jewry, the basic enemy of our people, an infection or a bacteria”.

Like many far-right militants, Kochetkov made a career under Putin as a facilitator of dictatorship. His speciality was “zombie election monitoring”, the enlistment of foreign extremists to legitimise unfair elections. Now he was influencing the regime’s information wars.

The greatest Russophobe?

The domestic crackdown that followed the invasion of Ukraine offered Kochetkov a new opening. After Putin vowed to cleanse Russian society of “scum and traitors”, Kochetkov returned to the Presidential Hotel for a conference on Internal Russophobia as a Threat to Russian Statehood. In his keynote address, he lambasted the enemy within – those who wanted to destroy the Russian state and bury the Russian people under its wreckage.

This conference marked a kind of apotheosis of Shafarevich’s ideas. The irony is that the anti-Russophobia crusade, which began as a rejection of stereotypes about Russia as a crucible of totalitarianism, has become a justification for a new totalitarianism.

As Putin pulverises the independent media, civil society and cultural institutions, his struggle against Russophobia is destroying the most humane tendencies in Russian culture. In the process, he has become the greatest Russophobe of all.

Robert Horvath receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Is Vladimir Putin the greatest Russophobe of all? – https://theconversation.com/is-vladimir-putin-the-greatest-russophobe-of-all-186642

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Renee Carey, Senior Research Fellow, Curtin University

Silica dust is a very fine dust produced when products such as bricks, concrete and pavers are cut or drilled. Artificial stone, which is used mainly for kitchen benchtops, is a particularly potent source of silica dust.

Breathing this dust into the lungs can cause severe long-term damage. This can result in breathing difficulties, scarring of the lungs (silicosis) and lung cancer.

In our recently published report, we estimate that without action, Australian workers would develop more than 10,000 future lung cancers and almost 104,000 silicosis cases during their lifetime due to their exposure to silica dust. This is around 1% of all future lung cancers in the Australian adult population.

However, banning artificial stone would reduce silica exposure and could prevent 100 lung cancers and almost 1,000 silicosis cases over the lifetime of these workers.

Read more:
Explainer: what is silicosis and why is this old lung disease making a comeback?

Re-emergence of an old disease

Silica dust is a serious hazard in Australian workplaces. Around 7% of Australian workers are at risk of breathing it in. Exposure is most common in miners and construction workers.

For the last 60 years, silicosis was very rare in Australia. Due to the increased use of artificial stone, we are now seeing a re-emergence of this terrible disease.

In response to the resurgence of silicosis, the Australian government set up a taskforce to improve the health and safety of those working with silica dust. Its final report, from June 2021, recommended further analysis on how best to protect artificial stone workers.

This is now under way, with Safe Work Australia releasing a regulatory impact statement for consultation. This statement looks at a number of options to reduce exposure to silica and the cost of these over the next ten years.

Safe Work Australia concluded these measures would only need to save about five people a year from silicosis in order for these options to be cost effective.

While this is a good start, there’s scope to do much more. Banning artificial stone is among the recommendations suggested by the taskforce but not currently supported by government and not being considered by Safe Work Australia.

Assessing the harm

To estimate the harm caused by silica dust at work, we used a method which calculates how many additional disease cases would occur in workers exposed to silica dust in one year – in this case, the year 2016.

We used past exposure surveys and recent reports from New South Wales and Victoria to estimate how many workers were exposed to silica dust nationwide.

Then we modelled how many lung cancers and silicosis cases would occur during the lifetimes of these workers.

We then looked at possible ways to reduce exposure to silica dust, including wet cutting, reducing worker access to dusty areas, using good quality and well-fitted respirators, as well as banning artificial stone.

While this modelling isn’t yet published in a peer-reviewed journal, it has been peer-reviewed by others in the field.

Reducing the harm

We found banning artificial stone could prevent 100 lung cancers and almost 1,000 silicosis cases.

Read more:
Engineered stone benchtops are killing our tradies. Here’s why a ban’s the only answer

We also looked at other control measures which could be implemented in the interim.

Setting up exclusion zones around areas where artificial stone is cut, using well-fitted respirators, wetting artificial stone while cutting it, and using on-tool dust extraction while cutting artificial stone could prevent cases of lung cancer and silicosis, but not as many as a complete ban.

Unfortunately, a ban on silica dust in other industries such as mining isn’t possible. However, exposure can be reduced. Stopping workers from entering areas near crushers on mine sites would prevent 750 lung cancers and almost 7,500 silicosis cases.

If we were able to reduce exposure in the mining industry to that experienced by the general population, we could save more than 2,300 lung cancers and over 20,000 silicosis cases.

Reducing silica dust would save lives

Overall, ensuring compliance with engineering controls and respiratory equipment could prevent more than 400 workers from developing two terrible diseases.

These cases can only be prevented if there is 100% compliance with control measures. This is a level of compliance much higher than what we’re currently seeing in Australian workplaces.

A licensing system for artificial stone businesses such as that underway in Victoria might go some way to improving compliance, but the effects of this remain to be seen.

Read more:
Renovating your kitchen? Help Australia’s tradies avoid silicosis by not choosing artificial stone

However, if we banned artificial stone, we could save up to 700 more young workers from developing these diseases. If we tried to eliminate silica dust exposure in other industries, we could prevent even more disease.

Clearly, much more needs to be done to protect our workers from these ultimately preventable lung diseases.

This report was commissioned by the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU).

Lin Fritschi 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. Banning artificial stone could prevent 100 lung cancers and 1,000 cases of silicosis, where dust scars the lungs – https://theconversation.com/banning-artificial-stone-could-prevent-100-lung-cancers-and-1-000-cases-of-silicosis-where-dust-scars-the-lungs-182420

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Erin Fitz-Henry, Deputy Coordinator – Anthropology, Development Studies & Social Theory, The University of Melbourne

“Climate change is racist”. So reads the title of a recent book by British journalist Jeremy Williams. While this title might seem provocative, it’s long been recognised that people of colour suffer disproportionate harms under climate change – and this is likely to worsen in the coming decades.

However, most rich white countries, including Australia, are doing precious little to properly address this inequity. For the most part, they refuse to accept the climate debt they owe to poorer countries and communities.

In so doing, they sentence millions of people to premature death, disability or unnecessary hardship. This includes in Australia, where climate change compounds historical wrongs against First Nations communities in many ways.

