Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jacob Sunter, PhD Student, University of Adelaide

Recently screened at the Sydney Film Festival, Fire Island is a rom-com inspired by Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, the film breaking traditional conventions to feature gay romance as the plot.

The fact that it is streaming on Disney+ speaks clearly about how ordinary non-heterosexualities have become. While it might be surprising that it has taken this long for same-sex romance to reach the mainstream, Australian audiences might be forgiven for wondering about the significance of the title of the film.

The island in question is a barrier island off the coast of Long Island, New York City, featuring a unique and threatened environment that has long been a gay sanctuary, providing a space of freedom and expression at a time when same-sex activity was still illegal and gay communities highly policed.

Prohibition, hurricanes and writing

Fire Island always attracted history’s brightest queer figures. Overlooking the Great South Bay in 1857, Walt Whitman contemplated the “wrecks and wreckers” of Fire Island. Taking respite from his 1882 American lecture series, Oscar Wilde enjoyed several days at Cherry Grove’s Perkinson’s Hotel.

In the Prohibition years of the 1920s, Fire Island’s remote location attracted a new crowd of thirsty mainlanders. To New York’s gay theatre personalities, the Grove’s relaxed policing suggested freedom and safety, though they remained outnumbered by the island’s wealthy heterosexuals.

In the Great Hurricane of 1938, two thirds of the island’s cottages were destroyed. Amassing large debts in the effort to rebuild, straight locals rented their properties to a younger metropolitan crowd, a crowd who heard whispers of the island’s untamed beauty throughout New York’s downtown gay scene. By the 1940s, the island’s small contingent of gay theatre personalities grew to a vibrant queer majority, and Cherry Grove earned its name as America’s first gay and lesbian town.

In the 1940s and 1950s, Fire Island emerged as a creative and literary space. Far removed from the noise and distractions of the city, the island’s serene and quiet landscape offered a place to read, reflect, and compose. Its catalogue of queer writers included WH Auden, Patricia Highsmith, Tennessee Williams, Frank O’Hara, and Truman Capote.

In 1955, Capote drafted Breakfast at Tiffany’s while staying at Carrington House. This drive to create was occasionally at-odds with the island’s emerging party scene. In a poem as early as 1948, Auden ridiculed the “bosoms and backsides” that paraded across the beach, the “great” masses who “will be drunk till Fall.”

Disco to meat rack

Cherry Grove’s queer reputation only grew in the 60s and 70s. Gay vacationers began to reside in the Pines, Cherry Grove’s conservative neighbour. Contrary to Auden’s fears, the island offered a site of both sexual and artistic exploration.

As gay men cruised the Meat Rack, the wild terrain at the edge of Cherry Grove, Andy Warhol and David Hockney sought creative inspiration in the island’s erotic and visual cultures. Warhol examined this atmosphere of open sexuality in his 1965 film My Hustler, and Hockney experimented with photography while staying on the island.

The island’s impact extended further throughout the golden years of disco. Pines DJ Tom Moulton revolutionised the clubbing scene with the invention of the extended mix, first played at the Sandpiper discotheque.

Tensions stirred, however, between Cherry Grove’s established population and the affluent community of the Pines. In 1976, Cherry Grove drag queen Teri Warren was denied service at a Pines restaurant. Grove residents dressed in drag, boarded a water taxi, and stormed the Pines in protest. Dubbed the first “invasion” the event is repeated every 4th of July, though to a much warmer reception from the Pines locals.

The AIDS epidemic saw the devastating loss of many island residents. What once represented sexual freedom became largely a site of care, a place to politically mobilise and grieve.

Fire Island today

Once a place of primitive living conditions, without running water or electricity – a real retreat – the island now features cutting-edge architecture, pumping clubs and a vibrant party scene, from “tea dances” at the Blue Whale to the infamous underwear parties at the Ice Palace. It is within this culture that the film Fire Island places its action.

With the development of PrEP and greater awareness about sexual safety, the island’s culture of sexual experimentation has largely returned, though concerns remain that digital cruising apps such as Grindr and Scruff put these historical queer sites at risk.

While other gay and lesbian enclaves exist around the world, mostly they are suburbs, often on the way to gentrification. As non-heterosexualities become more acceptable, at least in some parts of the world, the need for queer people to cluster for safety and comfort is less pressing.

Yet Fire Island continues to be a gay mecca, its remarkable history and contribution to art and literature legendary despite the fact that its predominantly white, male, cisgender, and upper-class aficionados make this legacy rather exclusive. Centring on the experiences of queer Asian Americans, the film Fire Island underscores the island’s ambivalence as a safe haven for marginalised queer identities.

While its current reality might lack the romance of its former bohemian cache, it nonetheless remains a place where queers – some at least – can feel “normal”, part of the majority at last. This might be its enduring appeal.

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

– ref. Art, freedom and drag invasions: the history of New York’s Fire Island as a gay sanctuary – https://theconversation.com/art-freedom-and-drag-invasions-the-history-of-new-yorks-fire-island-as-a-gay-sanctuary-185214

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

Anthony Albanese will be on the international road again next week. He’ll be at the NATO summit in Madrid, where the war in Ukraine will obviously dominate the discussions, which will also canvass China and climate change.

Albanese, who earlier attended the QUAD in Tokyo and visited Indonesia, isn’t going to be a minimalist when it comes to spending time overseas.

International conferences give an opportunity for the new PM to meet multiple leaders, gather information and signal continuities and change (for example on climate policy) in Australia’s national priorities.

A just-elected prime minister must be careful in deciding how much foreign travel to undertake, especially when there are problems at home and many ordinary people are doing it tough on their cost of living. At some point, being away too much stirs criticism.

But with NATO inviting four non-member countries – Japan, South Korea and New Zealand, as well as Australia – it would have been a hard invitation to turn down.

The trip includes Paris, in the wake of the Labor government settling compensation for the aborted submarine contract. This stop does seem something of an indulgence, although it could give an opportunity to explore co-operation with France in the Pacific.

Albanese clearly also wants to visit Ukraine. He indicated on Wednesday this would depend on advice from Australian security agencies.

The PM has been equally peripatetic domestically. He’s already been to all states and territories since the election.

Ministers have also been early overseas travellers: among them Foreign Minister Penny Wong, whose second home now seems to be the Pacific, and Defence Minister Richard Marles, who had what was seen as that (maybe) ice-breaking meeting with his Chinese counterpart in Singapore, before a visit to India.

A particularly important trip was Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil’s visit to Sri Lanka this week. One of Labor’s fears has materialised as people smugglers start to test the border. The government acted quickly, with O’Neil’s diplomacy and a $50 million humanitarian aid package for the country. Australia will also fund, as announced by the Coalition government, thousands of GPS trackers to be installed on Sri Lankan fishing boats.

The trickle of boats, none of which has reached the Australian mainland, is not serious so far, but the government knows the risks if it is not quickly cut off.

In general, we’re seeing the new government highly active on multiple fronts, driven by circumstances, particularly with the energy crisis, as well as by choice. It was notable this week that after months of the former government playing down COVID despite the significant number of deaths, Health Minister Mark Butler stepped up the messaging about vaccination and treatment, including launching a public campaign.

Beside the intense front-of-shop activity, a good deal of change is being set in train in the government’s back office, the public service.

Labor signalled in the campaign it wanted to remuscle the bureaucracy, after it had been run down and demoralised by the Coalition government.

Read more:
Albanese government mobilises diplomacy and aid in effort to counter Sri Lanka people smugglers

Scott Morrison downplayed the bureaucracy’s advisory role, outsourced much of its work to consultants, failed to implement some of the more important recommendations of the Thodey review of the service, and arbitrarily sacked a number of departmental secretaries.

This week Albanese wielded a small axe of his own, removing the secretary of the Foreign Affairs Department, Kathryn Campbell (Penny Wong was no fan, and Campbell had a history with Robodebt), and the head of infrastructure, Simon Atkinson.

Immediately after the election Albanese appointed Glyn Davis to head his own department, indicating he’s determined to leave the public service in better shape than he has found it. Davis is a policy wonk with extensive administrative experience and a reform bent; he was a member of the Thodey review.

The changes this week reinforced the point. A former senior bureaucrat, Gordon de Brouwer, also a member of the Thodey review, is returning as “secretary for public sector reform”.

In this context, on Thursday night one of Australia’s most distinguished recent public servants had some advice. Frances Adamson is a former ambassador to China, served as foreign affairs adviser in PM Malcolm Turnbull’s office, and later headed the Foreign Affairs Department. Adamson – who is now South Australian governor – knows the bureaucracy inside out.

In an oration named in her honour, she outlined what she described as four “encouragements” and one “entreaty” to public servants. They amount to an agenda for improvement.

Read more:
Head of Foreign Affairs Kathryn Campbell ousted in public service shake-up

First, she urged the full implementation of the Thodey review “in letter and in spirit”. The effect of the recommendations that were not taken up would be to give senior public servants more independence and protection.

Second, Adamson exhorted public servants to “think more broadly about our times and what they require of you”.

“This is a time for steadiness, for listening and consultation, close collaboration, and a renewed appreciation of and respect for expertise in policy development – whether on the economy, climate change, China or homelessness,” she said.

“A time to grow that expertise in a purposeful way through recruiting and development and to share it widely. And, certainly, time for frank, fearless, well-informed, creative and constructive advice.”

Her third “encouragement” related to the culture of the public service: the importance of fostering “a genuine sense of belonging that goes beyond the ways we typically think about diversity, equity and inclusion”.

“Belonging,” she said, “is about meaningful work, relationships, agency and accountability.”

Fourthly, Adamson stressed the importance of public servants having good relationships with counterparts in other levels of government. Although she didn’t go down this path, co-operation between federal and state governments will be vital if the Albanese government is to secure its aim of improving productivity.

Adamson’s “entreaty” was about integrity. “The 2022 election campaign should not leave us in any doubt about the importance the Australian people attach to integrity and the structures required to support it,” she said.

“Acting with integrity is how the service maintains the confidence and trust of the public. Indeed, integrity is one thing that does shift community attitudes and trust in government, so it is one of the tools that public servants have in strengthening public institutions.”

Adamson concluded that “the quality of public service contributes to a nation’s strategic weight […] Australia’s strategic weight in turn contributes to the stability, security, prosperity and development of our region and its character.”

The better the quality and robustness of the advice coming from the public service, the greater the chance of the Albanese government leaving the sort of “legacy” to which its prime minister says he aspires.

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

– ref. Grattan on Friday: Anthony Albanese has a lot on the go in the ‘back office’ of government – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-anthony-albanese-has-a-lot-on-the-go-in-the-back-office-of-government-185695

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jacqueline Peel, Director, Melbourne Climate Futures, The University of Melbourne

A major new climate case to stop Woodside’s controversial Scarborough gas project going ahead has been filed by the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) in the federal court this week. ACF lawyers argue that the potential for the project’s emissions to harm the Great Barrier Reef must be assessed.

While the case has only just begun, as legal experts, we see this as a landmark challenge.

Gas is often presented as a “transition fuel” towards a green economy. Woodside argues the Scarborough development will help to reduce global emissions by replacing coal with “cleaner” gas. But scientists say gas must rapidly exit the global power sector to keep the Paris Agreement’s 1.5℃ temperature goal in reach.

Indeed, a 2021 study found if the full Scarborough-Pluto project goes ahead, it’ll release over three times Australia’s current annual emissions.

ACF’s case against Woodside will be an important test of Australia’s new climate credentials. It will also fundamentally confront the question: what role, if any, will gas play in the energy transition?

The next frontier of climate litigation is gas

Australian climate lawyers are no stranger to challenging approvals for coal mines in the country. The ACF’s case brings similar strategies to the Scarborough gas project.

Woodside’s Scarborough-Pluto gas project proposes to drill and pipe gas from off the coast of Western Australia, mainly to supply natural gas to countries in Asia.

The company has said their oil and gas projects are consistent with their science-based, Paris-aligned reduction targets for scope 1 and scope 2 emissions, which include emissions directly released from the project, such as leaking methane. But this doesn’t include the scope 3 emissions, which are associated with burning gas by overseas customers.

Read more:
The ultra-polluting Scarborough-Pluto gas project could blow through Labor’s climate target – and it just got the green light

As the 2021 study concluded, the Scarborough gas project will cause an estimated 1.37 billion tonnes of cumulative emissions by 2055.

Despite these potentially significant climate change impacts, the Scarborough gas project has never been approved under Australia’s environmental protection law, the EPBC Act.

This is because Australian law allows all offshore gas and oil projects to be assessed under a streamlined process by the offshore regulator, the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environment Management Authority. The EPBC Act also doesn’t include a “climate trigger” requiring the climate change impacts of projects to be assessed.

Lawyers for the ACF will argue the project is likely to have significant impacts on the heritage values of the Great Barrier Reef.

They’ll point to the broader carbon footprint of the project, arguing the burning and consumption of the gas in other countries will increase greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere, thereby increasing global average surface temperature, and increasing the risk of mass coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef.

Until an environmental impact assessment has taken place, lawyers say Woodside must be restrained from developing the Scarborough gas project.

An uphill battle?

The ACF’s case has only just begun and will likely encounter headwinds in efforts to make out its novel claim.

Last year, we saw the disappointing result in the Sharma case, where the federal court unanimously overturned a finding that the federal environment minister owed Australian children a duty of care to prevent harm from emissions caused by approving a coal extension project.

Indeed, other challenges to the Scarborough gas project in the WA supreme court have not found success, nor have challenges to another gas project, Narrabri, in NSW.

But the ACF case takes a different tack. It uses an application for an injunction to allow evidence be given about how the Scarborough project impacts the environment. On the other hand, previous challenges to the Scarborough gas project focused on the decision-making process.

And in recent years there have also been other notable cases in the Rocky Hill litigation and the KEPCO mine, where the courts have refused to approve new fossil fuel developments on environmental grounds.

Read more:
Today’s disappointing federal court decision undoes 20 years of climate litigation progress in Australia

Between a climate crisis and an energy crisis

The ACF’s case against Woodside’s Scarborough gas project is linked to much broader tensions between the need for urgent climate ambition, the global and domestic energy crisis, and arguments around needing gas as a transition fuel.

Globally, the validity of gas as a transition fuel is being tested.

Last year, the International Energy Agency published a pathway for the planet to reach net zero emissions by 2050. Under this pathway, there would be “no new oil and gas fields approved for development […] and no new coal mines or mine extensions”.

Read more:
4 reasons why a gas-led economic recovery is a terrible, naïve idea

And this month, Climate Analytics published analysis saying gas “must exit electricity generation rapidly after coal – as early as 2035 in rich countries, and by 2040 for the rest of the world – to keep the Paris Agreement’s 1.5℃ limit in reach”.

Even Woodside’s own investors are questioning the company’s pathway in the transition to net zero, with nearly 50% of shareholders voting against its climate report, as it lacked detail and overly relied on carbon offsets.

At the same annual meeting, though, Woodside’s shareholders voted resoundingly in favour of the company’s merger with BHP’s petroleum arm. This cemented BHP’s move away from fossil fuels, and significantly increased Woodside’s oil and gas portfolio.

If the ACF case succeeds, it’s likely to be harder for future gas projects of this scale to be approved.

Beyond any courtroom result, cases such as the ACF’s challenge raise public awareness and conversations among policymakers about the future trajectory of the clean energy transition in this country. And this case could break new ground.

Jacqueline Peel receives funding from the Australian Research Council for a Discovery Project on Advancing Investor Action on Energy Transition (2022-2024).

Ben Neville receives funding from the Australian Research Council for a Discovery Project on Advancing Investor Action on Energy Transition (2022-2024).

Rebekkah Markey-Towler is undertaking a PhD associated with funding from the Australian Research Council for a Discovery Project on Advancing Investor Action on Energy Transition (2022-2024).

– ref. Why this new climate case against the high-polluting Scarborough gas project is so significant – https://theconversation.com/why-this-new-climate-case-against-the-high-polluting-scarborough-gas-project-is-so-significant-185578

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gail Iles, Senior Lecturer in Physics, RMIT University

Last Saturday, a two-seater SIAI-Marchetti S.211 jet took off from Essendon Fields Airport in Melbourne with an expert aerobatic pilot at the controls and a case full of scientific experiments in the passenger seat.

Pilot Steve Gale took the jet on Australia’s first commercial “parabolic flight”, in which the plane flies along the path of a freely falling object, creating a short period of weightlessness for everyone and everything inside.

Parabolic flights are often a test run for the zero-gravity conditions of space. This one was operated by Australian space company Beings Systems, which plans to run regular commercial flights in coming years.

As Australia’s space program begins to take off, flights like these will be in high demand.

What was on the plane?

The experiments aboard the flight were small packages developed by space science students at RMIT University. As program manager of RMIT’s space science degree, I have been teaching these students for the past three years, preparing them for a career in the Australian space industry.

The experiments investigate the effect of zero gravity on plant growth, crystal growth, heat transfer, particle agglomeration, foams and magnetism.

Scientific phenomena behave differently in zero gravity than in labs on Earth. This is important for two main reasons.