This injustice – a type of “atmospheric colonisation” – is a form of deeply entrenched colonial racism that arguably represents the most pressing global equity issue of our time. Several upcoming global talks, including the Pacific Islands Forum this week, offer a chance to urgently elevate climate justice on the global agenda.

‘Not borne equally’

The effects of climate change are not borne equally between everyone on the planet, and this problem will only worsen. Black people, people of colour and Indigenous people often face the most dire consequences in a warming world.

For example, research suggests global warming of 2℃ would leave more than half of Africa’s population at risk of undernourishment, due to reduced agricultural production. This is despite Africa having contributed relatively little to greenhouse gas emissions.

Climate injustice also manifests closer to home. The Lowitja Institute, Australia’s national body for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health research, says climate change:

disrupts cultural and spiritual connections to Country that are central to health and wellbeing. Health services are struggling to operate in extreme weather with increasing demands and a reduced workforce.

All these forces combine to exacerbate already unacceptable levels of ill-health within Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations.

Read more:
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population has increased, but the census lacks detail in other facets of Indigenous lives

Failure at Bonn

Last month, the continued failure on the part of rich white countries to take responsibility for this injustice was on full display at the United Nations climate meetings in Bonn, Germany.

There, governments failed to make any significant progress towards compensation for “loss and damage”. According to Oxfam, loss and damage collectively refers to:

the consequences and harm caused by climate change where adaptation efforts are either overwhelmed or absent.

At Bonn, the G77 (a coalition of 134 developing countries) and China wanted financing for a so-called “loss and damage facility” put on the official agenda at the COP27 climate conference in Egypt in November this year. This facility would comprise a formal body to deliver funding to developing nations to cope with the consequences of climate change.

But the United States and the European Union opposed the move, fearing they would become liable for billions of dollars in damages.

Read more:
How racism and classism affect natural ecosystems

Concerns around “loss and damage” have been long plagued global climate negotiations.

In 2013, the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage was established at COP19. Climate activists hoped it would usher in a new era of climate justice. But almost a decade on, there’s still no clear path to the financing required.

And rich white countries continue to distance themselves from all language of compensation or reparation for both historic and contemporary emissions.

This refusal continues long histories of European racism, including the deeply racialised processes of large-scale extraction that fuelled and sustained the Industrial Revolution from the outset.

Sugar plantations throughout the Caribbean were worked for generations by Africans who were enslaved, generating massive profits for Europeans that were then invested and reinvested in energy-intensive industrial infrastructure. This infrastructure helped fuel the global emissions that remain in the atmosphere today.

British industrialisation would simply not have been possible without the stolen land and uncompensated labour acquired through colonisation and slavery. Compensation for this plunder was never provided.

And today, the emissions it initiated are doubling back on those whose land and labour made them possible.

Climate change at the centre of reparations

Calls for reparations for colonialism and slavery have grown rapidly over the past few years – particularly as a result of the Black Lives Matter movement in the US and UK.

Some European states have begun to take responsibility and provide redress for colonial theft, violence and displacement.

These efforts are laudable. But there’s an urgent need to focus this sentiment on climate change – and in particular, to supercharge demands for climate reparations.

The Pacific Islands forum this week provides an opportunity for Australia to undertake climate reparation, by committing new finance for the loss and damage incurred by poorer Pacific nations under climate change.

UN Special Rapporteur Philip Alston recently said the world risks a new era of “climate apartheid”. In this scenario, tens of millions of people will be impoverished, displaced and hungry, while the rich buy their way out of hardship.

Going into COP27 in November, negotiators from the US, the EU and Australia must prioritise loss and damage finance. Failing to do so will only further solidify climate injustice.

Read more:
Will Australia’s new climate policy be enough to reset relations with Pacific nations?

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

– ref. Climate change is white colonisation of the atmosphere. It’s time to tackle this entrenched racism – https://theconversation.com/climate-change-is-white-colonisation-of-the-atmosphere-its-time-to-tackle-this-entrenched-racism-185579

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anabela Malpique, Senior Lecturer, Edith Cowan University

Learning how to be a confident and communicative writer is one of the most important skills students learn at school.

But NAPLAN results show a significant decline in Australian students’ writing performance. Research for the period to 2018, shows year nine students performed nearly 1.5 years behind the average student in 2011.

Read more:
Writing needs to be taught and practised. Australian schools are dropping the focus too early

International studies have also raised concerns about students’ writing performance, stressing the need to learn more about how writing is taught in primary schools.

So, what is happening in Australian primary classrooms? And what can parents do to help their children learn to write at home?

Our new research

In 2020, we surveyed 310 primary teachers around Australia. Through an online questionnaire, we asked teachers about the time children spent writing in their classrooms and what types of activities they did to teach writing.

While this has been studied at the state level, this is the first national survey in Australia about the teaching of writing to primary students.

While no classroom is the same, the Australian Education Research Organisation recommends primary students should spend at least one hour per day – or 300 minutes (five hours) a week – doing writing activities and being taught writing.

Most teachers in our survey said their students usually spent about three hours a week on writing activities in their classrooms. But responses varied considerably, with some teachers reporting only 15 minutes of writing practice per week and others reporting 7.5 hours per week.

Most teachers spent more time teaching spelling (about 88 minutes) than any other writing skill. They spent an average of 34 minutes teaching handwriting, 11 minutes teaching typing, 35 minutes teaching planning strategies, and 42 minutes teaching children strategies to revise their texts.

While the development of spelling skills is obviously important, the lack of attention given to planning and reviewing a piece of writing is concerning.

Research shows children who plan and revise their texts end up writing much higher quality pieces of writing. However, studies also show that unless children are taught how to do this, they rarely do it.

How much are families asked to help?

In our survey, we asked teachers about the use of 20 different strategies for teaching writing. But strategies to promote writing at home with parental support were the least reported.

Almost 65% of teachers we surveyed never asked students to write at home with the support of a family member. Meanwhile about 77% said they rarely (once a year) or never asked parents or carers to read their children’s written work.

This is concerning as research shows parental involvement helps children build their writing skills.

So, our findings show a need for teachers and families to work together more. As well as the need to provide families with more guidance about what they can do to support children as developing writers.

What can families do?

If you want to do more to help your child learn to write and write well, there are many things you can do in your every day life at home. Here are some recommendations to consider:

1. Get your kids to write for a reason

It doesn’t matter how small the task is. Encouraging children to write for a clear purpose is key. It can be a simple reminder note, a message to go in someone’s lunch box, a shopping list or a birthday card.

2. Write together for fun

Encourage family activities that make writing fun. Create jokes, riddles, stories, rhyming lists, and anything else you can think of!

3. Display writing done in the family

Use the fridge, family noticeboard or calendar. This shows children how writing works in our lives and how important it is and how it is valued.

4. Get your kids to read you their writing

Ask children to read their writing aloud. This shows your kids you are interested in what they are doing. Also, when children read their written work aloud, they will inevitably notice some mistakes (so it’s like revising their work).

5. Be encouraging

When working on writing skills with your child, make sure you are positive. You could say things such as, “I noticed that you really focused on your writing” or “I really like how you used [that word]”. Also recognise any progress in their writing efforts, “I noticed that you checked your capital letters”.

6. Take the initiative at school

Talk to your child’s teacher about what you are doing at home and ask for suggestions about what your child needs to further develop their writing skills.

Read more:
‘I’m in another world’: writing without rules lets kids find their voice, just like professional authors

Anabela Malpique receives funding from Collier Charitable Foundation (ID1749)

Debora Valcan, Deborah Pino Pasternak, and Susan Ledger 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 shopping lists to jokes on the fridge – 6 ways parents can help their primary kids learn to write well – https://theconversation.com/from-shopping-lists-to-jokes-on-the-fridge-6-ways-parents-can-help-their-primary-kids-learn-to-write-well-186216

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Priya Vaughan, Postdoctoral research Fellow, UNSW Sydney

There’s growing recognition that creative pursuits like painting, singing or dancing can have a positive impact on physical and mental health, can lessen isolation, and can increase connection to community.

Creative activities can also be an effective and safe way to learn about people’s life experiences, especially those that are upsetting or hard to talk about.

Our team uses art as a research tool to help increase understanding about mental health and well-being, and to build better systems of care and support.

We are using art to learn about stigma and marginalisation as a result of mental distress, disability or a refugee background. We collaborated with 35 people who identify as women, who have told us that making art and being creative is a powerful tool for self-empowerment.

Read more:
We still stigmatize mental illness, and that needs to stop

Giving voice to the unsaid

Women who experience mental illness, disability or who have a refugee background routinely experience stigma and discrimination.

This can have profound impacts, including reduced quality of life, barriers to accessing health care, reduced employment prospects, reduced access to affordable housing and diminished opportunity to experience motherhood.

The experience of stigma and discrimination often remains invisible. It can be upsetting to talk about and hard to describe. Creative activities, like making art, can help bring these experiences to light. Art can offer a way to express things that are tricky to say out loud.

As one participant in our study reflected:

Sometimes I don’t have the words for things … [art was] a really alternative way to express something without having to necessarily have the words for it.

Art can act like a mnemonic (prompting memories and recollections), can help people feel relaxed and safe when exploring upsetting experiences, can help people feel in control of their own stories, and enables them to share these stories in ways they feel comfortable with.

In our research we used a form of art creation called “body mapping”.

Body mapping involves tracing your body onto a large piece of paper or fabric and then decorating this outline by drawing, painting, sewing, collage and writing.

The body maps that participants created are visually striking, and each one tells a unique life story. These body maps were used as a jumping-off point to discuss the themes and experiences they encompass.

Mapping stigma

Participants explored the way stigma exists on a spectrum, ranging from subtle (indifference or ignorance) to overt (bullying, verbal and physical abuse). One participant wrote the words “now let’s add stigma” to her map to represent the way stigma had made it hard and scary to seek medical support.

When we spoke about her map, she told us:

I thought mental illness was like you’re locked away in a psych ward and left to die, that there is no help […] that’s what I got from social media and television.

Another participant represented her body as a multicoloured jigsaw puzzle to symbolise the “many fragments and pieces that makes you, you”. The jigsaw also represented her experience of healthcare, with doctors only seeing one piece of her and not acknowledging or offering support for other pieces.

As she reflected:

People with disabilities are people first and they too have mental health needs just like the rest of the world. And I think that for far too long this cohort of people have been overlooked and underrepresented.

Stigma was often identified as the reason participants felt the need to hide their feelings or pretend they were not struggling.

One participant drew two bodies on her map to represent this:

That is showing that you do work to the point of exhaustion everyday to make sure that you’re presenting in an appropriate way, but actually behind the scenes is what people don’t see.

Participants also used maps to celebrate their strength, resilience and the positive influences in their lives like friends, family, pets and nature. Making art was a common positive influence.

Participants saw art as an avenue for self-expression, meditation, relaxation and a way to process feelings. Participants also told us making art as part of the research project allowed them to take stock and reflect on their experiences.

They also used the research as an opportunity to reach new artistic heights. As one participant reflected:

My body map is by far the greatest piece of art I have created.

The power of art

An important takeaway from this work is the power and importance of art in well-being, health and social inclusion.

Participants remarked that they wished body mapping workshops, or other free creative activities, were regularly accessible.

Having a safe, supportive space to be creative and share their experiences with others was affirming and therapeutic. Art was a powerful way to share stories, shine a light on injustice, and encourage empathy and respect for difference.

A participant said it best when they remarked:

it’s empowering for everybody to have a voice [through art] and to be able to tell their story. That’s powerful.

Read more:
‘It’s given me love’: connecting women from refugee backgrounds with communities through art

The “Women marginalised by mental health, disability, or refugee background” project team are Yamamah Agha, Jill Bennett, Alise Blayney, Katherine Boydell, Angela Dew, Ainslee Hooper, Bronwen Iferd, Julia Lappin, Caroline Lenette, Cindy Lui, Apuk Maror, Jacqui McKim, Akii Ngo, Jane Ussher, Priya Vaughan, Ruth Wells, Yassmen Yahya.

This story is part of The Conversation’s Breaking the Cycle series, which is about escaping cycles of disadvantage. It is supported by a philanthropic grant from the Paul Ramsay Foundation.

Alise Blayney works for the Black Dog Institute as a Lived Experience Research Assistant for the Women and Body Mapping Project.

Katherine M Boydell is Professor at The Black Dog Institute in Sydney. She receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Suicide Prevention Australia, Rapid Applied Research Translation (RAFT) program, Medical Research Future Fund, NHMRC, and the Jibb Foundation.