First, zero gravity, or “microgravity”, provides a very “clean” environment in which to conduct experiments. By removing gravity from the system, we can study a phenomenon in a more “pure” state and thus understand it better.

Second, microgravity platforms such as parabolic flights, sounding rockets and drop towers provide test facilities for equipment and science before it is sent into space.

Read more:
To carve out a niche in space industries, Australia should focus on microgravity research rockets

Lab on a plane: a mini ISS

Last Saturday’s flight was a success, with the six experiments recording a variety of data and images.

The plants experiment observed broccoli seedlings throughout the flight and found no adverse reactions to hyper- or micro-gravity.

Another experiment formed a crystal of sodium acetate trihydrate in microgravity, which grew much larger than its counterpart on the ground.

The biggest zero-gravity lab is of course the International Space Station (ISS), where studies of plant growth, crystal growth and physical science phenomena are commonplace. At any one time 300 experiments are taking place on the ISS.

Turning a benchtop experiment into a self-contained science payload for space is not easy. Each one must be rigorously tested before launch to make sure it will work once it gets there, using parabolic flights or other testing platforms.

Going ‘zero-g’

There’s a common misconception that you have to go into space to experience microgravity. In fact, it’s the condition of freefall that makes things apparently weightless and that can be experienced here on Earth too.

If you throw a ball to a friend, it traces an arc as it flies through the air. From the moment it leaves your hand it’s in freefall – yes, even on the way up – and this is the exact same arc that the aircraft flies. Instead of a hand, it has an engine providing the “push” it needs to travel and fall through the air, tracing out a parabolic arc as it goes.

Even the International Space Station is experiencing the very same freefall as the ball or the aircraft. The only difference for the ISS is it has enough velocity to “miss the ground” and keep going forwards. The combination of the forward velocity and the pull towards Earth keep it going around in circles, orbiting the planet.

Human spaceflight

Parabolic flights in the USA and Europe occur every two or three months. On the flights, researchers conduct science, companies test technologies and astronauts receive training in preparation for spaceflight missions.

As a researcher at the European Space Agency and former astronaut instructor, I am a veteran of five parabolic flight campaigns in Europe. I’ve completed over 500 parabolas on board the Novespace Airbus A300.

While I have never become sick on these flights, up to 25% of people aboard do vomit in the zero-g conditions. This is why they are sometimes called “vomit comets”.

Why now?

So why does Australia need parabolic flights all of a sudden? Since the Australian Space Agency was established in 2018, several space projects have received funding, including a lunar rover, four Earth-observation satellites and a space suit.

For these projects to succeed, all their various systems and components will need to be tested. That’s where parabolic flights come in.

As the demand increases, so too will the Australian aircraft. Beings Systems has plans to offer a larger aircraft –- such as a Lear jet – by 2023, such that researchers and companies alike can test their equipment, large and small, without leaving the country.

In addition to reading exciting scientific papers on the latest phenomena observed in microgravity, we’ll begin to see footage of satellites testing deployment of their antennae and people donning and doffing spacesuits on board parabolic flights.

Gail Iles 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 just flew its own ‘vomit comet’. It’s a big deal for zero-gravity space research – https://theconversation.com/australia-just-flew-its-own-vomit-comet-its-a-big-deal-for-zero-gravity-space-research-185601

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

Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, is facing extradition to the United States after this was given the green light by the British Government. Assange faces charges of espionage over the publication of classified information about US actions in the Iraq War.

Barrister Greg Barns has worked pro bono on Assagne’s case for the last nine years as part of the Australian Assange campaign.

Barns argues the Assange issue “goes to fundamental questions like freedom of the press and freedom of speech.”

The election of the Albanese government has reignited calls for Australia to do more to try to bring Assange home.

“We’ve certainly been heartened by the approach taken by the new government,” Barns says.

“I think Anthony Albanese himself has been committed for some time now in his public statements and certainly been supportive privately of Assange’s position. He’s made that clear in a number of statements with a theme really that this has gone long enough.”

“There has been a marked change in rhetoric on the part of Mr Albanese, but also I think in his very telling statement that he did not want to pursue this matter through megaphone diplomacy, which we respect, because of course you’re dealing with Australia’s closest ally.”

“He wants to do something, but he wants to do it in a way that respects the friendship between Australia and the United States.”

On what US President Joe Biden should consider when it comes to the relationship with Australia and the issue of Assange, Barns notes Biden has “given a number of speeches now talking about democracy and the importance of democratic values”.

“This is an opportunity to assert those values by saying that freedom of speech and freedom of the press are fundamentally important in a democracy and in the democratic world. And so there are certainly plenty of avenues and plenty of reasons why President Biden might deal with this matter.”

“This case has gone on too long. There are fundamental principles at stake and it’s time to end it.”

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: Greg Barns on the battle to free Julian Assange – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-greg-barns-on-the-battle-to-free-julian-assange-185690

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Gillespie, Professor of Law, University of Waikato

The concern about gangs and gang-related violence in New Zealand continues to be highly politicised. Government ministers are under constant media scrutiny and political pressure, with both sides trying to look more staunch on crime than the other. The problem is that these debates often lack history, context or vision.

Every generation panics intermittently about crime, especially when it concerns gangs and youth. One of the earliest New Zealand examples was in 1842 when 123 male juveniles who had been transported from Parkhurst Prison in England began roaming the streets of Auckland.

Although a plea by the head of police for a prohibition on further deportations was accepted, the country realised it had a problem.

The following years saw the introduction of new legislation, such as that designed to deal with “vagabonds and rogues” (including the particularly troublesome “incorrigible” ones). This overlapped with generic laws designed to protect public order and keep criminals locked up.

Crime did not stop, but it did evolve. It was recognised as “organised” in the 1920s, well before the first post-WWII counterculture emerged. But the country was so shocked by youth behaviour in the 1950s that a dedicated committee on “Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents” was established. Its findings on the sexual morality of teenagers were posted to every home in the land.

It was not a huge success. By the late 1950s there were around 41 “milkbar cowboy” gangs in Auckland and 17 in Wellington. By the early 1960s, more enduring brands like the Mongrel Mob and a New Zealand chapter of the Hells Angels were beginning to put down roots.

Six decades of a growing challenge

Since then, politicians have swung left and right, wielding sticks and then carrots to deal with the issue. As we examine in our recent book, People, Power, and Law: a New Zealand History, government responses have moved from involving isolated ministries towards multiple overlapping agencies approaching the problem strategically and holistically.

There has also been a plethora of legislation. As well as the continually evolving criminal law, there have been laws on everything from fortified houses and the recovery of criminal proceeds, through to the prohibition of gang patches in public spaces.

Read more:
Despite claims NZ’s policing is too ‘woke’, crime rates are largely static — and even declining

While the practicality of many of these laws is questionable, the fundamental point is that none has stemmed the tide. Gang membership reached about 2,300 by 1980. It took nearly 35 years to reach just under 4,000 in 2014, but then only seven years before the numbers doubled again to 8,061 in 2021.

Gang members are over-represented in crime statistics. As of mid-2021, 2,938 people in prison had a gang affiliation – approximately 35% of the prison population.

In many ways, these people have joined gangs for similar reasons the Parkhurst boys got together in the early 1840s: alienation, identity, purpose, respect, friendship, excitement, security and even economic opportunity.

Read more:
How coronavirus is changing the market for illegal drugs

Drugs and gangs

But today’s gangs are not the same. Their scale, methods and social impact (especially overseas) have all changed. They’ve become mobile, transnational enterprises worth an estimated 1.5% of global GDP.

The ever-expanding global supply and demand for illegal narcotics has impacts everywhere. Although New Zealand Customs’ illegal drug take was down during the pandemic, the overall trend is one of growing seizures and a diversity of offshore suppliers.

Read more:
If reducing harm to society is the goal, a cost-benefit analysis shows cannabis prohibition has failed

Drugs are obviously attractive to gangs. In the first quarter of 2021, methamphetamine, MDMA and cocaine netted an estimated NZ$77 million through illegal distribution.

The previous quarter was even higher, with about $8.5 million generated every week. The estimated 74 tonnes of cannabis consumed in New Zealand each year may add up to $1.5 billion to the total.

A bipartisan approach

Solving a problem of this scale will require a strategic shift away from treating organised criminal groups like a partisan political game. It’s an intergenerational challenge that should ideally be a cross-party issue.

One way to achieve this would be through a new framework law that encourages whichever government is in power to focus consistently on illegal activity by organised groups. It should begin with a detailed review of what has worked and what has failed legally, socially and culturally.

There would then need to be an agreed system of political accountability set against known and transparent targets and indicators. But laws and policies designed to deter and punish criminal activity must also be seen in a wider context.

Read more:
Policing by consent is not ‘woke’ — it is fundamental to a democratic society

The law does not exist in a vacuum. The rights of victims of organised crime should be measurably enhanced. And the rights of freedom of association and freedom from discrimination due to group identity need to be reconciled.

We also need to accept that gangs will not simply disappear. Areas for co-operation on shared lawful projects should be found. Helping people safely leave organised criminal organisations would be another priority.

Perhaps the most critical aim of all will be to slow gang recruitment. Of course, that is a fundamental challenge well beyond any single policy or program – to create an inclusive society where the pathways, opportunities and benefits of being a lawful citizen outweigh the alternative.

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

– ref. New Zealand needs a new gang strategy – political consensus would be a good start – https://theconversation.com/new-zealand-needs-a-new-gang-strategy-political-consensus-would-be-a-good-start-185677

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Angela Conquet, PhD Candidate, The University of Melbourne

Three years in the making, Rising’s much-anticipated first edition brought to Melbourne’s festival-deprived audiences a rich program featuring 225 events.

With former Chunky Move founder and choreographer Gideon Obarzanek as co-director, it was only natural to expect a dance-heavy presence with eight local and international productions.

The works ranged from incredible local performer Jo Lloyd and her dancers in dialogue with drummer Jim White and guitarist Emmett Kelly, to the exquisite Indonesian dancer and choreographer Rianto’s ritualistic Hijra’h, but there were three works which I felt particularly captured something of this post-pandemic age.

Jurrungu Ngan-ga/Straight Talk

Marrugeku’s productions have often been straight talk – powerful invitations to reflect on the devastating effects of ongoing colonialism as experienced daily by Indigenous people and other marginalised communities.

Their works are almost always the result of intercultural collaborations, expressed through complex choreography expanding into spoken text, multimedia installations and diverse styles of dance.

This production is no different, inspired by ideas and experience contributed as material by choreographer Dalisa Pigram’s own grandfather Yawuru leader and senator Patrick Dodson, Kurdish Iranian writer and former Manus Island detainee Behrouz Boochani and Iranian-Australian scholar-activist Omid Tofighian.

Jurrungu Ngan-ga tackles the devastating consequences of Australia’s entrenched, government-sanctioned fixation with punishment through detention and incarceration.

The show brings together a cast of nine dancers of multiple backgrounds (from First Peoples, refugee, transgender and settler communities) who also contribute their embodied stories and histories to the piece.

It starts with a subtly exquisite solo, the dancer embracing the space with ample movement flowing freely. As it unfolds, movement becomes cagier, as if restrained, constrained by invisible barriers. It prefaces the next solo, a man pacing in a cell of light watched by a camera. He is in turn surveying by us watching the camera footage.

This is a man caged in a prison, caged in a body, and the movement – no longer ample – pulsates with repressed anger.

From here, the choreography grows into dizzying ensemble moments, including a surreal moment when the dancers navigate their way through a stage occupied by glowing crystal chandeliers lowered to the ground.

There is everything in this piece, from police abuse to spit-hoods to video surveillance, to naked bodies dumped on the floor with a muffled thump, to names of those who have perished in police custody or in detention. There is abuse and humiliation and moments of protest, of fury, and joy, wild and unapologetic.

The choreography is a breathtaking tour de force delivered by fierce bodies telling their dire stories. Although nothing is accusatory here, there is no breathing space for the audiences but to take it all in. As the final solo arrives, soothing and somewhat majestic, ears still resonate with the powerful rapping “this is Australia”.

This is Australia at its ugliest, in its fear of everything not from here, of everyone “not like us”, a mirror talking back at us.

Jurrungu Ngan-ga is truly a piece of its plagued times, viscerally sharp and brutally raw, so raw that it cuts to the bone, and the call to action at the end may well be the only way to catch the breath.

Read more:
Comic anticlimax in Nat Randall and Anna Breckon’s Set Piece

The Dancing Public

Danish choreographer Mette Ingvartsen’s The Dancing Public is also a piece about plagued times and as visceral as Marrugeku’s, yet very different.

We step into the dimly lit space. The music is raving and Ingvartsen, mingling with the audience, is inviting everyone to spread around. Some are starting to move with the music as they inspect the space. Then Ingvartsen gets up on one of the three platforms placed here and there, and starts to dance.

Furiously, relentlessly, her body pulses, throbs, possessed by the beats, convulsing in trance-like gestures.

As she dances, she chants about the unexplained hysterical mass dancing episodes that started in the 1300 in south of France and continued over time. People danced till they dropped, their feet covered in blood and their minds covered in fog. It was the time of mediaeval plaques and poverty.

She joins the crowds again and dances with anyone as she swirls her way to the other platform to tell us some more. She keeps dancing. There is no sweat dripping off her body, no heavy breathing. She is fury unleashed and it is mesmerising to watch. We forget about dancing.

Suddenly, she hurls her body over the platform railing and leaves it hanging there, in a rare moment of stillness, no sweat dripping, and we, with her, suspend our breath. And the dancing kicks off again, and goes on and on and at the end, she leaves us alone, to dance… or not.

If Dancing Public is about the public dancing it fails. The contagion from one body to the other does not take. Participatory dance shows are always tricky – they really depend on the audience mood and the dramaturgical tricks giving the cues. They also depend on who is in the room, and in Melbourne, given the ticket price, it wasn’t exactly the crowd most inclined to dance.

Dancing Public is indeed an experiment that needs to be experienced with the body, through the body. It is all that we have missed during these last two years. And here lies the merit of this show, in it turning a story from the past into some important questions for today: would we have all taken to the streets dancing if confinement had continued?

Could this be a new form of protest in our heavily policed socially-distanced post pandemic reality? Dancing manias were considered a threat to public order as crowds could be neither controlled nor explained.

In this sense, this show is more an invitation to consider our relationship to social norms, to being together, to acting collectively. How we respond to this invitation will depend on who is ready to let go.

Read more:
From creepy clowns to the dancing plague – when phobias are contagious

Multitud

At the start of Multitud, from the Uruguayan choreographer Tamara Cubas, the 72 volunteer performers are part of the audience – then, they step onto the stage, one by one, facing us. Bodies standing tall, lit by discreet fluoro lights.

Suddenly one bends, like a broken puppet, then another. Some fall to the ground, some crouch. Some rise back up, some don’t.

Later, they start running in circles. The circles grow into a spinning whirlwind.

They all coalesce into a vortex of piled, panting bodies, pulsing like magma, until they breathe as one: one single breath. A pause, and they erupt into a thunderous laughter. It is hilarious. It is hysterical, too, as they come together again into a crowd, frenzied and threatening this time, out of control, taking aim and tugging ferociously at a teenager in a green jumper.

They are vile.

The teenager stares at us as we witness what may turn into a public lynching. But the crowd calms down and there is silence and stillness again as they all watch us, the teenager and the attackers. In this suspended moment, one piercing cry is made of everyone’s cry. There is fury and anger and tears, real tears.

One wonders if we have caused them, placid witnesses of someone’s misery. Appeased, the crowd slowly disintegrates and retreats in the shadows backstage. In their final coming together, somehow they have lost their clothes. No, they have exchanged their clothes, nonchalantly at first, with sharper precision as they take or give, some are naked, some wear the wrong shoes, clothes fly everywhere, scattered now on the floor, some keep searching, some let go.

Multitud places the directions and the power of the actual choreography in the hands of the group – they decide where to start, what to do, how to end. They can opt out too. Every night is different. Every time is different.

Multitud succeeds where The Dancing Public fails. This, too, is an exquisite reflection on being together and acting collectively, yet this is about what holds us together as a collective.

This is not choreography for the masses, rather it is a multitude of relations between individual bodies, each affecting or being affected by the other. It is about being in communion; attentive, alert, attuned to the other. Then we become responsible for what we do collectively.

Multitud is fiercely political and delicately poetic, a tribute to what dance can (still) do in times of plague.

Read more:
Writing movement: why dance criticism matters

Angela Conquet 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 Rising festival brought us dance in times of plague – https://theconversation.com/how-rising-festival-brought-us-dance-in-times-of-plague-183642

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rick Sarre, Emeritus Professor of Law and Criminal Justice, University of South Australia

The judge in the trial of Bruce Lehrmann, the staffer alleged to have raped Brittany Higgins, ruled on Tuesday, “regrettably and with gritted teeth”, that his trial will need to be delayed.

This was because of the media coverage and social media attention that followed Logie Award-winning journalist Lisa Wilkinson’s acceptance speech (she won a Logie for her coverage on The Project of the Brittany Higgins allegations).

In the speech, Wilkinson thanked Higgins for trusting her and The Project team with the story, and for changing the national conversation around allegations of sexual abuse.