– ref. ‘Sometimes I don’t have the words for things’: how we are using art to research stigma and marginalisation – https://theconversation.com/sometimes-i-dont-have-the-words-for-things-how-we-are-using-art-to-research-stigma-and-marginalisation-183819

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Schuijers, Deputy Director, Australian Centre for Climate and Environmental Law and Lecturer in Law, University of Sydney

A non-profit group is imploring the new federal environment minister Tanya Plibersek to consider the climate change impacts of 19 fossil fuel projects currently pending approval, drawing on a rarely used legal provision that will require her to reconsider the findings of her predecessors.

The minister will be forced to either confirm or revoke previous decisions that the fossil fuel projects – which propose to extract new coal or gas – aren’t likely to have a significant impact on Australia’s protected species and places.

The group that issued the 19 requests, the Environment Council of Central Queensland, argues the projects will contribute to climate change. This will, in turn, harm the threatened and migratory species, wetlands, heritage sites, and marine areas protected under Australia’s environmental law, the EPBC Act.

So what makes this intervention important?

Read more:
Greater gliders are hurtling towards extinction, and the blame lies squarely with Australian governments

The environment is changing rapidly

The legal term for the type of request issued by the environment council is a “reconsideration request”. Made under section 78A of the EPBC Act, reconsideration requests depend on “substantial new information”.

Here, this includes the latest climate science and evidence about how Australian species and places are responding to climate change.

For example, the situation for a species like the Eyre Peninsula southern emu-wren, whose habitat has been decimated by bushfire is more dire than it was just a few years ago, making any new impact more significant.

Similarly, the Great Barrier Reef has now suffered its fourth mass bleaching event since 2016. Further climate change could bring this iconic ecosystem closer to collapse.

The environment council and its team argue that essentially all matters protected under the EPBC Act are vulnerable to the effects of fossil fuel projects, not just species and areas next door to mine sites.

Their logic is that every project unearthing new fossil fuels to be extracted and burned over a long period of time will make an important contribution to climate change. As we transition toward net-zero emissions, every tonne of emissions counts.

In turn, climate change will significantly impact Australia’s heritage and biodiversity. The environment council want to make sure this is factored into any final approval decision.

Read more:
‘Existential threat to our survival’: see the 19 Australian ecosystems already collapsing

What happens now?

Now the requests have been made, the minister is legally obliged to reconsider the projects in light of climate change.

If the minister confirms the previous decisions that there aren’t likely to be significant impacts on protected species and places, despite the new information, she can go ahead and approve or reject the projects based on the information she already had. However, this could then be challenged in the Federal Court.

So, what might the court say? Would it find that climate-related impacts to protected species and places are relevant to fossil fuel approvals?

This depends on the interpretation of key terms “likely”, “significant”, and “impact”.

Under the EPBC Act, the word “likely” means “a real and not remote chance or possibility”. It doesn’t equate to a probability over 50%.

“Impact” can include an indirect impact, which might occur at a different place and time to the project, including in the future. An impact doesn’t have to be wholly caused by a project to be relevant.

That said, there hasn’t yet been an authoritative judicial interpretation of the definition of this term. This means we don’t know if the court would find that climate-related impacts to biodiversity and heritage are impacts of fossil fuel projects. Arguably, it certainly could.

What we do know is that the word “significant” calls for the courts to consider the context of an impact. The context here is an extinction crisis that’s being exacerbated by a climate crisis.

If the minister does decide the projects are likely to significantly impact Australia’s threatened species and protected places, she’ll revoke the original decisions. This would trigger a process to procure sufficient information to better inform a final approval decision.

What does this mean for the law and for future approvals?

The EPBC Act came into force more than two decades ago, without any reference to climate change. Yet, it’s the law we’ve got to protect the environment.

Recognising that fossil fuel projects are likely to harm the Australian environment would mean climate change would need to be taken into account for new extraction proposals in future.

Specifically, the plight of threatened species and protected places would be broadly relevant to all final coal and gas approval decisions. The minister could still approve new projects, but she’d have to be mindful of the broad-ranging impacts to biodiversity and heritage.

Read more:
Australia’s environment law doesn’t protect the environment – an alarming message from the recent duty-quashing climate case

Whatever the ultimate result, this challenge will help elucidate a potential link between the EPBC Act and climate change.

This includes clarifying the responsibility fossil fuel projects have over climate-related harm to the environment, now climate change is well and truly manifest.

Laura Schuijers has previously been supported by Australian Research Council funding and has volunteered for Environmental Justice Australia.

– ref. Times have changed: why the environment minister is being forced to reconsider climate-related impacts of pending fossil fuel approvals – https://theconversation.com/times-have-changed-why-the-environment-minister-is-being-forced-to-reconsider-climate-related-impacts-of-pending-fossil-fuel-approvals-186715

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

Ensuring equal opportunities and pay for women is one of the wide range of topics laid down for the federal government’s jobs summit, to be held September 1-2.

About 100 invitees will come from business, unions, civil society groups, and other levels of government. The summit was flagged by Anthony Albanese in the election campaign, and he and Treasurer Jim Chalmers announced details on Monday.

It is modelled on the Hawke economic summit of 1983, although it will only run half as long.

Some of the summit’s outcomes could be implemented in the October budget.

Individual ministers will lead the work in particular areas.

Minister for Women Katy Gallagher will co-ordinate work on the women’s labour market. Employment Minister Tony Burke will lead the job security and wages area.

Other areas will be led by Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil (migration); Social Services Minister Amanda Rishworth (workforce participation and barriers to employment); Skills and Training Minister Brendan O’Connor (skills and training); and Industry Minister Ed Husic (renewables, digital and manufacturing).

Apart from women’s employment, topics for the summit include

• keeping unemployment low and boosting productivity and incomes

• promoting secure well-paid jobs and strong, sustainable wages growth

• expanding employment opportunities, including for the most disadvantaged

• addressing skills shortages and getting the skills mix right

• improving migration settings

• maximising jobs and opportunities from renewable energy, tackling climate change, the digital economy, the care economy and a “Future Made in Australia”.

An employment white paper will be produced following the summit, led by Treasury. It will be informed by the summit’s outcomes, but there will also be a call for public submissions and community consultations. The white paper would be completed in about a year.

Albanese told a news conference there was “a lot of good will and real enthusiasm” from business groups and the ACTU to make the summit a success.

“I’ve said before that people have conflict fatigue. People want less argument and they want more solutions. My government is determined to deliver that.”

Chalmers said the challenges in the economy were “thick on the ground, but so are the opportunities”. The summit was about “picking the brains of people around Australia”.

He said the government changed hands at a time of rising inflation, falling real wages, labour shortages and the attendant challenges.

“We owe it to the Australian people to try and find that common ground so that we can reach the common objectives together. That’s what the summit will be about.”

“Our goal is to build a better trained workforce, boost incomes and living standards, and try to create more opportunities for more people in more parts of Australia.”

Invitations will be sent out about the start of August and discussion papers will be issued.

The Business Council of Australia said this was “a chance to seize the opportunity and end the deadlock on workplace relations, restore the Hawke-Keating enterprise bargaining system to lift productivity and let Australians earn more.

“And, we need a migration system that fills workforce shortages across the economy with the right targeting and incentives.”

The ACTU said the summit was “an opportunity to fix an underfunded and neglected skills sector, ensure that migration is providing opportunities rather than exploitation and address a broken bargaining system which has failed to deliver wage growth for almost a decade and has inflicted real wage cuts on workers during a cost of living crisis”.

Meanwhile, the Melbourne Institute’s Taking the Pulse of the Nation report, released Monday, found a significant difference between employers and employees over working from home, as well as a gender difference among workers.

“Over one third of workers would like to spend more time working from home than their employer would permit,” the survey found.

“Women are 25% more likely than men (8 percentage point difference) to want to spend more time working from home than their employer would allow.

“This is not because women are more likely to be caregivers. A 7-percentage point gender gap remains even after accounting for having children in the household.”

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. Women’s job opportunities in the spotlight at Albanese’s summit – https://theconversation.com/womens-job-opportunities-in-the-spotlight-at-albaneses-summit-186743

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Singh, Research fellow, University of South Australia

During the pandemic, some people found their level of exercise greatly reduced, whereas for others it was a catalyst to increase their physical activity.

With the widespread switch to working from home, incidental physical activity was reduced. Some people took this newly freed up time as an opportunity to add exercise to their day, with online fitness programs and health apps reporting a boom.

However the early impetus to exercise appears to have been short-lived for many, with a study comparing activity levels between the first and second waves of COVID in Victoria finding most people reported a reduction in their physical activity levels the second time around due to a lack of motivation.

A systematic review found that overall, COVID has reduced physical activity and increased sedentary behaviour, and the effects could be lasting.

Now restrictions have eased, use of organised fitness venues are yet to return to pre-pandemic figures. A survey of gym members found that in Australia, 47% of previous gym members hadn’t returned to the gym following lockdowns.

Ongoing concerns about COVID have led to caution about returning to public spaces such as gyms. But also, with many people changing their exercise habits and setting up home gyms during lockdowns, it’s become much more convenient working out at home.

Read more:
Heading back to the gym? Here’s how you can protect yourself and others from coronavirus infection

It’s clear for many of us COVID changed how and how much we exercise. But the changes don’t necessarily have to be for the worse.

Is exercising at home as good as going to the gym?

People who switched to online workouts, fitness apps and home-gyms during COVID report their workouts are less intense, less satisfying, less enjoyable and they felt less motivated compared with attending fitness venues.

In addition to the physical effects, people report missing the social aspects, camaraderie, and escapism of the gym. In-person classes also offer the benefits of supervision and instruction, which can help ensure workouts are completed safely and effectively.

However, online workouts, fitness apps and near-home workouts are likely here to stay, and offer numerous benefits, such as greater accessibility (no need to travel to the gym) and convenience, making it easy to fit in a workout while juggling work and family responsibilities.

Read more:
Regaining fitness after COVID infection can be hard. Here are 5 things to keep in mind before you start exercising again

How to ensure a good workout from home

1. monitor your intensity. If you think about your exertion on a scale of one to ten, where one is very light activity and ten is your maximal exertion, aim for a four to six.

2. make it enjoyable. Choosing an exercise you enjoy will help you stick with your program. Try out different types of exercise until you find something you like (YouTube and apps are a great source of inspiration). If you hate lifting weights, try body weight exercises.

3. stay motivated with a clear fitness goal. For example, you might decide you want to be able to do ten push-ups in four weeks, or run five kilometres in six months. Then you can devise a plan to gradually reach your goal.

4. commit to your workouts by planning how much you’re going to do. This can include committing to a certain duration (such as jogging for 30 minutes) or number of repetitions (for example 20 push-ups), and not stopping until it’s achieved.

5. exercise with a friend or family member. Pre-planning your workouts and exercising with a support person means you’re more likely to do them.

Read more:
Why some people find it easier to stick to new habits they formed during lockdown

6. aim to achieve the national guidelines. This involves performing 150 to 300 minutes of moderate activity each week, such as brisk walking, cycling or swimming. You should also aim for strength exercises at least twice per week, such as push-ups, squats and lifting weights.

7. purchasing equipment such as hand-held weights, resistance bands, and even a weight bench can be a great investment and can add variety to your home workouts. However, you can still achieve a great home workout with household items. For example, putting your feet or hands on a chair to do push-ups.

8. minimise your risk of injury. It’s important to always take the time to do a proper warm-up, stretch regularly, and ensure you are using appropriate technique, especially when lifting weights. There are plenty of free apps and videos online which can guide you.

9. use virtual reality to make your workout a bit more exciting. There are various apps and online programs that let you train in virtual worlds, ranging from walking or jogging from Zombies to exercise biking in a virtual world. The early evidence to support virtual workouts for improving motivation and adherence looks promising.

Carol Maher receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Medical Research Future Fund, the National Heart Foundation, the South Australian Department for Innovation and Skills, the South Australian Department for Education, Healthway and Hunter New England Local Health District.

Ben Singh 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. COVID has changed our exercise habits, but it doesn’t have to be for the worse – https://theconversation.com/covid-has-changed-our-exercise-habits-but-it-doesnt-have-to-be-for-the-worse-181493

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Scott, Associate Professor in Geology, University of Otago

Meteorites hit New Zealand three or four times a year, but the fireball that shot across the sky above Cook Strait last week was unusual.

It had the explosive power of 1,800 tonnes of TNT and was captured from space by US satellites. It set off a sonic boom heard throughout the southern parts of the North Island.

Witnesses described a “giant bright orange fireball” and a flash that left a “trail of smoke that hung around for a few minutes”.

The fireball was most likely caused by a small meteor, up to a few metres in diameter, traversing Earth’s atmosphere. It was one of only five impacts of greater than a thousand tonnes of energy globally in the past year. Most meteors are tiny, creating “shooting stars” that only briefly skim the atmosphere.