Lehrmann’s lawyers successfully argued the speech was a potential “contempt of court”.

Chief Justice Lucy McCallum said:

“What concerns me most about this recent round is that the distinction between an allegation and a finding of guilt has been completely obliterated… The implicit premise of [the speech] is to celebrate the truthfulness of the story she exposed.”

One might have thought the exceptional umbrage taken by the courts against the media’s reporting of the George Pell case might have made the veteran journalist a little more cautious about referring to matters that are either currently or imminently before the courts.

According to news reports, Wilkinson had been warned by ACT Director of Public Prosecutions Shane Drumgold that her speech could delay the trial if it made reference to the case, but he reportedly didn’t want to listen when Wilkinson started to read it to him beforehand, offering that prosecutors “are not speech editors”.

Wilkinson reportedly told him she was not expecting to win, so the speech would not likely be made.

There’s also the complication that the prosecution reportedly plans to call Wilkinson as a witness in the trial.

Read more:
Cleo Smith interview: does Channel Nine run the risk of being in contempt of court?

What is ‘contempt of court’?

So, what caused the judge to make her ruling to stop the case in its tracks, and list it for trial at a date yet to be determined?

It’s the law designed to ensure all criminal trials are fair and it’s guided by the principles of “contempt of court”.

Contempt of court can arise if any words or actions by the media (or indeed anyone who makes a public statement) are deemed to interfere with the administration of justice, or constitute a disregard for the authority of the court.

The principle of contempt law that pertains to this case is that a jury must decide the guilt or innocence of an accused on the basis of the evidence before them, and not to allow other considerations to taint their deliberations.

This could include commenting publicly on the credibility of a victim’s story, stoking the public’s disdain of an accused by a storm of social media, or calling for a social evil to be tackled. This is referred to as sub judice (“under a judge”) contempt.

Back in February this year, Channel 9 came perilously close to being in contempt of court after airing material that could have been deemed to have a tendency to prejudice the judge’s consideration of a sentence for the man convicted of kidnapping Western Australian four-year-old Cleo Smith.

There need only be evidence the content – whether it be a media article reporting a speech, a social media post, or some other public discussion – could have a tendency to affect the thinking of the jurors in their deliberations. Actual proof that it did, in fact, influence jurors isn’t required. If successfully argued, a trial can be shifted to another jurisdiction, or delayed, or, potentially, aborted permanently.

That’s what Lehrmann’s lawyers asked the court to consider. “This speech did not need to be made,” his barrister Steve Whybrow said. He added that his client had no interest in delaying the trial, but he wanted it to be a fair trial.

What’s clear is the speech had the potential to prejudice the imminent trial. Justice McCallum ruled the matter would be better dealt with when the dust has settled on Wilkinson’s acceptance speech, and the social media storm has died down. There would not have been a media lawyer in Australia who would have been surprised by the ruling.

The timing of the Logies was unfortunate. Wilkinson should have been counselled more wisely to generalise her remarks.

Warnings should have been heeded

Parliaments around Australia are facing growing calls to overhaul their contempt of court laws, with many advocates arguing the status quo does not meet public expectations.

But that’s a broader question about freedom of speech. In this instance, freedom of speech was not an issue. It was clear the case could be prejudiced, and the warnings should have been heeded.

No-one has made the allegation in Australia yet that Wilkinson’s remarks are in contempt of court, and only the judge can rule on that if she be so minded.

Whether there are legal ramifications for Wilkinson remains to be seen, but one could have some sympathy for her. Wilkinson had spoken with Drumgold on June 15 to discuss the evidence that she would give at the trial. Drumgold warned her against commenting publicly on Higgins’ case, but clearly not strongly enough.

Given the costly and annoying rescheduling that is now needed, Drumgold is probably regretting he didn’t simply give Wilkinson a firm “no”.

Rick Sarre is a member of the SA Council for Civil Liberties and the Australian Labor Party.

– ref. Why was the Brittany Higgins trial delayed, and what is ‘contempt of court’? A legal expert’s view on the Lisa Wilkinson saga – https://theconversation.com/why-was-the-brittany-higgins-trial-delayed-and-what-is-contempt-of-court-a-legal-experts-view-on-the-lisa-wilkinson-saga-185585

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gita Mishra, Professor of Life Course Epidemiology, Faculty of Medicine, The University of Queensland

New research shows women who have had a miscarriage or stillbirth, have an increased risk of stroke – when blood can’t get to the brain, because of a blocked or burst artery. That risk increases with each miscarriage or stillbirth.

Trying to establish this link is difficult because it requires following a large number of women over a long period of time and having reliable data on women’s experiences. Our study, published by the British Medical Journal today, is the first to conclusively show the link between pregnancy loss and stroke.

Many women are unaware their experiences during pregnancy can be an early marker of later health dangers. Our findings show their doctors should be alert to their increased risk.

It’s possible infertility, miscarriage, and stillbirth could increase stroke risk because of other health issues. These could include endocrine disorders (low oestrogen or insulin resistance), inflammation, problems with endothelial cells that assist in blood flow, psychological disorders, unhealthy behaviours (such as smoking) or obesity.

Heartbreak then stroke risk

Our research is based on pooled data from 618,851 women who took part in eight separate studies in Australia, China, Japan, Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The women were aged between 32 and 73 when they were first enrolled in the studies and were followed up for an average of 11 years.

The study showed that over the time they were studied, 9,265 (2.8%) women had at least one non-fatal stroke and 4,003 (0.7%) women had a fatal stroke. Overall, 91,569 (16.2%) women had a history of miscarriage while 24,873 (4.6%) had a history of stillbirth.

Among the women who had ever been pregnant, women who had reported a miscarriage had a 11% higher risk of a non-fatal stroke and 17% higher risk of a fatal stroke compared with women who have not had a miscarriage.

The risk increased with each miscarriage, so that women who had three or more miscarriages had a 35% higher risk for non-fatal stroke (from incidence rate of 43 per 100,000 “person years” to 58 per 100,000) and an 82% higher risk in fatal strokes (from 11.3 per 100,000 person years to 18 per 100,000) compared with women who had never miscarried.

Stillbirth also significantly increased the risk of stroke.

Among women who had ever been pregnant, women who had a history of stillbirth had a 31% higher risk of non-fatal strokes (from an incidence rate of 42 per 100,000 person years to 69.5 per 100,000) and a 7% higher risk of fatal strokes.

Again, the greater the number of stillbirths, the higher the risk of later strokes, with women who had had two or more stillbirths having a 26% higher risk of fatal strokes (rising from 11 per 100,000 person years to 51.1 per 100,000).

The study is the first to show links with stroke subtypes: stillbirths were linked to non-fatal ischaemic (blockage) stroke or fatal haemorrhagic (bleeding) stroke; miscarriages were linked to both subtypes.

Our study strengthens findings from a previous systematic review that found similar results but showed limited evidence linked to stroke subtypes.

Of the possible explanations for these links, problems with endothelial cells (which control vascular relaxation and contraction as well as release blood-clotting enzymes) might lead to pregnancy loss through problems with the placenta. These problems also relate to how blood vessels dilate and get inflamed or blocked during stroke.

Read more:
What causes miscarriages? A doctor explains why women shouldn’t blame themselves

Adjusting for known risk factors

Our findings were adjusted for many of the known risk factors for stroke: body mass index, whether the women smoked or not, whether they had high blood pressure, or diabetes. The numbers were also adjusted for ethnicity and education level.

By adjusting for risk factors, we can isolate the increased risk likely linked to the number of miscarriages or stillbirths the women.

Read more:
Remind me again, why is salt bad for you?

What should women and their doctors do with this information?

When doctors do a heart health check, they look at the risk of cardiovascular disease overall – that is, heart disease, heart failure and stroke. By considering these risks, doctors assess and predict the risk of future disease.

The current Australian guidelines recommend heart health checks should be conducted regularly for people aged 45 to 74, or for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples from the age of 30 – this is when the risk of cardiovascular disease starts to increase.

The guidelines recommend medication (blood pressure medication and/or lipid-lowering medication such as statins) when the risk of cardiovascular disease is greater than 15% in the next five years.

These guidelines are currently being updated by the Australian Chronic Disease Prevention Alliance (which includes the Cancer Council Australia, Diabetes Australia, Kidney Health Australia, National Heart Foundation of Australia and the Stroke Foundation), but more recent international guidelines recommend medication at lower levels of risk.

Read more:
I’m approaching a ‘milestone’ birthday. What health checks should I have at my age?

No matter what your risk of cardiovascular disease is, the best way to prevent having a stroke is by living as healthy a lifestyle as possible: stopping smoking, eating a healthy diet, having a moderate alcohol intake and doing regular exercise.

These lifestyle measures lower risk for everybody, but doctors will try particularly hard to help people do this who are at long term risk.

Our research shows miscarriage and stillbirth are signals a woman is at increased risk of cardiovascular disease. These events occur many years before a woman develops other risk factors, such as high blood pressure, diabetes or high cholesterol.

Women who have experienced a miscarriage or stillbirth should discuss these with their doctor. Knowing you have a higher risk of stroke is opportunity to monitor your health and make lifestyle changes that can help prevent stroke.

GPs need to ask about women’s reproductive histories and be aware of recurrent miscarriage and stillbirths as potential predictors of stroke risk.

Gita Mishra receives funding from National Health and Medical Research Council and the Australian Government Department of Health.

Jenny Doust receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council and the Medical Research Futures Fund. She is a member of the National Heart Foundation Clinical Committee.

Chen Liang 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 are at greater risk of stroke, the more miscarriages or stillbirths they’ve had – https://theconversation.com/women-are-at-greater-risk-of-stroke-the-more-miscarriages-or-stillbirths-theyve-had-185490

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Wayland, Senior Lecturer Social Work, University of New England

About a year ago, many of us were in lockdown. State premiers fronted the media every day to reveal how many people had tested positive for COVID and how many people had died.

The number of deaths were prominent in news bulletins. We would lament the sadness of it all, until the next day’s data arrived.

A year later, Australia has an average of about 50 COVID deaths a day. We have had more than 9,300 COVID deaths since the pandemic began. Yet, these deaths are barely mentioned in the Australian media.

We seem to have lost the collective opportunity to acknowledge lives lost. And when we don’t talk about these traumatic deaths, there’s a long-term impact on those left behind.

Read more:
COVID has changed how we live, how we die, and how we grieve

Is traumatic loss different?

All grief is hard to cope with. But when grief is combined with the type of trauma we’d see with a violent or sudden death, we can see something different over the long term.

If the media doesn’t discuss the losses, this can complicate the traumatic grief and lead to something called prolonged grief disorder.

This type of grief can extend far beyond the first year after the loss. People yearn for their life before their loved one was taken away. This impacts their capacity to keep moving forward, long after the death occurs.

Read more:
Health-care workers share our trauma during the coronavirus pandemic – on top of their own

How does this apply to COVID?

People who have lost a loved one to COVID can feel lonely and isolated. They can also develop prolonged grief disorder.

It can be traumatic to say goodbye under hospital restrictions or losing the opportunity for grief rituals – viewings, funerals and sharing the loss with others – despite many others going through a similar loss.

People who develop prolonged grief disorder after losing a loved one to COVID may find they have more severe and prolonged grief responses. This can lead to adverse outcomes such as an increased pre-occupation with their grief, intense emotions and difficulty connecting with their life after the loss.

But if we look to Australian media, it appears the community is no longer focused on the faces of those lives lost.

What has the media got to do with it?

Media coverage has long been intertwined with how we grieve.

When the media publicises first-person accounts of people’s lives, images or faces of people who died, or continually updates the toll of lives lost, this has an impact on those left behind, especially if there was a sudden and traumatic death.

This type of media coverage allows viewers to collectively empathise with people left behind, placing stories against the abstract statistics of death. The community can share in that sorrow vicariously and the media exposure increases the community’s understanding of what that loss means.

We’ve seen examples of this on social media, for instance with the @FacesOfCOVID Twitter account, which pays tribute to five or six people a day who have died of COVID.

However, we haven’t seen the equivalent tributes, on a daily basis, in the mainstream media.

If we don’t pay tribute to lives lost, this can affect people left behind in many ways:

• fewer shared images, names or acknowledgments limits how many people hear about someone who’s died, so fewer can express their grief

• families lose the chance to say to others “this is the person I have lost” to show people their pain

• people who have also lost someone don’t get to see others bearing the same pain.

Read more:
The five stages of grief don’t come in fixed steps – everyone feels differently

Each traumatic loss affects many others

More people are impacted by a sudden or traumatic loss, such as a homicide or suicide, than we once thought. One study suggests as many as 135 people are significantly affected. For each COVID death, another study shows up to nine people are impacted.

Irrespective of whether there are nine or 135 people feeling the ripple effects, the number of deaths we have experienced in Australia tells us thousands are living with the grief of a traumatic COVID death.

This grief will shape people’s experiences of the world, dulling possibilities for joy, making it difficult to accept the finality of a loss. This will be exacerbated by how little we focused on those losses as a community.

A lack of media coverage of COVID deaths means we have also lost moments of shared empathy – a space for others to see people who are travelling the same path.

Sarah Wayland 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 deaths are now barely mentioned in the media. That changes the very nature of grief – https://theconversation.com/covid-deaths-are-now-barely-mentioned-in-the-media-that-changes-the-very-nature-of-grief-184837

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Grose, Climate projections scientist, CSIRO

It’s an offhand joke a lot of us make – it’s freezing, can we get a bit more of that global warming right about now?

But how should we really conceive our day-to-day weather in the context of climate change, especially when Australia’s east coast is enduring a colder-than-normal start to winter? Here are four ways.

Read more:
Why is it so cold right now? And how long will it last? A climate scientist explains

1. Put the weather in a long-term context

The recent cold conditions in some parts of Australia haven’t been seen in decades, but they aren’t unprecedented. In Melbourne, for instance, the first two weeks of June were coldest since 1949. In Brisbane, they were the coldest since 1990.

Under the global warming trend, cold events such as these are becoming less and less likely. But Australia naturally has a variable climate, which means they, of course, still do occur.

And given Australia’s instrumental records go back only 112 years (a relatively short length of time), it’s actually still possible we’ll see new record cold temperatures, even in a warming climate.

Still, record hot temperatures in Australia are being broken 12 times more often than cold ones.

The climate would need to be warming incredibly fast for there to be zero cold records broken, and even faster still if we were to see no cold weather at all. No one suggests this is the reality.

2. Zoom out for a wider view

Let’s look at an individual day – say, Tuesday June 13 – using Climate Reanalyser, a platform for visualising climate and weather datasets.

That day was certainly colder than the 1979-2000 average in eastern Australia and Tasmania. But it was warmer than average in parts of Western Australia and many places around the world, including large parts of Africa. Meanwhile, parts of the United States and Europe were experiencing major heatwaves.

On this day, the global average was 0.3℃ warmer than the 1979-2000 baseline, and this baseline was around 0.6℃ warmer than the pre-industrial climate.

This is exactly what you expect from weather variability in a warming climate – variations day to day and place to place, but a consistently warmer climate when you take the wide view.

Read more:
After the vicious cold snap, here are our tips to warm up while keeping your environmental footprint down

3. Look at the climate indicators with more ‘memory’

Looking at the weather day to day is a bit like watching the live share market updates from one stock exchange. To understand the trends and the bigger picture, you need to track it over time and space.

Given instrumental records only go back so far, scientists can use climate indicators found in nature. Glaciers, for example, respond to temperature over time, with almost all glaciers around the world receding in response to a warmer climate.

The oceans have longer memories than the atmosphere. Ocean warming is clear in, for instance, the East Australian Current, which now extends further south, bringing warmer water down the southeast coast. This, in turn, is driving fish species further south and devastating kelp forests.

Perhaps the most reliable indicator of warming planet is the total “ocean heat content” – the total amount of extra energy stored in our oceans, which can store a lot more than the atmosphere. There has been a rock-steady increase of ocean heat content in recent decades.

Read more:
How climate change made the melting of New Zealand’s glaciers 10 times more likely

4. Consider the concept of attribution

Determining whether climate change helped make a particular weather event more likely or more severe than it would have been – whether a cold snap, a heatwave or flooding rains – requires a formal attribution study, which looks for a climate change “fingerprint”.

Overall, the planet has warmed 1.09℃ since pre-industrial times. And since 2012, the human caused climate change fingerprint has been clear in any single day of global weather.

Thanks to event attribution studies, we can confidently state that cold extremes are now less likely than they would be in a world without climate change, while heatwaves and extreme heat events are far more likely.

For example, climate change made the recent devastating heatwave in India and Pakistan 30 times more likely.

Our weather intuitions

Our intuitions and common sense are great tools for navigating our day-to-day life and making decisions. But our first-hand experience is rooted at the scale of centimetres to kilometres, seconds to days.

Our brains are not perfect data loggers over decades, and our memories are subjective. Vivid childhood memories of hot asphalt on our young feet, cars with hot vinyl seats and houses with no air conditioners affect how we compare the past to today. And we aren’t exposed to all weather, especially us city dwellers who spend a lot of time indoors.