The fragmentation of the meteor produced a shock wave strong enough to be picked up by GeoNet, a network of earthquake seismometers, with a flash bright enough to be recorded by a global lightning-tracking satellite. The Metservice’s Wellington radar picked up the leftover smoke trail south of the tip of the North Island.

But what is the chance of finding any of the its fragments, or meteorites, that dropped to Earth?

As part of Fireballs Aotearoa, a recently established collaboration between the universities of Otago and Canterbury and the astronomy community to track down freshly fallen meteorites, we are deploying specialised night-sky meteor cameras across New Zealand.

Fireballs Aotearoa’s meteor cameras only operate at night, but the compiled witness reports reveal the July 7 fireball travelled from northwest to southeast and most likely fragmented over the ocean. Unfortunately, any meteorites are therefore probably inaccessible.

Meteorites on Earth

Earth mainly gets meteorites from the asteroid belt, the Moon and Mars. They range from those only visible with a microscope to gigantic ones, such as the roughly 10km-wide meteorite that triggered the extinction of dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

Meteorites are scientific goldmines. Some contain material from before the Sun formed. Others tell us about the history of the young Sun’s planet-forming disk, when dust circulating around it began to clump into larger rocks and, eventually, planets.

Read more:
As the Perseverance rover lands on Mars, there’s a lot we already know about the red planet from meteorites found on Earth

Lunar meteorites show the Moon originated from the collision of a small planet with Earth. Martian meteorites tell us about the surface and interior of our closest planet. We don’t even need to send a spaceship.

If a meteor is recorded by several night-sky cameras, then its trajectory can be calculated and any resulting meteorites potentially located. The trajectory also tells us the meteor’s pre-impact orbit, allowing us to estimate where in the Solar System it originated.

How to help find a meteorite

New Zealand has nine known meteorites. Although the fireball wasn’t seen, the most recent was the Auckland meteorite that crashed through an Ellerslie roof in 2003. Our analysis shows this rock belongs to the ordinary chondrite group and therefore was part of a small asteroid only slightly younger than the Sun.

Last year, the British citizen-led fireball network UKFall captured footage of an enormous fireball over southern England. The debris was located on a driveway in Winchcombe, Gloucestershire – where the owner initially assumed someone had emptied their barbecue.

Now on display in the Natural History Museum in London, the Winchcombe meteorite turned out to be a type incredibly rare on Earth.

It is similar to the 5g of material returned in 2020 from asteroid Ryugu by the Hayabusa 2 spacecraft, except the meteorite gave scientists a hundred times as much to work with.

Read more:
What are asteroids made of? A sample returned to Earth reveals the Solar System’s building blocks

Although the Wellington fireball on July 7 probably didn’t drop a meteorite on land, the next one might. And you can join the meteorite hunt by reporting any sightings to Fireballs Aotearoa.

We would like to acknowledge Jim Rowe and Jeremy Taylor, our colleagues at Fireballs Aotearoa, for help with compiling this article.

James Scott receives funding from the MBIE Participatory Science Platform to build and deploy nightsky cameras across Otago.

Michele Bannister receives funding from the Royal Society of New Zealand Te Apārangi to explore small worlds throughout the Solar System.

– ref. Equivalent to 1,800 tonnes of TNT: what we now know about the meteor that lit up the daytime sky above New Zealand – https://theconversation.com/equivalent-to-1-800-tonnes-of-tnt-what-we-now-know-about-the-meteor-that-lit-up-the-daytime-sky-above-new-zealand-186636

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vaughan Cruickshank, Program Director – Health and Physical Education, Maths/Science, Faculty of Education, University of Tasmania

Cross-town sporting rivalry between the kids from the wealthy school and those from the country school – or the poorer suburbs – has been fodder for Hollywood movies such as Friday Night Lights, McFarland USA, Coach Carter, The Mighty Ducks and Hoosiers. We like to believe sport is the great leveller and privilege doesn’t matter once you enter the arena or sports field. Yet our study indicates this isn’t true. Educational advantage carries over into sporting participation and success.

This finding matters for reasons other than sport. Sport promotes physical activity, and the gaps in participation and success go some way towards explaining disparities in the health of students from advantaged and disadvantaged backgrounds.

Our findings suggest better funding and resourcing for government schools, particularly those in areas of low-socieconomic status (SES), could make a substantial difference to supporting healthy active lifestyles for all Australian students.

Read more:
Aussie kids are some of the least active in the world. We developed a cheap school program that gets results

What was the focus of the study?

Our study looked at the sporting success of primary schools in Tasmania. Inequalities related to differences in school funding, infrastructure and academic outcomes have been studied. Yet sporting success had remained largely unexamined.

Of course, wealthier schools have advantages in terms of sporting infrastructure and equipment. And students from low-SES backgrounds are much less likely to undertake physical activity that requires indoor facilities, costly infrastructure or equipment, or access to water or snow.

Therefore, we looked at the least resource-intensive and highest-participation sporting event on the primary school calendar, the cross-country running carnival. In Tasmania all primary schools send their best runners to compete at their regional event, and potentially on to the state-wide competition. A school is placed on the combination of its three fastest runners’ finishing times in each age and sex division.

We had access to the results from the 55 government primary schools in the southern (greater Hobart) regional association, and 130 primary schools that took part in the state carnivals over ten years. We matched these data with each school’s population, educational advantage and geography.

Read more:
Our ‘sporting nation’ is a myth, so how do we get youngsters back on the field?

What did the study find?

While there were some outliers in some years, overwhelmingly the study found the participation and success of schools depended on three factors: size, geographic region and educational advantage.

It makes sense that the larger schools did better than the smaller schools because they had more runners to choose from.

What we found concerning was, regardless of size, there was a direct correlation between a school’s relative educational advantage and its success in running carnivals. The richer they were, the faster they ran. This was true at both the regional and state carnivals.

The state-wide event also enabled us to look at each school’s success when compared to its geographic location. We found that geography, as well as educational advantage, determined participation rates. The more remote the school, the less often it sent runners to the state carnival.

What can be done about these disparities?

It’s deeply concerning that the socioeconomic status of schools has a direct impact on students’ success in cross-country running, and that the school’s location can determine their opportunities to participate. Previous research has found disadvantaged students and rural communities have poorer health than their wealthier and more urban peers.