Pulling at our intuitions about cold weather to comment about climate change can be compelling. United States senator James Inhofe famously brought a snowball into the senate in 2015 to claim that if there’s cold weather then the climate can’t be warming.

While this was widely mocked at the time, these appeals do tug at our instincts to turn to our experiences to understand the world.

To get out of these local scales, we need to feed our intuitions some more input. So, data are important.

With data, we can inform and guide our intuitions and overcome our natural focus on the local scale. To be convinced the climate is warming, we need to watch the long-term trends and expect the wiggles.

And just like in places such as southern Australia where the climate is drying, we still expect some wet years, we still expect cold spells in a warming climate.

It is instinctual to downplay or doubt the idea the climate is getting warmer when you’re feeling cold right now. But next time, consider these four points.

Read more:
If you’re renting, chances are your home is cold. With power prices soaring, here’s what you can do to keep warm

Michael Grose receives funding from the National Environmental Science Program.

– ref. 4 ways to understand why Australia is so cold right now despite global warming – https://theconversation.com/4-ways-to-understand-why-australia-is-so-cold-right-now-despite-global-warming-184834

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Renee Adams, Professor of Finance, University of Oxford

The gender diversity of thought leadership in finance is lower than in most other academic fields, our research shows. Finance ranks 132nd out of 175 fields with a representation of only 10.3% women among its thought leaders. Yet these women outperform their male peers.

How did we measure this? The impact of an academic’s ideas can be quantified using academic citations – how often their work is referenced in research published by other academics. We consider thought leaders to be academics who have been ranked among the top 2% in their respective fields by citations in the Scopus database.

We found the percentage of female thought leaders in finance is lower than in economics and in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).
It’s surprising since finance is a younger field than economics and so might be expected to be less traditionally male-dominated. The field of academic finance was carved out of economics in the early 1940s.

Our evidence on thought leadership is consistent with other evidence that women are less represented in finance academia than in economics. This is true at every level, from incoming PhD students through to full professors.

We see the under-representation of women in finance both among academics and more broadly. A 2020 Deloitte report noted:

“All but six of 111 CEOs at the 107 largest US public financial institutions (including four with co-CEOs) are men.”

Read more:
Gender equity. The way things are going, we won’t reach true parity until the 22nd century

Why are so few women in finance?

The fact that finance is less gender-diverse than other maths-intensive fields suggests standard arguments about women’s preferences with respect to STEM subjects cannot explain their low representation in finance.

Country-level culture is also unlikely to explain women’s representation in finance. As our research shows, finance thought leadership is geographically concentrated. Only 20% of finance thought leaders are located outside the USA or UK.

Instead, we argue the culture of academic finance is less welcoming to women than it is to men. We provide two pieces of evidence for this argument.

First, we show that individual female thought leaders in finance have more impact than their male peers, as measured by citations per paper, their academic rank and a composite score of six citation metrics (total citations, H-index, Hm-index, citations of single, first and last-authored papers). This finding is especially striking given evidence that women’s research is less likely to be cited. Female thought leaders in finance also have relatively more impact than they do in economics or other STEM fields.

These results suggest the obstacles women face in finance are greater than in other fields. The individuals who overcome these barriers outperform their peers.

Second, we show that women’s beliefs about the level of innate talent needed to succeed in finance, instead of motivation and effort, are not correlated with women’s representation in finance thought leadership, but men’s beliefs are. These results are consistent with the idea that men’s beliefs represent a greater barrier to equality in thought leadership, role modelling and education in the “masculine” field of finance than in other fields.

Read more:
As women decide Australia’s new leaders, what is going on with academic leadership?

Lack of diversity is a handicap

The finance sector is a bedrock of the world economy. It’s the third-largest industry in Australia, accounting for 8% of economic output. The lack of diversity in thought leadership for such an important sector is problematic for several reasons.

Diversity of thought and innovation are linked. Lack of diversity means the finance industry may be less innovative than it could be.

The finance sector may also be less welcoming to women than it should be. The general public does not always embrace finance despite its importance. Stockmarket participation is low in some countries and demographic groups, as is financial literacy.

Trust in finance might be higher when finance professionals are more similar to members of the general population.

Read more:
Women are dropping out of economics, so men are running our economy

What can universities do about it?

Women are also less likely to enter the field of finance after graduating. They make up only 35% of MBA enrolments in Australia (41% in the USA). The absence of female thought leadership, role models and educators in finance may help explain women’s under-representation in MBA enrolment and in the finance sector.

To overcome the inequality of finance, the culture of finance academia must change. But culture cannot change on demand.

The leadership of academic finance associations and our universities should provide opportunities for introspection, reflection and discussion of these issues. We should start by discussing why academia seems to be focused primarily on producing more science, rather than better science.

Read more:
The push for ‘researcher entrepreneurs’ could be a step backward for gender equity

We should also acknowledge the role of gatekeepers and take steps to diminish their influence. Universities, academic associations and journals should increase the transparency of their operations. The process through which positions of power are filled, like those of university deans and journal editors, should be transparent. Opportunities for individuals to exercise their voice without repercussion should be provided.

All these organisations must demonstrate a commitment to unbiased decision-making as a core element of good governance. Only when the rules of the game are clear can there be a hope of changing the rules to level the playing field.

In the past, Renee Adams received funding from various research agencies for other research projects.

Jing Xu 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. Female finance leaders outperform their male peers, so why so few of them in academia and beyond? – https://theconversation.com/female-finance-leaders-outperform-their-male-peers-so-why-so-few-of-them-in-academia-and-beyond-178893

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

Australian shoppers are facing a crisis in the fresh-food aisles.

Iceberg lettuces that cost $2.80 a year ago have doubled, or tripled, in price. Brussel sprouts that cost $4 to $6 a kilogram are now $7 to $14. Beans that cost $5 to $6 a kilogram are now more than double – and five times as much in remote areas.

That’s if you can even find such produce. Supermarket shelves for leafy greens are often bare.

This is a strong hint as to why prices have risen so much. As well as growers facing higher input costs – in line with pressures pushing up food prices globally – these price hikes are being driven by lack of supply – with crops and stores wiped out by rain and floods in eastern Australia.

Read more:
Why is lettuce so expensive? Costs have shot up, and won’t return to where they were

The price hikes have led to calls for supermarkets to impose price caps to ensure shoppers can still afford to feed their families healthy food.

But price ceilings on goods or services rarely, if ever, work. Prices play an important role in allocating resources efficiently. They send a signal to both customers and suppliers. To arbitrarily reduce prices would only increase shortages – both now and in the longer term.

Supply, demand and market equilibrium

The laws of supply and demand are fundamental concepts in economics. The law of demand says buyers will demand less of an economic good the higher its price. The law of supply says sellers will supply more of a good the higher the price. There are some rare exceptions, but generally these laws describe all markets.

British economist Alfred Marshall was the first to illustrate the interaction of these two laws graphically, in his 1890 book Principles of Economics. Market equilibrium (balance) occurs at the price and quantity where demand equals supply.

If the quantity supplied falls, the market response is for prices to rise, achieving a new equilibrium. If the quantity supplied falls but prices remain the same, demand will outstrip supply, leading to shortages.

Fresh fruit and vegetables are particularly prone to significant price fluctuations because they are perishable and cannot be easily stored for a long time. This why seasonal price fluctuations are common.

Higher prices provide a signal both to consumers and producers. They tell consumers to buy less and switch to alternatives. They provide an incentive for producers to grow more – though this process is fairly slow given the time needed to grow and harvest fruit and vegetables.

But eventually, if the market is left to its own devices, prices will eventually return to “normal”, consistent with historical prices.

Capping the price, on the other hand, will benefit those lucky enough to grab supplies when they available. But it will likely reduce supply even further, by affecting the decision of producers unwilling to supply at below-market prices.

It could also lead to a “black market”, with some customers sourcing supplies by other means at higher uncapped prices.

Evidence from rent controls

The economic theory of price caps is well supported by empirical evidence. The best-known involve rent controls, which are used in US cities such as New York City and Los Angeles, and in European cities such as Stockholm, Berlin and Dublin.

Rent controls mean some are lucky enough to find an affordable apartment. Many others miss out – or engage in “deals” with landlords to get around the controls.
The most disadvantaged tend to lose out most since landlords can discriminate in favour of what they consider the “more desirable” tenants.

As Stanford University economist Rebecca Diamond has written:

While rent control appears to help current tenants in the short run, in the long run it decreases affordability, fuels gentrification, and creates negative spillovers on the surrounding neighborhood.

As with housing, so too with broccoli and cabbage.

Read more:
Why the NZ government is right to rule out rent controls as a housing crisis solution

We’ve seen this all before

So generally price caps are to be avoided.

If there are suspicions of wholesalers or retailers exploiting shortages, this is best handled by the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission. Though “price gouging” is generally not illegal, the consumer watchdog can prosecute companies for makes misleading claims about the reasons for price increases and for unconscionable conduct (in the case of extreme gouging for an essential good).

What else can be done? Only what consumers have always done, which is to substitute relatively cheaper goods for those becoming more expensive.

We’ve seen this before. Queensland’s floods in 2011 destroyed vast crops of bananas and watermelons, causing prices to skyrocket. Shoppers switched to other fruits. Banana farmers recovered. Prices dropped.

These high prices for lettuce and such now may be a shock, but they are not a sign of market failure requiring intervention. If we let the market do its thing, shortages will end and prices return to “normal” – at least until the next natural disaster.

Phil Lewis 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. Why capping food prices won’t work – and will actually make things worse – https://theconversation.com/why-capping-food-prices-wont-work-and-will-actually-make-things-worse-185492

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bruce Isaacs, Associate Professor, Film Studies, University of Sydney

A new Baz Luhrmann film caused a stir this year at Cannes – again.

In 2001, Moulin Rouge opened the grandest of all film festivals with the grandest of modern musical extravaganzas. The film garnered praise, disdain and bewilderment in equal measure, but marked the festival’s continuing love affair with the cinema of Lurhmann.

The next fanfare was Luhrmann’s quixotic imagining of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (2013), again opening the festival, again to a somewhat mixed critical response. Critics seemed to love and hate Gatsby (and Luhrmann) in equal measure.

But what do critics matter? I was at one of the early Australian screenings of The Great Gatsby in Dendy Newtown and was transfixed less by the film than the entire row of seats immediately in front of me comprised of teenagers in tuxedos, tails and the risqué couture of the 1920s flapper.

I marked the so-called era of excess with a shared bottle of wine; these high schoolers had imported an entire aesthetic mode of expression.

Gatsby took US$380 million worldwide on a US$100 million budget, generated a chart-topping contemporary soundtrack and prompted millions of spectators to reread Fitzgerald’s novel.

Read more:
The Great Gatsby: death by glitter or a thought-provoking spectacle?

The new Baz Luhrmann spectacular Elvis premiered in Cannes and opens this week in Australia.

The critical world is again anticipating what will come of Luhrmann’s signature self-indulgence, inflated budget and artistic grandiosity. Peter Bradshaw’s early review opens with: “Baz Luhrmann has given us another pointless explosion of super-spangly sparkles in celluloid form.”

To be honest, I agree with everything Bradshaw wishes to signify in his dismissive statement. The film is super-spangly (as was Elvis, as is the film’s director). It is explosive in its audio-visual kinetics. It is also, time and again, narratively unhinged.

And yet, midway into the first act, seeing that performance of Austin Butler’s Hayride, with the camera orchestrating shot reverse shot encounters between adoring, orgasmic women (and a young man singled out) and Elvis’s crotch (I kid you not), I realised, in spite of my reservations about an Elvis biopic years in the making, I had fallen in love with the film.

An auteur in Hollywood

There lies the critical rub and the tension that makes Luhrmann so fascinating as a contemporary film auteur. I valued the film precisely for what other critics have lambasted: its fluid, playful, elaborate pointlessness.

My question to Bradshaw and other like-minded critics of Elvis is: should cinema be pointed? Or, perhaps more provocatively, we could ask: must a work of art have a point?

Luhrmann is an iconoclast. His version of Elvis, Elvis’s “story” (for whatever that signifies) and Elvis’s music was never going to be a straight-ahead history.

But he is an iconoclast who nonetheless must make money for his investors.

These investors – the heart of the American studio filmmaking system – are fickle and changeable. Careers are made and extinguished on a single film. How, then, does iconoclasm subsist within an industry that enforces homogeneity to guarantee a financial return?

Read more:
To make films is human, to Baz Luhrmann, divine

Each of Luhrmann’s Hollywood films wishes to reconstruct history as audio-visual spectacle. Luhrmann’s films are the past in vibrant, saturated colour, flowing in Catherine Martin’s creative costume design. The films are anachronism in sound and music composition.

Luhrmann’s history is historical projection. These histories are his idiosyncratic fantasies.

This is precisely how Luhrmann sets about the task of making Elvis meaningful now.

He begins with a simple premise: the traditional biopic genre, strait-jacketed by our desire for fidelity to historical truth, is not adequate to the task of putting Elvis on a cinematic screen.

The genre is also not adequate to the task of turning Elvis into a financial commodity for export on screens, red carpets, music video montage pieces, fashion houses and digital streaming platforms.

Luhrmann’s reconstruction of the genre is, to use Bradshaw’s terminology, an aesthetic explosion.

An artistic triumph

The film is an artistic triumph because it is less about Elvis the historical figure than Elvis as a social, cultural, political and sexual phenomenon.

Luhrmann uses his mastery of film to take what could have been a flaccid history and make it into a full-blooded, euphoric, eroticised audio-visual spectacle.

Austin Butler’s chameleon-like turn is less a screen performance than an embodied imagining of what Elvis represents as a cultural signifier, realised in a glorious moment in which Luhrmann cuts between Butler’s and Elvis’ failing bodies in a 1977 performance of Unchained Melody.

I’m convinced Luhrmann’s only genuine fidelity in this film is to Elvis as a cross-cultural, historically fluid body: in all its eroticism, grandiosity and tragic disassembling.

Read more:
How Elvis permanently changed American pop culture

Bruce Isaacs 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. Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis is super-spangly, explosive, narratively unhinged – and an artistic triumph – https://theconversation.com/baz-luhrmanns-elvis-is-super-spangly-explosive-narratively-unhinged-and-an-artistic-triumph-184161

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Sussex, Fellow, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University

As Russia’s war in Ukraine becomes a quagmire of attrition, Western leaders are slowly coming to two realisations about Vladimir Putin’s intentions.

First, Russia’s war against Ukraine won’t be over soon, and is likely to grind on for the foreseeable future.

Second, it’s pointless to try to imagine a future in which relations with Moscow are characterised by anything other by mutual mistrust and hostility.

In spite of this, there is still the chance that Russia’s invasion falls off the international radar through a Western inability to deal with hard realities.

Putin’s war of expansion

In an interview with a German newspaper, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg estimated the war could take years, rather than months.

Patrick Sanders, the incoming chief of the British Army, has claimed the UK’s armed forces need to be oriented around fighting a ground war with Russia.

And after an awkwardly frosty hug with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, even French President Emmanuel Macron, whose calls to Putin have annoyed Kyiv and who previously warned Putin must not be humiliated, has voiced his unequivocal support for Ukraine.

These epiphanies are long overdue. There’s no point in dreaming up elaborate diplomatic “off ramps” for Putin when it’s abundantly clear he sees no need for them.

Doing so also denies Ukraine agency in determining how the war ends, and presupposes a post-conflict European security order can meet both Russian and Western requirements. As witnessed prior to Russia’s invasion on February 24, the Kremlin isn’t content with anything short of regaining something close to the geo-strategic footprint of the USSR.

Obsessed with territorial aggrandisement, and having cynically cultivated a fetish for militarism in Russian society, Vladimir Putin recently admitted as much when he compared himself to Peter the Great, noting “now it’s our turn to get our lands back”.

At the very least, Putin’s words should put to bed the vastly overstated claim that the enlargement of Western security structures somehow forced Putin to invade Ukraine. This is clearly a war of Russian expansion, not NATO expansion.

Yet some Western security policymakers and commentators remain incapable of letting go of victor’s guilt over how the fledgling Russian state was treated following the USSR’s collapse.

While such sentiments are to an extent defensible, the West’s strategic failings nonetheless pale in comparison to Putin’s long history of internal repression, political warfare against external foes, nuclear threats, and brutality against those whose continued independence irk him.

Putin waiting the West out

Another reason the West should avoid the temptation of hand-wringing is because now is the most dangerous time in Ukraine’s efforts to repel the Russian invasion.

By its own estimation, Ukraine’s forces are outgunned ten-to-one by Russian artillery in the Donbas region. However, Ukraine has no option but to keep fighting, both for national survival and because suing for peace now – given what we know about the barbarism inflicted on Ukrainians by Russian invaders – would mean a swift end for Zelenskyy’s government.

Having initially failed to capture Kyiv in a poorly conceived and executed dash for the capital, Russian forces have adopted their typical approach to offensive operations – massive unguided fires in both urban and rural environments. That curtain of bombardment allows its military to advance, albeit painfully slowly.

This suits Putin just fine, at least for the moment. He has no incentive to go to the negotiating table since the limited territory he has seized from Ukraine so far cannot be spun as a great victory either at home or abroad.

His military calculus is simple: to continue capturing territory and destroy as much of Ukraine’s infrastructure as possible.

It also dovetails with his strategic calculus, which is to simply wait the West out. Previously – in Chechnya, Georgia and Crimea – he has correctly anticipated that Western tolerance for protracted confrontation is low, and it can be counted on to de-escalate.

Will the invasion fall off the radar?

Yet although Western elites are gloomily coming to the understanding Putin cannot somehow be managed, there remains a significant danger the conflict falls off the international radar, or that Western leaders waver as the conflict drags on.

We can already see some of this happening: in the tendency of the Western media to grasp at straws over Putin’s reputed ill-health, and in Germany’s egregious vacillation over allowing heavy weapons destined for Ukraine to transit its territory.

For his part, Zelenskyy is acutely aware of this. It’s why he has maintained the pressure on European nations to match words with deeds.

It’s also why he now expects something in return for the popularity sugar hit European leaders get from photo opportunities after taking the increasingly well-worn path to Kyiv to meet him.

3 reasons to meet Ukraine’s military requests

Meeting Ukraine’s requests for heavy weapons and ammunition is in the interests of NATO members for three reasons.

1. It’s critical to show Putin that escalation comes with real costs: something Western leaders have shied away from for decades.

2. It’s increasingly likely neither Ukraine nor Russia will be happy with any eventual settlement to the war, and a “frozen” conflict leaves Russia the chance to try again in future. Ukraine’s armed forces have performed far above expectations in denying the Kremlin the chance to “win”, at least in terms of its original ambitions. But although Kyiv’s desire to recapture all its lost territory – including Crimea – is unsurprising, there’s no realistic prospect of that without military assistance far beyond its requests.

3. A third reason for the West to meet Ukrainian hardware needs concerns the credibility of NATO’s and the EU’s assertions they protect international order and shared values. No matter how the war ends, a profoundly damaged Ukraine will take decades to rebuild.

And while it’s currently fashionable for Western leaders to proclaim how much they are doing to help, the reality is they’re safely watching Ukraine fight a major power.

With that track record, it would be completely understandable for those in other nations that might need Western security assistance in future to have little confidence in obtaining much more beyond noble sentiments, and bare minimum support.

Matthew Sussex has received funding from the Australian Research Council, the Carnegie Foundation and various government agencies.

– ref. Russia’s Ukraine invasion won’t be over soon – and Putin is counting on the West’s short attention span – https://theconversation.com/russias-ukraine-invasion-wont-be-over-soon-and-putin-is-counting-on-the-wests-short-attention-span-185489

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

The secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Kathryn Campbell, has been replaced in a shake-up of federal departmental heads announced by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

The new secretary will be Jan Adams, who is presently ambassador to Japan and has previously served as ambassador to China. She was Australia’s ambassador for climate change when the now foreign minister, Penny Wong, was climate change minister in the Rudd government.

In the changes the government has brought in two people from outside the federal service. Three of the four new secretaries are women. When Scott Morrison sacked five secretaries in 2019, three were women.

The removal of Campbell has been widely anticipated. Before the election Wong questioned her sharply at Senate estimates. Campbell has been DFAT secretary less than a year. Formerly she served as secretary of the departments of social services and human services, and was embroiled in the Robodebt disaster.

Albanese said Campbell would “be taking up a senior appointment in the Defence portfolio in an AUKUS-related role”.

In the changes, Jenny Wilkinson, a deputy secretary at Treasury, will become head of the Finance Department. She is a former head of the Parliamentary Budget Office. Wilkinson replaces Rosemary Huxtable, who had indicated for some time she intended to retire.

The new Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water will be headed by David Fredericks, who shifts from his present position as secretary of the Department of Industry, Science and Resources.

Natalie James, a partner at Deloitte Australia, becomes secretary of the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations. She has had wide experience in public service and workplace relations, including being the Fair Work Ombudsman for the Commonwealth.

Jim Betts, who has worked in the NSW and Victorian public services, becomes secretary of the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts. He replaces Simon Atkinson, who was regarded by Labor as too close to the Coalition. Atkinson served as a ministerial adviser from 2013-16 and cabinet secretary from 2017-18.

In a farewell message to staff after the announcement Atkinson said: “It is critical that the secretary is the right fit to lead and provide advice and keep the department well connected to ministers.”

The appointment of Gordon de Brouwer as secretary for public sector reform, in a return to the public service, is further evidence of Albanese’s determination to re-invigorate the bureaucracy. De Brouwer will report to the minister for the public service, Katy Gallagher.

After the election Albanese appointed Glyn Davis as head of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. Part of Davis’s brief is to drive change in the service, which has been run down under the Coalition government.

Labor is committed to cutting the use of outside consultants, which reduced the role and capability of the public service. Both Davis and de Brouwer were members of the Thodey review of the service – the former government refused to take up many of its major recommendations that would have made the senior levels of the service more independent.

Albanese said a new secretary of the Industry Department would be announced soon.

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. Head of Foreign Affairs Kathryn Campbell ousted in public service shake-up – https://theconversation.com/head-of-foreign-affairs-kathryn-campbell-ousted-in-public-service-shake-up-185607

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Timo Rissanen, Associate professor, University of Technology Sydney

Today we make more clothing than ever before. And the driver for this is primarily economic, rather than human need. Over the past decade, the term “circular economy” has entered the fashion industry lexicon, wherein materials are made to be reused and recycled by design.

Yet we haven’t seen the same level of recycling in fashion as we have in other spaces – such as with plastic recycling, for instance. And this is mainly because clothing-to-clothing recycling is much more difficult.

The use of recycled polyester and cotton by brands such as H&M and Cotton On are key aspects of these companies’ sustainability initiatives – but the source of these recycled fibres usually isn’t clothing. Recycled polyester tends to come from plastic bottles, and recycled cotton is usually made from manufacturing waste.

The fact is most clothing is simply not designed to be recycled. Even when it is, the fashion industry lacks the kind of infrastructure needed to really embrace a circular economy model.

Why is recycling clothes difficult?

Recycling clothing isn’t like recycling paper, glass or metal. Clothes are endlessly variable and unpredictable. So they’re not ideal for recycling technologies, which require a steady and consistent source material.

Even a seemingly simple garment may contain multiple materials, with fibre blends such as cotton/polyester and cotton/elastane being common.

Different fibres have different capacities for recycling. Natural fibres such as wool or cotton can be recycled mechanically. In this process the fabric is shredded and re-spun into yarn, from which new fabric can be woven or knitted.

However, the fibres become shorter through the shredding process, resulting in a lower quality yarn and cloth. Recycled cotton is often mixed with virgin cotton to ensure a better quality yarn.

Most fabrics are also dyed with chemicals, which can have implications for recycling. If the original fabric is a mixture of many colours, the new yarn or fabric will likely need bleaching to be dyed a new colour.

A complex garment such as a lined jacket easily contains more than five different materials, as well as trims including buttons and zippers. If the goal of recycling is to arrive at a material as close to the original as possible, all the garment’s components and fibres would first need to be separated.

This requires labour and can be expensive. It’s often easier to shred the garment and turn it into a low-quality product, such as shoddy which is used for insulation.

À lire aussi :
To make our wardrobes sustainable, we must cut how many new clothes we buy by 75%

Industry progress and challenges

Companies such as BlockTexx and Evrnu have developed processes to recycle fibres from blended fabrics, though such recycled fibres aren’t yet widely available.

Through a proprietary technology, BlockTexx separates cellulose (present in both cotton and linen) and polyester from textile and clothing waste for new uses, including in new clothing. And Evrnu has developed a type of viscose made entirely from textile and clothing waste.

Spain-based company Recover meticulously sorts through different kinds of cotton textile waste to produce high quality, mechanically recycled, cotton fibre.

There’s also biological recycling. Fibre waste from the Rivcott cotton “gin” (or cotton engine) is composted to become fertiliser for a new cotton crop. The same is possible with natural fibres from worn-out clothing, after potentially toxic dyes and chemicals have been eliminated.

Synthetic fibres such as polyester and polyamide (nylon) can also be recycled mechanically and chemically. Chemical recycling through re-polymerisation (where the plastic fibre is melted) is an attractive option, since the quality of the original fibre can be maintained.

In theory it’s possible to use polyester clothing as the source for this. But in practice the source is usually bottles. This is because clothing is usually “contaminated” with other materials such as buttons and zippers, and separating these is too labour intensive.

The plastic problem

Almost all recycled polyester in clothing today comes from recycled plastic bottles, rather than previous polyester clothing. This is significant when you consider polyester accounts for more than 60% of all fibre use.

Given the rapid increase in the production of synthetic fibres, and the as-yet-unknown impact of microplastics (which were documented in human placentas last year) – the question remains whether clothing should be made from biologically incompatible materials at all.

Polyester clothes, regardless of fibre sources, contribute to microplastic pollution by shedding fibres when worn and laundered.

A new generation of synthetic fibres from renewable sources (recyclable and also biodegradable) offers a path forward. For instance, the Kintra fibre is made from corn.

Reduce and reuse before you recycle

There’s plenty of evidence that reducing the consumption of clothing by wearing items longer and buying second-hand is preferable to purchasing recycled fibre clothes.

But even second-hand fashion isn’t without problems when you consider the scale and pace of clothing production today.

Liz Ricketts of the US-based OR Foundation, a charity focused on sustainable fashion, paints a gruesome picture of the Kantamanto market in Ghana, where much of the world’s secondhand clothing ends up (including from Australia).

One path forward is for companies to take responsibility for products at their end of life. US fashion brand Eileen Fisher is a pioneer on this front.

The company has purchased garments back from customers since 2009. These are cleaned and sorted, and mostly resold under the Eileen Fisher Renew brand.

Garments too damaged for resale are given to a dedicated design team, which redesigns them to be sold under the Eileen Fisher Resewn collection. Off-cuts from this process are captured and turned into textiles for further use.

À lire aussi :
Time to make fast fashion a problem for its makers, not charities

Timo Rissanen is a founding board member of the Union of Concerned Researchers in Fashion.

– ref. Brands are leaning on ‘recycled’ clothes to meet sustainability goals. How are they made? And why is recycling them further so hard? – https://theconversation.com/brands-are-leaning-on-recycled-clothes-to-meet-sustainability-goals-how-are-they-made-and-why-is-recycling-them-further-so-hard-184406

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bill Skinner, Postdoctoral research associate, University of Adelaide

It’s commonly assumed Australia’s farmers and cities are divided over climate issues. This is not true. After all, farmers are on the front line and face the realities of our shifting climate on a daily basis.

In regional Australia, our research has found many farmers are already responding to climate change threats and finding ways to adapt.

Wine grape growers are among those who are responding fastest. That’s because their crop is extremely sensitive to weather and climatic shifts. Growers have had to learn quickly how to adapt to safeguard their industry. Think pruning for better canopy management, growing cover crops to keep the ground cooler and promote soil health, and reducing how much water they use in irrigation.

Establishing a vineyard takes a long time – up to five years until the vines produce a full yield. Grape growers have to take a medium to long term perspective to farming, weighing up forecasts about climate change and market trends a decade or more in advance. Successful vignerons recognise the need to work together in a coordinated way to achieve positive outcomes. Maintaining local agency is crucial, and relinquishing this can open up new risks.

Australia’s broader farming community will have to draw on similar adaptations – preparing for less rainfall in some areas, or finding ways to capture the enormous but less frequent rain bursts predicted for other areas.

Why have wine grape growers moved early?

Wine grape growers have had to act early because wine has enormous market differentiation based on variety. In turn, choice of varieties depends heavily on water and soil.

During the 1990s and 2000s, Australian wine exports boomed. The lion’s share of the cheap and cheerful Aussie wines bound for supermarket shelves around the world came from grapes from extensive irrigated vineyards throughout the Murray-Darling Basin, where grapes are grown relatively cheaply with lots of sunshine and lots of water. But the days of water abundance are no longer guaranteed.

Our research in South Australia’s Langhorne Creek wine region has found climate change is having most impact in respect to water.

Historically, this region has relied on groundwater or surface irrigation from seasonal floods along local watercourses. But as groundwater suffered from over-extraction, the aquifers became saltier.

In response, farmers sought to minimise reliance on groundwater. Some vineyards even installed desalination plants to make groundwater usable again. Community leaders spearheaded a push to cut their own allocations and seek supply from nearby Lake Alexandrina, which the Murray and other rivers empty into.

Read more:
Australia’s farming future: Tasmania

Then came the 2001–2009 Millennium Drought, which led to the shallow lake beginning to dry up through lack of inflow. The crisis of these drought years is seared into regional memory. Without a clear end in sight, many began to wonder if the region had a future.

The community backed a new private-public pipeline drawing directly from the Murray. When the new pipeline opened in 2009, it gave Langhorne Creek an important boost to water security. But it did so at the expense of tying its future directly to that of the Murray Darling Basin.

Now, farming in Langhorne Creek is at the mercy of everything that happens upstream. After two years of La Niña rains, there’s plenty of water in the system. For the time being, things are good – but farmers know better than most that good times don’t last.

In response to the broader shifts, many grape growers have increased plantings of southern Mediterranean varieties such as tempranillo or vermentino, better suited to hotter and drier conditions than traditional mainstays like shiraz and cabernet sauvignon grapes.

To date, Langhorne Creek offers an excellent example of how a strong community can act effectively in the face of environmental threat. As the region becomes integrated into the wider basin, there will be new challenges in navigating basin-wide management policies, a broadening bureaucratisation of decision making, and falling public trust in basin management.

While the technological fix of a new pipeline has helped grape growers overcome an immediate water supply issue, it does not defeat broader climate risk. What it does show is the need for forward thinking. The task for current and future farmers is to remain vigilant in confronting new climate risks, and responding through strong and coordinated local action and political cooperation.

Read more:
Developing a taste for Sagrantino: climate change and Australia’s wine industry

Bill Skinner receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Douglas Bardsley has received funding from the South Australian and federal governments, including the Australian Research Council.

Georgina Drew receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Grape growers are adapting to climate shifts early – and their knowledge can help other farmers – https://theconversation.com/grape-growers-are-adapting-to-climate-shifts-early-and-their-knowledge-can-help-other-farmers-183636

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amy Chan, Senior Clinical Research Fellow, University of Auckland

Modern medical science has made remarkable progress in the treatment of asthma. Inhalers containing steroids are particularly effective in preventing an asthma attack. But getting people to take these preventive medicines long-term remains a challenge.

Because asthma is an ongoing condition, many people struggle to take their medication regularly, due to busy schedules or because the medication may not seem to work right away.

One potential solution lies in digital technologies that can reduce the risks associated with not taking medication as prescribed. These technologies include text message reminders, web-based apps, interactive voice response systems and smart inhalers.

The benefits could be considerable, given that asthma is one of the commonest health problems. It affects as many as 339 million people worldwide. New Zealand has one of the highest rates of asthma, with one in seven children and one in eight adults diagnosed.

Asthma attacks are also the commonest cause of days off school and work for people with the condition. In the UK it’s estimated someone has a potentially life-threatening asthma attack every ten seconds, with similar data in New Zealand. Asthma mortality is highest for Māori and Pacific peoples, with rates 4.3 and 3.2 times higher than for other groups.

While there are inhalers that work well on immediate symptoms, preventive medicines are key for long-term asthma control. These need be taken as prescribed, often once or twice a day. What’s known as “non-adherence” to such regimes is a major health problem and can lead to more symptoms and attacks.

Medication adherence strategies

Achieving adherence is therefore very important to reduce the risk of death. With increasing investment in digital technologies designed to improve health, the research focus with asthma is on improving how existing medications are used and therefore improving outcomes.

Research in New Zealand has shown “smart” inhalers – devices that monitor when doses are taken and can provide reminders and feedback – improved medication adherence by 50% and improved control in children with asthma.

Read more:
Time in hospital sets back tens of thousands of children’s learning each year, but targeted support can help them catch up

But we still don’t know whether digital technologies in general can improve the situation for all people with asthma and, even if they do, whether this will have a positive impact on asthma symptoms or attacks.

To learn more, we looked at all the randomised controlled trials of digital technologies and their impact on medication adherence in asthma. We found 40 studies around the world, with a collective sample base of more than 15,000 adults and children with asthma.

By pooling the data from all the separate trials, we were able to measure whether people who used digital technologies to improve their medication regime had better adherence – and fewer asthma symptoms and attacks – than those who did not.

How digital technologies can help

In a nutshell, digital technologies can work to improve asthma medication taking.

On average, 15% more people took their medication as prescribed when they had the technology, compared to those who did not (who took 45% of the prescribed amount of their medication).

This 15% increase can have significant impacts on people’s asthma management, as more regular medication use can reduce symptoms and cut the risk of attacks.

Read more:
Listening to asthma and COPD: An AI-powered wearable could monitor respiratory health

Looking at all the studies, people with access to the digital technology had fewer asthma symptoms and, on average, half the risk of asthma attacks compared with people who did not get the technology. These benefits could reduce the risk of asthma-related deaths.

We also found that people who had the technology had better quality of life and lung function, although the effect on lung function was small and may be of limited clinical importance.