Subsidising families’ sport-related costs or giving vouchers could help students from lower-income communities take part in sport, get coaching and increase their participation in events. Partnerships between schools and clubs could also help reduce physical activity inequalities and barriers such as transport, as well as promote lifelong connection to community sport.

Read more:
How sport can help young people to become better citizens

However, complex challenges such as reducing structural inequality and improving children’s health require more than just money.

Schools could consider increasing the formal and informal opportunities they offer their students to play sport and be physically active. Research shows attending a school with many sporting opportunities can reinforce positive attitudes to physical activity.

Low-SES students have poorer health as a result of lower rates of physical activity. School and community programs to promote active and healthy lifestyles in low-SES communities are essential. Examples of programs that could be extended to more schools include the national Sporting Schools program and Live Life Well @ School in New South Wales and Walk to School in Victoria.

These programs have:

• introduced students to new physical activities
• resulted in more students joining local sports clubs
• helped schools buy new sporting equipment
• aided schools in developing more healthy canteen menus
• provided parents with ideas on healthy eating and physical activity.

Read more:
The kids who’d get the most out of extracurricular activities are missing out – here’s how to improve access

Education can improve health literacy

Efforts to increase physical activity among students need to be backed up by education about the benefits. Students need to know how they can take ownership of maintaining their own health and well-being.

People with higher education are more likely to seek, understand and act on health information and services, including messages that promote physical activity. In other words, they have greater health literacy. Schools could consider programs focused on developing health literacy among their students.

HealthLit4Kids is one such program. It aims to halt negative intergenerational health behaviours by providing children with the tools to better understand their own health. It is operating in some Tasmanian schools and could be scaled up to benefit more students and their families.

Initiatives like these would help reduce some of the inequalities that have influenced the findings of this study.

This article is part of The Conversation’s Breaking the Cycle series, which is supported by a philanthropic grant from the Paul Ramsay Foundation.

Vaughan Cruickshank does 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. This article is part of The Conversation’s Breaking the Cycle series, which is about escaping cycles of disadvantage. The series is supported by a philanthropic grant from the Paul Ramsay Foundation.

Jeffrey Thomas and Kira Patterson 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. Richer schools’ students run faster: how the inequality in sport flows through to health – https://theconversation.com/richer-schools-students-run-faster-how-the-inequality-in-sport-flows-through-to-health-185681

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist), The Conversation

The Poll Bludger covered findings from the 2021 Census on June 30. The most striking finding was that the Coalition won the ten seats with the lowest household income at the federal election. These seats are all in regional Australia.

This validates my pre-election article, in which I said that whites without a university education in regional areas would continue to move to the Coalition. Labor won this election owing to swings against the Coalition in the cities, but no regional seat changed hands, and those that came closest to changing were all Labor-held.

Read more:
Final 2022 election results: Coalition routed in cities and in Western Australia – can they recover in 2025?

Nine of the ten seats with the top household income were in NSW – the tenth was Canberra in the ACT. Teal independents won four, the Liberals four and Labor two (Canberra and Sydney). Labor won nine of the ten seats with the highest percentage of non-English speakers; the exception was Kristina Keneally’s loss in Fowler.

The top ten seats for percentage of people aged 20 to 34 were all won by Labor and the Greens, while the Coalition won seven of the ten seats with the highest percentage of people aged 65 and over.

COVID lockdowns hit Victoria’s population particularly hard, as it dropped 1.5% in 2021. This has put Victoria in danger of losing two seats from its current 39 when state entitlements are determined for the next election in the middle of 2023. NSW could also lose a seat, with the beneficiaries likely to be WA and Queensland.

Essential and SEC Newgate federal polls

An Essential poll, conducted in the days prior to June 28, had 44% strongly supporting the Fair Work Commission’s announced 5.2% increase for the minimum wage, with 23% somewhat supporting, 9% somewhat opposed and 6% strongly opposed, for total support over opposition of 67-15.

45% thought Australia’s electricity and gas crisis was due to years of neglect, 35% due to unpredictable factors such as the Ukraine war and COVID, and 20% due to opposition to renewables.

49% thought the government should implement the policies it took to the election regarding emission targets, while 30% thought the government should be more ambitious.

80% thought it important for Australia to have a close relationship with the US, 78% with Pacific nations, 76% with European Union nations, 58% China and just 33% Russia.

The Poll Bludger reported an SEC Newgate poll on Monday that was conducted June 23-27 from a sample of 1,201. “Nearly four out of ten” said the new government had done an excellent or good job so far, 31% fair and 26% poor or very poor.

57% expected the economy to worsen in the next three months, up from 36% in May, with just 8% expecting the economy to improve, down from 13%. Cost of living was rated extremely important by 68% (up five), moving ahead of healthcare (61%, down three). By 42-23, voters favoured Labor over the Coalition to handle cost of living.

Bragg (SA) byelection: Libs hold, but with a 2.5% swing to Labor

A byelection in the South Australian Liberal-held state seat of Bragg occurred July 2. The Poll Bludger’s results show a Liberal win by 55.6-44.4, a 2.5% swing to Labor since the March 2022 election. Primary votes were 50.5% Liberals (down 3.3%), 30.0% Labor (up 1.3%) and 14.9% Greens (up 2.2%).

On election day booth votes, which were the only votes counted on election night, the Liberals had only led by 50.9-49,1, but they increased their vote share by a large 4.7% after pre-poll and postal votes were counted.

The byelection was caused by the resignation of Liberal Vickie Chapman after the Liberals lost the March election. Bragg is an inner metro seat that has SA’s highest median household income. At the March election, there was an 8.8% swing to Labor in Bragg that reduced the Liberal margin to the lowest it had been before the byelection.

Queensland YouGov poll: 50-50 tie

A YouGov poll for The Courier Mail, reported by The Poll Bludger, had Labor and the LNP tied at 50-50, a two-point gain for the LNP since February. Primary votes were 38% LNP (steady), 34% Labor (down five), 14% Greens (up four) and 10% One Nation (up two).

45% approved of Labor Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s performance (down five) and 39% disapproved (up three), for a net approval of +6, down eight points. LNP leader David Crisafulli was at 31% approve (up five) and 23% disapprove (down five). Palaszczuk led as better premier by 41-28. This poll was conducted June 23-30 from a sample of 1,044.

Victorian Morgan poll: 59.5-40.5 to Labor

The Victorian election is in late November. A Morgan SMS poll, conducted June 30 to July 2 from a sample of 1,710, gave Labor a 59.5-40.5 lead, unchanged since last November. Primary votes were 43.5% Labor (down 1.5), 29.5% Coalition (up 0.5), 12% Greens (up 1.5), 2% UAP (down two) and 13% for all Others (up 1.5).

Labor Premier Daniel Andrews had a 63.5-36.5 approval rating, unchanged from November. He led Liberal leader Matthew Guy by 64.5-35.5 as better premier.

I am dubious about this poll as Morgan has been the most Labor-friendly pollster, and the Victorian result for Labor at the federal election was below this poll by about five points, with big swings to the Coalition in safe outer metro Labor seats, presumably due to Andrews’ handling of COVID.

NSW Essential poll: Coalition leads Labor 37-33 on primary votes

The NSW state election is in March 2023. An Essential poll reported in The Guardian gave the Coalition 37% of the primary vote and Labor 33%. Unfortunately the report does not mention other parties’ primary votes. This poll was conducted over five days after the June 21 state budget from a sample of 700.

Liberal Premier Dominic Perrottet had a 49% approval rating and a 35% disapproval rating (net +14), while Labor leader Chris Minns was at 39% approval, 22% disapproval (net +17).

Boris Johnson has resigned. How is the next Conservative leader elected?

After being abandoned by Cabinet, Boris Johnson resigned as UK Conservative leader last Thursday, but will remain caretaker PM until a new leader is elected. Johnson has been embroiled in scandals, UK inflation is up 9.1% in the 12 months to May and the Conservatives lost two seats at recent byelections.

To elect a new leader, Conservative MPs vote in rounds with the lowest polling candidate eliminated each round, until there are just two left. Those final two go to the Conservative membership, which votes by mail. In the first round, there will be a 5% threshold for all continuing candidates, and 10% in the second round.

To be certain to make the final round, a candidate needs one-third of the MPs’ vote. The membership is more right-wing than MPs, so if a right-wing candidate makes the final two, that candidate could win.

These are the rules that applied at the 2019 Conservative leadership election. Elections to the 1922 committee that sets the rules will occur Monday UK time.

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. Census data shows poorest seats voted Coalition; byelections or polls from four states – https://theconversation.com/census-data-shows-poorest-seats-voted-coalition-byelections-or-polls-from-four-states-186115

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Claire Breen, Professor of Law, University of Waikato

A new law designed to improve oversight of the agencies charged with protecting children and young people is making its way through parliament. As it stands, there are serious concerns about how effective it will be once enacted.

The Oversight of Oranga Tamariki System and Children and Young People’s Commission Bill 2021 is described as providing for independent monitoring and complaints oversight for Oranga Tamariki, and greater advocacy for children’s and young people’s issues generally.

These are laudable goals, but of the 403 submissions to the select committee hearing submissions on the bill, 311 oppose the proposed law changes. Only eight are in favour, with the rest neutral.

The bill’s proposed changes are problematic for a number of reasons. One is that the bill still does not incorporate the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child into domestic legislation. This would mean the convention rights would become part of the law of Aotearoa New Zealand.

One of the clear benefits of this would be that children’s rights – especially their rights to health, housing and food – would be more readily enforceable through the national courts. In other words, it would be easier to hold the government to account for its actions or inaction.

Changing roles and responsibilities

The question of accountability becomes all the more important because the bill contains major changes to how the rights, interests and well-being of young New Zealanders are protected.

It proposes the establishment of an Independent Monitor of Oranga Tamariki that will assess how the child welfare agency is supporting children, young people and their whānau. It will replace the Independent Children’s Monitor, which was established as an independent crown entity in 2018.

Read more:
The state removal of Māori children from their families is a wound that won’t heal – but there is a way forward

The new monitor will be a departmental agency within the Ministry of Education. This move has been criticised for undermining the independence of the new monitor.

The bill also proposes that the Office of the Ombudsman will be the sole body responsible for investigating and resolving complaints on matters regarding the application of the Oranga Tamariki Act.

This is particularly contentious because so far the Children’s Commissioner has had that role.

Reduced powers and weaker oversight

The transfer of investigative powers to the Ombudsman is not the only major change to the Children’s Commissioner, whose office will be replaced by a Children and Young People’s Commission.

The new commission will continue to promote and advance the interests and well-being of children and young people, but its role is weaker.

In particular, unlike the current Children’s Commissioner, it will not be able to advise on establishing complaints mechanisms for children or monitor the types of complaints made.

Read more:
Children had no say in New Zealand’s well-being budget, and that matters

Stripping the new commission of any powers to deal with complaints has a much wider impact on the application of children’s rights in Aotearoa New Zealand.

If the new commission is not able to advise the multitude of organisations that work with children and young people about how to make a complaint, this will significantly limit the extent to which the government can be held accountable for any failure to protect children’s rights overall.

Less scrutiny of government actions

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has already expressed concern at the system of protecting children’s rights in Aotearoa.

In 2016, it recommended the Children’s Commissioner be given adequate resources to receive, investigate and address complaints from children. The new commission would appear to be a step in the opposite direction.

The UN also recommended that Aotearoa New Zealand commit itself to the complaints mechanism of the convention, which would allow children to complain to the UN committee about breaches of their rights.

The government is examining whether it will sign up to the complaints mechanism.

But its level of commitment to the complaints process looks questionable if the new Children and Young People’s Commission, as a body charged with promoting the rights, interests and well-being of New Zealand children, cannot investigate complaints.

Bad timing

All these changes come at a time when young New Zealanders face declining physical and mental health, educational achievement and living standards, while the high levels of poverty and violence they experience persist.

For many young people, these outcomes are exacerbated by multiple forms of discrimination. More can and must be done.

Incorporation of the Children’s Rights Convention into domestic law would provide children in Aotearoa New Zealand with a clear legal mechanism to uphold their rights.

Even if the government continues with its (widely opposed) plan to give monitoring and investigative powers regarding Oranga Tamariki to the Independent Monitor and the Ombudsman only, it must restore the powers of the Children and Young People’s Commission to scrutinise the government’s effectiveness in protecting the remaining range of children’s rights.

Claire Breen 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. Changes to the way Oranga Tamariki is monitored risk weakening children’s rights and protections – what should be done? – https://theconversation.com/changes-to-the-way-oranga-tamariki-is-monitored-risk-weakening-childrens-rights-and-protections-what-should-be-done-186305