Everyday asthma care

For people with asthma who find it hard to take their medication regularly, digital technologies are likely to help improve their medication taking, which in turn can reduce asthma symptoms and attacks.

But we need more research into how these technologies can be integrated into routine asthma care. The available studies don’t tell us enough about the effects on time off work or school, the cost-to-benefit ratio, or whether there are any harmful outcomes.

Read more:
Passive smoking, synthetic bedding and gas heating in homes show the strongest links to asthma

Also, digital technologies may not work for everyone. While research shows users generally accept the technologies, people didn’t actually finish the full study in about 25% of the studies we examined.

Some technologies may also work better than others. We found smart inhalers and text message systems seemed better for improving medication taking than other technology types. But the small number of studies means we can’t be completely certain these technologies definitely work better.

Future tech potential

Digital technologies are constantly evolving and are likely to play an even bigger role in future asthma care. Devices like smart watches can monitor changes in a person’s physiology in real time.

These changes could be used to predict a change in a person’s risk of asthma attacks when put together with information from the environment such as changes in air temperature and humidity.

This risk prediction is the subject of current research funded by the Auckland Medical Research Foundation and Health Research Council.

If proven to work, we could see a substantial change in how asthma is managed. Users might one day be able to monitor their asthma control status simply by looking at their phones.

Amy Chan has received asthma research funding from the Health Research Council, Asthma UK, and the University of Auckland. She is the Auckland Medical Research Foundation Senior Research Fellow. She has provided subject matter expertise to Active Healthcare Ltd, and is a Board member of Asthma NZ.

– ref. How digital tech can help people with asthma manage their meds and reduce the risk of attacks – https://theconversation.com/how-digital-tech-can-help-people-with-asthma-manage-their-meds-and-reduce-the-risk-of-attacks-185193

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Harry Hobbs, Senior lecturer, University of Technology Sydney

In the landmark 1973 decision of Roe v Wade, the US Supreme Court held that the right to privacy provided by the 14th amendment to the US Constitution protects a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion. Last month, a leaked draft of Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization revealed that a majority of the Supreme Court is poised to overturn that decision.

How did it come to this? In part, it’s a result of the extreme politicisation of the US judiciary, with judges routinely appointed based on their political views. Many people voted for former US President Donald Trump because he promised to appoint conservative judges. Many others voted for President Joe Biden because he promised to appoint judges that would protect Roe and other progressive laws.

Especially prominent in leading the charge against Roe v Wade and the politicisation of the US courts has been the Federalist Society, a libertarian-conservative legal movement. Founded in 1982, the society has played a major role in “deliberately, diligently shifting the country’s judiciary to the right”. As well as training and socialising conservative law students, lawyers and professors, the society helps appoint young conservatives to prominent positions in government and on the courts.

The society’s success has been startling. Drawing on an expansive understanding of free speech, it has been influential in weakening laws that limit how much can be spent on elections (the 2020 US election cost more than $14 billion). It has made gun control more difficult, almost led to the overthrow of Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law, and helped gut voting rights protections. Six of the nine judges on the US Supreme Court are current or former members of the Federalist Society.

Fortunately, political views are not relevant for appointment to the judiciary in Australia. But we must be vigilant: some politicians are publicly agitating for the creation of a similar legal movement here.

In 2020, a majority of the High Court of Australia held that Aboriginal Australians are not “aliens” under the Constitution – even if they were not born in Australia and are not citizens. In the Love; Thoms case, the Court explained that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ longstanding and deep connection to Country means they cannot be considered as not belonging to the Australian community – even if they don’t hold citizenship.

Read more:
Indigenous people cannot be aliens in their own land. Why challenging this fact (again) is so concerning

In reaching this decision, the court extended the land-ownership principles of the famous Mabo case to determine who is a member of an Aboriginal group.

Given that few Aboriginal Australians are non-citizens facing deportation, the decision has limited practical consequences. But it infuriated many conservatives in and outside government. Peter Dutton claimed the decision was a stunning example of judicial activism, while IPA research fellow Morgan Begg called it the “most radical judgment in Australian history”. Former LNP senator John Stone even exclaimed that parliament should impeach the four judges in the majority.

Former Senator Amanda Stoker was the most forthright. In a paper presented to the conservative Samuel Griffith Society, the assistant minister to the attorney-general (as she then was) praised the work of the US Federalist Society. Drawing on their example, Stoker argued High Court judges should be selected on the basis of ideology with the aim of overturning Love; Thoms in the same way that Republican politicians have stacked the US Supreme court hoping for an overturning of the decision in Roe v Wade.

Stoker may have lost her Senate spot, but she might succeed in this endeavour. In 2020 and 2021, two justices of the High Court who found in favour of Daniel Love and Brendan Thoms retired, and were duly replaced by Morrison government appointees. Several months later, the federal government petitioned the High Court to overturn Love; Thoms. If the government is successful, some descendants of Australia’s First Nations peoples could be declared “aliens” in the country their people have occupied for more than 60,000 years.

Read more:
Two High Court of Australia judges will be named soon – unlike Amy Coney Barrett, we know nothing about them

It is not only our highest court that has seen political interference. Although the US Supreme Court receives the most attention, the Federalist Society has been successful at securing conservative judges at all levels of America’s court hierarchy. Similar moves to stack the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) in Australia have been exposed by a recent Senate inquiry.

The AAT reviews government decisions. Members must be – and be seen to be – independent. However, over the past few years, concerns have been raised about the appointment process. In March this year, the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee found that the process of selecting AAT members had been inappropriately influenced by personal connections and political affiliations. Up to 40% of those appointed in the last three years by the Morrison government had political backgrounds. The committee recommended the current AAT be disbanded and a new system established as a matter of urgency.

The Albanese government should adopt this recommendation. It should also make sure that appointments to all Australian courts and tribunals are made without reference to political ideology. The last thing we need is to follow the US example.

Harry Hobbs is a member of the ALP.

George Newhouse is a member of the ALP, a director of the National Justice Project and a Company Secretary and member of the McKell Foundation.

– ref. Has US-style politicisation of the courts come to Australia? – https://theconversation.com/has-us-style-politicisation-of-the-courts-come-to-australia-185384

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samantha Thomas, Professor of Public Health, Deakin University

Netball Australia CEO Kelly Ryan said last week she would consider accepting gambling sponsorship to help with Netball Australia’s debts.

Gambling sponsorships were “lucrative” for sports, she reasoned, adding netball had to “put itself a little bit more outside its comfort zone” in terms of financial partnerships.

While betting firms sponsor large female sporting codes in the United States, this is the first time a high profile women’s sport in Australia has publicly discussed accepting gambling sponsorship.

A social media backlash followed. Parents and fans expressed fears about the impact of exposure to commercial marketing for gambling via a code largely marketed to young girls.

While such partnerships may be financially lucrative for sporting codes, there are also hidden costs.

Gambling is an addictive product with a range of significant health and social costs for individuals, their families and communities. This includes children – with extensive research showing how gambling advertising in sport normalises gambling for young people.

Read more:
Sports betting: how in-play betting features could be leading to harmful gambling – new research

Caught in the middle

As gambling brands attempt to market products to a relatively limited market, children are caught in the middle.

Thanks to a range of sophisticated and innovative marketing strategies – including the use of celebrity endorsements – children can name multiple gambling brands, and perceive gambling as a normal activity for sports fans. Some believe the deals provided by gambling companies, including free bets and money back offers, mean gambling has little risk attached to it.

Concern is mounting about the impact of gambling marketing in sport on young people. A joint commission report by The Lancet, WHO and UNICEF recently highlighted gambling as a commercial harm that threatens child health and well-being, calling it an “unaddressed public health challenge for children”.

No one likes gambling ads

Surveys show gambling advertising in sport is unpopular and worrying for sporting fans.

Even sporting leaders recognise its deeply problematic impact on young people. This week, a survey by The Age newspaper of AFL club bosses reported 11 out of 16 chief executives or chairs felt gambling advertising in sport was excessive. One said the AFL had “prostituted themselves” to the gambling companies.

Now it’s girls’ and women’s turn

So why are female sporting codes now following the well-trodden and heavily criticised path of male sporting codes – turning to an industry that poses an unnecessary risk to the health and well-being of fans?

To date, evidence about gambling marketing in sport has largely centred on the impact on boys and young men. But this does not mean girls and young women are immune to its impacts.

Gambling companies are increasingly targeting women to expand their customer base and profits. They have begun sponsoring television programs such as Married at First Sight, that are popular with a female audience.

They even offer information about how to bet on your pregnancy – including predictions of birth date, weight and “gender reveals”.

Following the tobacco and alcohol playbook

The feminisation of gambling marketing and products should not be a surprise for policymakers, given the historical playbook of the tobacco and alcohol industries.

These industries spent millions of dollars aligning their products with the values and social practices of women – including sponsoring women’s sporting events – to appeal to new markets, and to legitimise the use of these products for women.

Our research shows gambling – including on sport – is becoming increasingly normalised and socially accepted for young women.

Women we interviewed felt gambling was commonly portrayed as a form of entertainment. Women also said they had signed up to betting accounts after seeing marketing for gambling companies, and that online companies had largely eliminated the stigma associated with going to a male-dominated betting venue.

Read more:
Bingo seems like harmless fun – but higher stakes and new technology are making it more dangerous

Time for governments to step up

Public health action from governments on this issue has been almost non-existent.

Public education is still largely based on the idea of personal responsibility, which can reinforce the normalisation of gambling by portraying gambling as a common leisure activity that can be kept in control with informed choices. Campaigns generally focus on young men and betting, and often portray women in stereotypical roles such as disgruntled girlfriends.

An audit of public education programs about gambling harms found they couldn’t match the scale or intensity of sports betting companies’ marketing.

Sporting codes have repeatedly demonstrated they are unable to make decisions about gambling partnerships in the best interests of young people. Regulations should be implemented to prevent young people from being exposed to gambling marketing.

Our recent research with young people shows they agree with this view. They support comprehensive curbs on gambling marketing, including an untangling of the relationship between gambling and sport and protection from harm.

In the words of one 14-year-old female sports fan:

I’m a bit disappointed and sad that gambling is such a big part of sport now. I would say that, like, just do it because, watch it and do it because you love (sport) and don’t try to bring gambling into it. It doesn’t have to be about that, it doesn’t have to be about money.

Read more:
Gambling: what happens in the brain when we get hooked – and how to regain control

Samantha Thomas has received funding for gambling research from the Australian Research Council Discovery Grant Scheme, the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation, and the New South Wales Office of Responsible Gambling. She has received travel expenses for gambling speaking engagements from the European Union, Beat the Odds Wales, the Office of Gaming and Racing ACT, and the Royal College of Psychiatry Wales. She is a member of the Responsible Gambling Advisory Board for LotteryWest, and is a member of the board of the International Confederation of ATOD Research Associations (ICARA). She does not receive any financial compensation for these roles.

Hannah Pitt has received funding from the Australian Research Council Discovery Grant Scheme, the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation, the New South Wales Office of Responsible Gambling, VicHealth, and Deakin University.

Simone McCarthy has been employed on research projects that are funded by the Australian Research Council and the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation.

– ref. As Netball Australia eyes betting sponsorship, women and girls are at increased risk of gambling harm – https://theconversation.com/as-netball-australia-eyes-betting-sponsorship-women-and-girls-are-at-increased-risk-of-gambling-harm-185407

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joel Cullin, Lecturer in Social Work, The University of Queensland

An extensive ABC investigation has revealed confronting stories about children being sexually abused in state care, and other failings of Australia’s child protection systems.

This might all seem tragically familiar. We’ve seen dozens of inquiries, reports and reform efforts in child protection in Australia over the past three decades, yet terrible things still happen to children known to child protection agencies.

How does this keep happening?

I have studied systems and how they function for a long time. My focus is on how we can use “systems thinking” to understand the repeating patterns seen in our efforts to improve mental health and child protection systems – and how we can break these patterns.

So often we try to “fix” problems with a care system by targeting only one small part of it. Or we try to change many parts at once, without a coherent approach based on how systems work, how they maintain stability and how they change. A systems thinking approach looks holistically at problems to identify, in this case, how and why children end up in state care and what could have been done at much earlier stages to prevent that.

After so many inquiries and reform efforts, maybe we should start using real systems ideas to try to achieve lasting change.

Read more:
The workforce in the child protection system needs urgent reform

Looking at child protection through a systems lens

If we look at child protection through a systems lens, we first see there are many layers to consider.

Harm through child abuse and neglect is often misrepresented as solely a problem of individual parents’ behaviour – but it’s much more complicated than that.

The huge overrepresentation of Indigenous children and families in our child protection systems is stark evidence of this.

If we really want to understand this area, we need to consider the disadvantage and trauma experienced by many families (often across generations). Many areas of government policy have a part to play.

For instance, we need welfare policies that support disadvantaged parents financially to reduce the risk of neglect (a common reason given for child removal). Neglect is a complex problem, often inextricably linked with poverty.

We also need education and training policies that help disadvantaged parents get and retain work. We need health policies that ensure disadvantaged parents and children can easily see doctors – including specialists – and access allied and mental health support where needed.

Shoring up the front lines

Second, we can see the front line workers of our child protection agencies are crucial. Any reform effort needs to start there.

The work child protection workers do is vastly complex, challenging and vital. It’s among society’s most important jobs; it requires expertise and sustained resources.

Yet staff turnover remains very high. Many newly graduated and inexperienced staff populate the front lines, working with high stress and limited support.

Reducing attrition rates requires workers to be well trained and well paid, operating under positive working conditions where excellence is rewarded.

The primary resource of our child protection agencies is these workers’ ability to communicate, to form good relationships, to appraise risk and to make complex decisions.

Every time we lose a good worker, we lose their experience – and what might have become their expertise if we had better supported them. Then someone new comes in, to face the same huge challenges.

We probably wouldn’t be as accepting of these human resource problems if it was our health system.

A high degree of ‘otherness’ in child protection

Many think what happens in this area is not directly relevant to their lives. It happens to other kinds of people.

But we are talking about children, and, often, struggling and unsupported parents. There’s a lot of blame in child protection, especially when it hits the news. Society blames parents, and the workers who have “failed” to prevent harm to children or to protect them.

This raises the question of whether a “protection” ethos is the right one.

Decades of evidence about what helps foster healthy development for children shows healthy attachment to adult carers – who are themselves healthy, well-resourced and socially connected – is key.

That’s why we need a front line approach that supports families (not just mothers; there is a disproportionate focus on women in child protection).

Instead, we often revert to a reactive, “child rescue” focus, when evidence suggests having the right support and care would allow many families to care safely for their children and avoid removal altogether.

A reactive ethos, enacted by overburdened workers, sees too many children removed from birth families, in some cases spending their childhood in numerous foster placements or residential care facilities.

Politics plays a role

Finally, a systems view reveals politics plays a role. A scandal is followed by promises to make things better, always within a usually unacknowledged political context.

Just a few hours after the latest ABC story broke, the federal attorney-general said he was “deeply concerned” by these horrific findings.

We shall wait and see what the latest government’s response will be.

The ABC story raises the suggestion of a royal commission. We are getting used to those in Australia. Royal commission or not, if we want to really change a “system”, we need a true systems approach.

That requires beginning with what we know about the conditions required for healthy child development, and “building” the system backwards from there.

Real change may take decades, given the generational patterns at work. And there will likely always be a need for some children to not live with their birth families.

But how much evidence do we need that our present approach isn’t working?

Read more:
First Nations children are still being removed at disproportionate rates. Cultural assumptions about parenting need to change

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.

– ref. How does this keep happening? After so many child protection inquiries and reform efforts, it’s time for a new approach – https://theconversation.com/how-does-this-keep-happening-after-so-many-child-protection-inquiries-and-reform-efforts-its-time-for-a-new-approach-185412

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Birt, Associate Professor of Computer Games and Associate Dean Engagement, Bond University

The streaming wars are heating up. In March, Disney delayed the release date of Obi-Wan Kenobi to May 27 to coincide with the launch of Netflix’s top show, Stranger Things. This on the back of Google’s announcement YouTube Shorts had matched TikTok’s 1.5 billion subscribers in the short-form video market.

Facing increased competition, falling subscriber numbers and loss of content, Netflix and TikTok are having to diversify. And for this they’re turning to games. With more than three billion players worldwide, and an estimated market share of US$200 billion, the gaming industry is both popular and lucrative.

Netflix introduced mobile gaming last year for all its subscribers. This included two notable Stranger Things tie-ins. Meanwhile, TikTok has offered games to select users since 2019 and seems very likely to expand these offerings.

Retaining existing subscribers

Both Netflix and TikTok have transformed the entertainment business.

They appear diametrically opposed on the surface. The former gets revenue from subscriptions, and spends millions of dollars on licensing or creating content. The latter makes money by linking viewers to advertisers, with the help of streaming “influencers” who have mastered the art of short-form video.

However, the two platforms share some key characteristics. They both:

1. deliver video content via the internet
2. aim to constantly grow their user base
3. benefit from unique and original content
4. collect user data and use it to improve their services, and
5. face considerable and rising competition from other companies and entertainment media.

Many well-loved films and television series are departing Netflix for competitor platforms. At the same time, TikTok is also losing short-form video influencers to other platforms. Both platforms are seeking new strategies for subscriber retention, growth, and original content.

This is where gaming comes in. According to one consumer insights report, 79% of the world’s online population engages with games in some form. And millennials rate gaming as either the most popular, or second-most popular entertainment activity – behind watching other people play games on video platforms.

Why is gaming an attractive space?

Games typically afford longer engagement periods than series or movies. This is due to the psychological principles of motivation that underpin most gameplay.

People invested in games will often seek out additional narrative (or “lore”) in the form of shows and movies. Alternatively, audiences invested in shows may also look to video games to provide alternative narratives and opportunities for world-building. So shows lead customers to games, and games keep them engaged between season releases.

This technique of telling a story across multiple platforms and formats is known as “transmedia storytelling” and has been used with great success by broadcast, social media and gaming companies. This is what platforms are banking on to keep audiences locked into their entertainment ecosystems.

Content creation has boomed since the pandemic, and younger audiences are spending more time than ever watching user-generated content online. They have been particularly tuned into games such as Crab Game (a fan-made version of the popular Netflix show Squid Game) – which also has millions of view hours on the streaming service Twitch.

The rise of Minecraft as a popular “modding” game (in which players can collectively transform the game space through their own modifications) has also helped video streaming and subscription services. Minecraft-related videos have been streamed more than one trillion times on YouTube.

Transmedia success provides additional avenues for companies looking to leverage their licensed or original copyrighted content.

Intellectual property and data analytics

We know games promote attention, motivation, emotion and socialising among players.

Companies such as the game-hosting platform Steam have demonstrated user data can influence the creation of new content by game developers. In fact, this is a market advantage that Netflix and TikTok have over rivals.

For example, one could easily imagine that a character who is popular in a game, as revealed through gaming data, would also be more likely to feature in an upcoming show based on that game.

Netflix and TikTok can lose big

When we speak of the streaming wars and greater competition, it’s not a level playing field. There are crucial differences between Netflix and TikTok, and other players such as Disney+, Amazon Prime, Apple TV and YouTube.

Netflix is in the streaming business, and TikTok in the video-hosting industry. On the other hand, based on revenue Disney is in the theme park and toy business, Amazon the online sales industry, Apple the computing and phone industry, and Google in the search and advertising industry.

For these companies, streaming and video hosting is a small side business that provides useful data to feed a greater machine. So in the “streaming wars” they don’t have as much to lose, as they can run these side businesses at a loss.

Netflix and TikTok aren’t so lucky. By turning to games, they’re grabbing onto a lifeline they really need.

Read more:
How Netflix affects what we watch and who we are — and it’s not just the algorithm

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

– ref. Levelling up: why Netflix and TikTok are turning to gaming to secure their future – https://theconversation.com/levelling-up-why-netflix-and-tiktok-are-turning-to-gaming-to-secure-their-future-183990

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert Phiddian, Professor of English, Flinders University

There are three, not entirely compatible, things to say about how cartoonists are coping with the recent change of government in Canberra.

First, there is the usual mild distress at having lost a pet set of ministers who seem to get uglier and more recognisable with age. Cartoonists can be like chooks returning to an empty feeder: the cartoonists’ Robert Menzies “stayed on” long after his retirement in 1966; so too did Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser well into the 1980s, and Bob Hawke and Paul Keating into the later ’90s.

Bill Leak’s classic whinge in The Australian in late 2007 sums up the problem. Every cartoonist, he said, had the right to feel

extremely disappointed, depressed or even downright angry at what Rudd and his cohorts have given us to work with […].

The cause of his disappointment? “Handsome men and attractive women make life hell for cartoonists, and the Rudd ministry is chock-a-block with them.”

Although time works grotesque wonders, that’s usually how a ministry looks when it steps out of the shadows. Add to that the debilitating instinct to give the not-yet-guilty party the benefit of the doubt.

Cathy Wilcox, for one, suspended judgement of the new government for a honeymoon moment, and instead turned her ire on the broader media, which seem utterly at a loss without the Coalition:

Interestingly, Bill Leak singled out one new minister with potential in 2007: >Anthony Albanese, whose open mouth looks like a cemetery after an earthquake, should prove valuable as long as he continues to resist calls to visit a dentist.

Perhaps “Albo” took notes: for many of the long, last months of the Gillard and second Rudd ministries, he was afflicted with braces.

The Albanese transformation was completed by his carb-free, grog-reduced 2021, resulting in the almost photoshopped presentability depicted in David Pope’s cartoon at the top of this article.

The grotesques are still those from the previous cast of characters — “ScoMo the Clown” and Kooyong Josh, with their pork barrels, swept away by the teal wave.
That’s because where there is real satirical ordure, it attaches largely to the mess left by the departing government, as demonstrated in this typically grotesque image by David Rowe.

The second thing to say is that temporary immunity for a new leadership team is disappearing very rapidly among cartoonists at the News Corp papers, where Johannes Leak, Mark Knight and Warren Brown had already warmed-up with a few anti-Albanese visual tropes. Leak was probably the first to nail down a really first-class negative “Albo” caricature, while the far more ligne claire style of Knight and Brown has struggled with the subtleties of the “new new” Labor PM.

Our study of election campaign cartoons suggests that, even in the most pro-Coalition newspapers, the gathering chaos in the Morrison-led campaign prompted some harsh cartooning.

Brown was unimpressed by a Liberal leader who had come to self-identify as a bulldozer. Leak regularly deployed his pink-shirted, pony-tailed “spin doctor” to pillory the all-image-and-no-substance Morrison mob, just as he did to smirk at how much better Labor did in the polls when Albanese was in isolation with COVID.

So, after the easy bit of making his debut on the international stage, Albanese had better get used to seeing himself in the papers looking like this:

As he and his government take wear and tear, he will be joined by the more prominent ministers – even debonair ones like Penny Wong and Jim Chalmers.

Meanwhile, the third thing to say about post-election cartooning is a sad sign of the sectarian times. There is now very little dissonance between the cartoonists and the editorial line of their newspapers. Perhaps it lingers only at The Age – where Michael Leunig’s much-reduced role has made space for new talents and new ideas to shine – and via the genius of David Rowe at the Australian Financial Review.

There used to be more of this, particularly when cartoonists were often broadly to the left of the corporate lines their newspapers tread. But we do not mean this as a simple left-wing complaint. Guardian readers are no more likely to have their convictions challenged by First Dog on the Moon than are Australian readers by Spooner or Leak.

Read more:
The Australian helped political cartoonists sharpen their edge

We are far from suggesting cartoonists are bending to editorial direction. That simply doesn’t happen, because it is well recognised among editors that cartoonists have to be free to be funny.

But the editorial cultures of newsrooms – assailed as they are by a fraying business model derived from the print age – seem to be getting tighter and narrower. They appear to be drawing cartoonists into line, either by selecting cartoonists who fit the polemical bent of the paper or by projecting a sort of team spirit in precarious financial times.

Either way, readers seem less likely to be surprised by the box of graphic mayhem in the paper than to get a blast of confirmation bias. We can be confident that cartoonists are devious enough jesters to overcome this situation if alerted to it. Not least because they are just as much forward-looking and -thinking as they are conscious of the past.

Our thanks to Lucien Leon, who collaborated with us on this article.

Robert Phiddian receives funding from The Australian Research Council and the State Library of New South Wales Ross Steele AM Fellowship.

Richard Scully receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. From ScoMo to Albo: how a new cast of characters poses a challenge for cartoonists – https://theconversation.com/from-scomo-to-albo-how-a-new-cast-of-characters-poses-a-challenge-for-cartoonists-184545

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Evangeline Mantzioris, Program Director of Nutrition and Food Sciences, Accredited Practising Dietitian, University of South Australia

Most of you will have noticed hosting a dinner party is harder than it used to be. One friend is gluten-free, another is dairy-free, one can’t eat onion and two more are vegetarian. Are food intolerances increasing? Or do we just hear more about them now?

What are food intolerances?

Food intolerances are reactions to eating foods, in normal quantities, that do not involve the immune system.

They are very different to food allergies which is when the body mounts an immune response to a food that is either ingested or even touches the skin. This immune response is very quick (within 20 minutes to two hours) and releases chemicals that can affect the person’s breathing, gastrointestinal tract and heart.

Common food allergies include eggs, peanuts, wheat and shellfish. Allergies differ from intolerances in that the most severe allergies cause anaphylaxis: severe allergic reactions that are life-threatening.

The mechanisms behind food intolerances can vary greatly. One common mechanism is when people lack enzymes that are needed for breaking down nutrients.

In one of the most common food intolerances, lactose intolerance, people lack the enzyme “lactase” which is used to break down this carbohydrate naturally found in milk and some other dairy products. Lactose is broken down into glucose and galactose in the small intestine, and then absorbed.

Read more:
Everything you need to know about coeliac disease (and whether you really have it)

Without lactase, lactose stays in the intestine, where it draws water in from the blood supply to dilute the amount of lactose. Initially this leads to diarrhoea, and then as the lactose enters the large intestine it is fermented by the bacteria in our gut, which results in gas causing abdominal bloating, pain and discomfort.

Other food intolerances due to the lack of enzymes include intolerances to histamine and caffeine. Some people are unable to break down histamine, which is found in red wine, strong and blue cheeses, tuna, tomatoes and pork products.

This can lead to symptoms such as itching, red flushing on the skin, abdominal pain, nausea, dizziness, headaches and migraines. Similarly, people can also have a sensitivity to caffeine (found in coffee and cocoa).

Food intolerances are also different from auto-immune responses, such as in coeliac disease. In this case, people develop an auto-immune response in the small intestine to a protein in wheat called gluten. The auto-immune response also damages the villi, the small finger-like structures that absorb all the nutrients.

Many people who experience gastrointestinal symptoms in reaction to wheat products assume they have coeliac disease. However, they may have a sensitivity to fructan, a type of carbohydrate in wheat. Fructan is a naturally fermentable carbohydrate and a “FODMAP” – which stands for Fermentable Oligo- Di- Monosacharides and Polyols, a group of nutrients that can cause sensitivity.

Read more:
The FODMAP diet is everywhere, but researchers warn it’s not for weight loss

Like in the case of lactose (which is also a FODMAP carbohydrate), some people are unable to absorb large amounts of fructans (also present in onions and garlic). Like lactose, this causes diarrhoea, and then the bacteria in the large intestine ferment the fructan, producing gas, abdominal pain and discomfort.

So are food intolerances increasing?

While it may seem as if food intolerances are increasing, we have no good evidence this is really the case. Data is lacking on actual numbers, perhaps as food intolerances generally do not lead to the requirement to take medications or seek urgent medical treatment.

A 2009 report suggests about 20% of the population has one or more food intolerances, with no apparent change since 1994. A more recent survey from 2020 of self-reported intolerances in internet users indicated about 25% of the population.

The perceived increase may reflect many other factors. Some people may self-diagnose a food intolerance from well-intended but misleading health advice from family and friends.

Additionally, people may incorrectly attribute medical symptoms to foods they have eaten. We also have an increased ability to self-diagnose, thanks to Dr Google. In other cases dietary requests may reflect ethical choices about food.

We all know from attending social events with food how often we need to provide our dietary requirements. This is also contributing to normalising food intolerances, compared to even a decade ago. Previously people would have suffered in silence or simply avoided consuming their problematic trigger foods at events.

Another factor could be the greater proportion of people of different ethnicities living in Australia, some of whom are genetically more likely to have an intolerance.

If you suspect you have a food intolerance it’s best to get diagnosed by a doctor, to ensure you are not overlooking a potentially concerning medical problem. Also you may be needlessly avoiding a particular food group and missing out on essential nutrients required for optimal health.

Read more:
Explainer: what is gluten intolerance?

Evangeline Mantzioris is affiliated with Alliance for Research in Nutrition, Exercise and Activity (ARENA) at the University of South Australia. Evangeline Mantzioris has received funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, and has been appointed to the National Health and Medical Research Council Dietary Guideline Expert Committee.

– ref. Why does everyone seem to have food intolerances these days? – https://theconversation.com/why-does-everyone-seem-to-have-food-intolerances-these-days-183224

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Benjamin Brown, Postdoctoral research associate, Charles Darwin University

Mangroves ring the shores of many of Indonesia’s more than 17,000 islands. But in the most populated areas, the world’s largest mangrove forests have been steadily whittled away, and with them, the ability to store blue carbon.

As the world’s fourth-most populous nation has grown, pressure on the mangroves has too. More than 756,000 hectares of mangroves have been cleared and turned into brackish ponds to farm water shrimp and milkfish.

Every year for the past three decades, another 19,000 hectares has been ripped out for aquaculture and increasingly, for oil palm plantations. As of 2015, an estimated 40% of the country’s mangroves had been degraded or lost.

Is this another predictable bad news story about the environment? No. This is a good news story. That’s because Indonesia’s government is, rising to the challenge of conserving its mangroves – and restoring lost forests.

Government investment in mangroves is rising and the political will is in place. Indonesia’s ambitious goal is to restore almost all of what’s been lost, rehabilitating 600,000 hectares of mangroves by 2024.

Why have Indonesia’s mangroves been hard hit?

In a 2012 interview, former Indonesian forestry official Eko Warsito explained why his country’s mangroves were disappearing:

More than 50% of Indonesia’s population lives in coastal areas, and most of them are poor. An ordinary plot of mangroves is worth $84 a hectare. But if it’s cleared and planted with oil palms, it can be worth more than $20,000 a hectare.

Unfortunately, this difference in perceived value has seen mangroves degraded or replaced. You can glimpse the current state of Indonesia’s 3.3 million hectares of mangrove area in the map below, which was released last year by Indonesia’s environment and forestry ministry.

Mangroves are broadly in good condition in the provinces of Papua and West Papua. But in the more populated areas – especially around the densely populated island of Java – mangroves have been largely deforested and degraded.

Recent analysis by the World Bank puts the value of mangrove ecosystems at between A$21,000 to $70,000 per hectare per year. Similarly, a 2020 cost-benefit analysis of mangrove conservation versus conversion to shrimp aquaculture in Indonesia’s Papua province estimated the direct and indirect value of mangroves at A$34,000 per hectare per year.

But these valuations are heavily influenced by the role mangroves play in providing ecosystem services. Without these services, mangroves are worth two orders of magnitude less, at around A$340 per hectare.

Their real value lies in their ability to store large amounts of carbon, averaging almost 4000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents per hectare. Until now, however, policy bottlenecks at the national level have stopped Indonesia from investing in better mangrove management and producing new revenue streams from stemming mangrove losses.

Indonesia’s mangroves have suffered because of this disconnect between their real value and government policies and institutions. Over 20 institutions have some level of responsibility for mangrove management in Indonesia. It’s no wonder their agendas often conflict.

Read more:
Indonesia’s vast mangroves are a treasure worth saving

But progress is being made. Two years ago, President Joko Widodo added mangroves to the mandate of the country’s peatland restoration agency, after its success at restoring damaged peatlands. The goal for mangroves is to restore 600,000 hectares of mangroves by 2024.

There are alternatives to aquaculture

You might think it’s too hard to restore mangroves once they’ve been turned into shrimp farms. Previously, this has been true, with an over-reliance on simply planting more seedlings rather than tackling the harder work of social and economic reliance on former mangrove habitat. In response, Indonesia’s government has mapped around 77,000 hectares of the best restoration candidate areas across 300 villages in Sumatra and Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo), working in full collaboration with coastal villagers.

To create alternatives to aquaculture, Indonesia’s national farmer field school program will expand to include hundreds of coastal villages. These coastal field schools help local villages improve their management of the coasts and develop alternative sources of income.

These include learning to use Nypah palms alongside mangroves, to allow villagers to harvest the valuable sugar from the sap. This species is the only palm considered a true mangrove. They can produce 800,000 litres of sap per hectare per year, forming a sustainable commodity base for organic palm sugar production as well as bio-ethanol.

Other options include encouraging production of honey, gluten-free flour, tea, juice, jam, and cosmetics. For some villages, eco-tourism could be an option, or shifting to more sustainable aquaculture.

What’s next?

Indonesia’s government is drafting a new mangrove policy, focused on balancing mangrove protection, sustainable use and restoration. We’re already seeing welcome realignment between the nation’s ministries.

These efforts are being funded by a $A573 million loan from the World Bank and a $A27 million grant for the policy reforms and investment in coastal livelihoods. This loan will be repaid with credits from blue carbon. Indonesia’s government is seeking more financial support from other governments and multilateral organisations to scale up their mangrove management to a national scale.

Indonesia’s work to turn around the fate of their ailing mangroves will be shown on the world stage at the G20 summit in Bali in November. By then, there will be a public dashboard to represent progress captured by field-based and satellite monitoring.

Read more:
Can blue carbon help Indonesia meets its 2030 emission targets?

World Bank natural resources expert André Rodrigues de Aquino contributed to the research underlying this article

Benjamin Brown consults for the World Bank. This article does not necessarily benefit the World Bank, as the loan arrangement is already finalized.

Satyawan Pudyatmoko 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. After decades of loss, the world’s largest mangrove forests are set for a comeback – https://theconversation.com/after-decades-of-loss-the-worlds-largest-mangrove-forests-are-set-for-a-comeback-182951

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

A crisis, as the saying has it, combines danger and opportunity. The dangers of the current electricity crisis are obvious. The opportunity it presents is to end to the failed experiment of the national electricity market.

Having suspended the market last week, the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) is now directing generators when to supply electricity. It’s also paying them lavish compensation for the financial shortfalls they suffer as a result.

These emergency measures are unsustainable. But they provide the starting point for a restructured electricity supply industry – one that’s better balanced between markets and planning.

Now’s the time to create a national grid that serves the Australian public and meets the challenges of a warming world. A new government-owned and operated body should take control of Australia’s electricity system. And decarbonising the grid, while ensuring reliable and affordable energy, should be its core business.

A failed experiment

The National Electricity Market is where energy generators and retailers trade electricity. It was established about 25 years ago after technological advances allowed electricity grids to be connected across all states except Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

Before the market began, each state operated its own electricity industry with only limited interconnection. Back then, electricity companies were publicly owned. Most were also fully integrated, with one company responsible for the entire electricity supply chain, from generation to distribution and billing.

The national grid’s arrival coincided with the peak of enthusiasm for micro-economic reform. So, instead of a unified national enterprise, state utilities were broken up into separate parts – generation, transmission, distribution and retail – with the intention they would be privatised then engage in market competition.

Driving the trend towards privatisation was a widespread view that state-owned electricity enterprises had not performed well – particularly in investing to expand access to electricity.

Reflecting this view, the industry became fully or mostly privatised in Victoria, South Australia and New South Wales. Other states opened electricity generation and retail to competition.

Read more:
What’s a grid, anyway? Making sense of the complex beast that is Australia’s electricity network

The market was created just as the global need to reduce carbon emissions was being recognised. Despite this, the climate problem was not considered in the design of the market, which was based on a mix of coal and gas plants.

Until AEMO suspended the market last week, bids from generators determined the wholesale price of electricity at five-minute intervals. Retailers supplied electricity to consumers at prices that shielded them from the fluctuations in wholesale prices.

Prices typically sat around A$50 per megawatt hour. But in periods of very high electricity demand, the price can reach the market “price cap”, currently set at $15,100 per megawatt hour.

Meanwhile, electricity distribution – getting the power to homes and businesses using poles, wires and other infrastructure – was handed to a set of regulated monopolies, which were awarded high rates of return on low-risk assets.

What went wrong

The designers of the national electricity market hoped it would lead to better efficiency and more rational investment decisions. The market also aimed to lower consumer power bills and promote competitive retail offers tailored to individual needs. But none of this happened.

In fact, consumer electricity prices – after falling for the better part of a century in real terms under public ownership – rose dramatically.

This was partly due to high returns to private electricity distribution companies, and the need for infrastructure investment to improve reliability. A proliferation of highly paid marketers, managers and financiers were also required to run the market.

Over time, the failures of the original design led to an alphabet soup of agencies needed to run the industry. They include AEMO, AEMC, AER, ARENA and a bunch of state-level regulators. Finally, the Turnbull government created the misnamed Energy Security Board (ESB), which sat on top of the whole process.

All this delayed the transition from an old and unreliable coal-based system to its necessary replacement by a combination of solar, wind and storage.

Now, this rickety system has failed to deal with a major supply crisis. The temptation is to slap on another patch and restore “normal” market conditions. The ESB’s proposal to pay coal and gas generators to be on standby if needed is one such quick fix. But much more comprehensive reform is needed.

Read more:
Why including coal in a new ‘capacity mechanism’ will make Australia’s energy crisis worse

Where to from here?

A combination of public and private investment is now needed to secure affordable electricity and transition to renewable energy generation.

The plethora of bodies regulating the market should be replaced by a single government agency that buys wholesale electricity from generators. This organisation could then sell electricity directly to customers or supply it to electricity retailers.

The emergency purchasing arrangements AEMO currently has in place should be replaced by “power purchase agreements”. These are long-term contracts between a buyer and a generator to purchase energy, in which prices, availability and reliability are set.

Within those terms, generators that consistently produce electricity at very low prices are the first to be called on. This dispatch method, known as merit order, has been shown in Germany to lead to lower prices for consumers.

At the same time, the Australian electricity grid should be returned to government ownership and operation. And its guiding principle should be moving to a decarbonised energy system, rather than the “net market benefit” test AEMO currently uses when deciding where to approve investment.

Labor’s Rewiring the Nation policy provides a starting point for reform. It should invest directly in the expanded transmission network needed to support the transition to renewable energy.

Australian energy policy took a wrong turn in the 1990s. It’s time to get back on course.

Read more:
In an energy crisis, every watt counts. So yes, turning off your dishwasher can make a difference

John Quiggin is a former Member of the Climate Change Authority

– ref. The national electricity market is a failed 1990s experiment. It’s time the grid returned to public hands – https://theconversation.com/the-national-electricity-market-is-a-failed-1990s-experiment-its-time-the-grid-returned-to-public-hands-185418

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Luke Beck, Associate Professor of Constitutional Law, Monash University

New federal Education Minister Jason Clare has announced a change to the National School Chaplaincy Program to allow schools to “choose” between having a religious chaplain and having a professionally qualified well-being worker.

The opposition has criticised the announcement as effectively meaning “the end of many school chaplains”. So what’s the fuss about?

Read more:
After years of COVID, fires and floods, kids’ well-being now depends on better support

The Howard Coalition government started the chaplaincy program in 2006. It has continued, with some variations, ever since.

A “project agreement” signed by federal, state and territory education ministers governs the chaplaincy program. The states and territories receive federal funding to pay for chaplains in public schools.

What do school chaplains do?

Chaplains are not counsellors in the psychologist sense. They are more like youth workers in the social worker sense.

The project agreement says chaplains are responsible for providing “pastoral care services” and strategies that support the “well-being of the school community”. It gives examples of activities like “co-ordinating volunteering activities and support, breakfast clubs, lunchtime activities, excursions, school incursions, and parent/carer workshops”.

These activities look non-religious. Any qualified youth worker, regardless of their religion, could deliver them. However, the National School Chaplaincy Association says:

“While chaplains must have underlying qualifications in youth work, community work or equivalent, school chaplaincy is religious in nature.”

Read more:
School chaplains may be cheaper than psychologists. But we don’t have enough evidence of their impact

How are school chaplains hired?

The project agreement sets two key criteria for the appointment of chaplains:

1. all chaplains must have minimum qualifications such as a Certificate IV in Youth Work

2. all chaplains must be “recognised through formal ordination, commissioning, recognised religious qualifications or endorsement by a recognised or accepted religious institution”.

Rather than being school employees like teachers or front-office staff, chaplains are employed by third-party providers that have contracts with schools. One provider is a Christian organisation called Generate, which says its mission is:

“To bring God’s love, hope, and good news to children, young people, and families.”

Job advertisements for school chaplains usually require applicants to be Christians. For example, to apply for school chaplaincy positions advertised through Generate, this organisation says “you need to have a committed Christian faith”.

Schools working with Generate have effectively decided they will not have Jewish, Muslim, Hindu or atheist youth workers working with students. Generate is currently advertising positions at more than 20 public schools, including schools in highly multicultural areas such as western Sydney.

There is no public information about the processes public schools use to choose the school’s favoured religion for the purpose of hiring a chaplain.

Isn’t religious discrimination unlawful?

You might think refusing to hire someone for a job in a public school simply because that person doesn’t belong to a particular religion sounds like religious discrimination. Religious discrimination in employment is unlawful under anti-discrimination laws in every state and territory, except New South Wales and South Australia.

A number of state anti-discrimination commissioners have expressed concern about the National Schools Chaplaincy Program.

In 2020, Victoria’s Human Rights Commission told a Victorian MP: “we agree that the program may be in breach of [Victoria’s] Equal Opportunity Act 2010”.

In 2021, in response to advocacy by the Rationalist Society of Australia, Western Australia’s Equal Opportunity Commission said it was concerned that restricting youth worker/chaplain positions to religious people was “prima facie religious conviction discrimination” under Western Australia’s Equal Opportunity Act 1984. In 2020, Queensland’s Human Rights Commissioner said the practice involved “potential contraventions of the [Qld Anti-Discrimination] Act”.

A 2019 religious discrimination case in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal settled before the tribunal could rule on whether limiting youth worker/chaplain jobs in public schools to Christians breached state anti-discrimination laws.

Read more:
Is Australia a secular country? It depends what you mean

What exactly did the minister announce?

Last Friday, Clare announced:

“The government will open up the program to give schools the option to choose either a chaplain or a professionally qualified student welfare officer.”

The fact it was the new minister’s first big decision suggests the issue is important to him. There’s no good reason to force a public school to hire youth workers on the basis of religion. It’s why the ACT pulled out of the school chaplains program in 2019.

However, there are three key problems with the minister’s announcement.

First, all chaplains are already required to have professional qualifications. There’s nothing new about that.

Second, the minister has not explained how a public school – which schools legislation says are secular in character – could ever justify “choosing” that Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and atheist youth workers should not be eligible for a pastoral care job at the school.

The third and most practical problem is that this announced change won’t actually enable schools to hire youth workers without reference to the person’s religious affiliation.

Existing third-party providers like Generate are in the business of hiring only Christians. Unless new providers come onto the scene, public schools will have little choice but to continue to engage existing providers who will continue to hire only Christians.

Read more:
School chaplaincy debate ignores what ‘secular’ actually is

What’s the solution?

The minister said he will work with his state and territory counterparts to revise the project agreement so a new system is in place for the 2023 school year.

If the nation’s education ministers want to make sure school youth workers/chaplains are hired based on merit and not on religion, they could make one simple change: get rid of outsourcing.

Requiring schools to hire directly rather than through third-party providers will ensure job ads don’t include selection criteria about a person’s religion. Some public schools might well be happy to allow their third-party provider to refuse to hire Jewish, Muslim and atheist youth workers. However, a public school is rather unlikely to itself ever put out an ad like that.

Getting rid of outsourcing would also mean the public money now used to fund the administration costs of third-party providers can be redirected to putting more youth workers in more schools.

Luke Beck is a member of the Australian Labor Party and is on the board of the Rationalist Society of Australia Inc. This article reflects only his personal views.

– ref. To give schools real choice about secular school chaplains, latest change needs to go further – https://theconversation.com/to-give-schools-real-choice-about-secular-school-chaplains-latest-change-needs-to-go-further-185487

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Markus Wagner, Associate Professor of Law and Director of the UOW Transnational Law and Policy Centre, University of Wollongong

After decades of conflict that has neutered its work, the World Trade Organization looks to be back in business.

Its highest decision-making body – a conference of ministers from the organisation’s 164 member nations – has just met for the first time since 2017.

None of what the ministerial conference (dubbed MC12 due to being the 12th such meeting) agreed on was particularly groundbreaking. But the fact there was agreement at all – on areas such as agriculture, fishing, intellectual property, e-commerce and food insecurity – was itself a milestone.

The question is what happens now, with considerable challenges ahead for the WTO and its role in promoting and protecting a global rules-based trading system.

Fighting for relevance

The WTO’s job is to be the forum for multilateral rule-making, to observe the implementation of these trade rules, and to settle disputes among members.

In most situations, decisions must be made by consensus. This means a single detractor can scuttle initiatives supported by the rest of the WTO’s membership.

This has proved particularly problematic for the WTO’s rule-making function, which has largely been comatose for two decades, since negotiations on reducing trade barriers ground to a standstill at the ill-fated Doha Round launched in 2001.

Particularly damaging to the WTO has been the hostility of the US. Past administrations, especially the Trump administration, stymied the WTO’s dispute-settlement function by blocking the appointment and reappointment of judges to its appeal court (known as the Appellate Body). By 2019, there were not enough judges to hear appeals, leaving disputes in limbo.

The WTO has also been criticised for having few to no answers to the world’s most pressing issues: how to craft modern trade rules that support climate action and sustainability.

The rise of economic nationalism and unilateralism has increased trade friction making the WTO look increasingly irrelevant.

Reaching agreement

Given this, the ministerial conference held in Geneva last week delivered welcome agreements on several sometimes long and strongly contested areas.

It agreed on limiting government subsidies for harmful fishing operations in an attempt to slow the depletion of rapidly declining fish stocks. This agreement will aid in curbing food insecurity and increase the sustainability of certain fish species.

Importantly, it is the first WTO treaty with environmental protection and sustainability as its objective.

Read more:
We still need a vaccine patent waiver, but not the one on offer at the World Trade Organization meeting

Read more:
Putting an end to billions in fishing subsidies could improve fish stocks and ocean health

It agreed to relax intellectual property rules for COVID-19 vaccines.

Countries such as South Africa have been pushing for a waiver from provisions in the Agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights so they can produce cheaper generic versions of vaccines. The impact should be limited, given vaccine supply is now enough to meet demand, but the concession may serve as a blueprint for the future.

It agreed to extend the moratorium on customs duties on “electronic transmissions” first agreed to in 1988.

It agreed to co-operate to resolve issues to do with food insecurity. With Russia’s war on Ukraine driving up food prices, some countries have restricted certain food exports or are subsidising the price of food from domestic farmers.

It also agreed on reforming the WTO dispute settlement process, committing members – including the US – to “conduct discussions” to arrive at a “fully and well-functioning dispute settlement system accessible to all Members by 2024”.

Such soft language is a far cry from reinstating the Appellate Body. It was likely the only way to bring the US on board.

But fundamental differences remain

The ministerial conference is only the first step. It will be difficult – and take time – for WTO members to reach a compromise on many important issues.

Compromise is needed between the policy space governments demand for themselves and effective international trade rules.

For example, the US and its allies have been pushing for tightening the rules on China’s state-owned enterprises and industrial subsidies. China has showed strong resistance to any new rules it views as being against its interests.

Another issue is support measures adopted during the pandemic. Some governments understandably adopted policies to support domestic businesses in a time of crisis. But some of these measures are arguably against the WTO’s rules to eliminate trade distortions.

These points are symbolic of the larger disagreements between WTO members, with economic nationalism and unilateralism presenting a fundamental challenge to the organisation’s reason for being.

Examples abound. There are the US tariffs on steel and aluminium on national security grounds. China’s trade sanctions against Australia on products such as wine, coal, lobster, barley and beef. China’s Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law and the European Union’s Anti-Coercion Instrument allow these governments to retaliate against any foreign actions they deem to be unfair.

Read more:
Why have Canada and Australia taken such a different approach to China?

A common feature of these instruments or actions is governments taking the law into their own hands, ignoring the WTO’s rule book and its dispute resolution mechanisms.

To overcome these existential challenges, the multilateral trading system will need strong and sustained commitment from member governments.

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

– ref. World Trade Organization steps back from the brink of irrelevance – but it’s not fixed yet – https://theconversation.com/world-trade-organization-steps-back-from-the-brink-of-irrelevance-but-its-not-fixed-yet-185373

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ari Mattes, Lecturer in Communications and Media, University of Notre Dame Australia

Back to June again, after the disruption of the last couple of years, and the twin festivals of light – Vivid and the Sydney Film Festival – once again galvanise the city.

Here are my picks for best films from among the 40 or so I managed to catch.

Tchaikovsky’s Wife

Tchaikovsky’s Wife, written and directed by Russian auteur Kirill Serebrennikov, is a spellbinding exploration of an individual’s idealistic obsession with greatness.

The film follows Antonina Miliukova (a wonderfully understated Alyona Mikhailova) as she meets and then decides she wants to marry celebrated composer Tchaikovsky (Odin Lund Biron). Tchaikovsky agrees to marry her, mainly, the film implies, as a beard covering up his sexuality and to access her proposed dowry.

He quickly tires of her – she’s annoying, clingy, doesn’t understand or fit into his Bohemian lifestyle – and demands a separation. But she refuses to let go, and much of the film involves following Antonina’s gruelling refusal to give up on her deluded belief in the fidelity and splendour of her marriage.

It is both incredibly sad and incredibly funny, a tale of an idiot whose naïve refusal to disbelieve in her love is as touching as it is infuriating. But by the end of the film, all traces of humour are gone – Antonina has had three children with her lawyer Nikolai (Miron Fedorov), all of whom have died in the orphanage to which she abandoned them. The whole thing culminates in a staggering, surreal dance sequence, the virtuosity of the production crew on full display.

Watching a film like Tchaikovsky’s Wife at the cinema is a genuine delight. It is replete with beautifully staged period details capturing the mania of 19th century Europe. I am sure this will hold up as one of the masterpieces of the 21st century.

Fire of Love

Similarly worth seeing on a big screen, Fire of Love is a documentary following the work and lives of Katia and Maurice Krafft, French husband and wife volcanologists.

Writer-director Sara Dosa skillfully foregrounds the contrast in temperament of the two researchers without undermining the seriousness of their research into volcanoes. Maurice appears at times like a media-savvy entertainer, almost a charlatan, in contrast with his sober, serious wife. This worked for the couple, Dosa points out, both personally and in their division of labour, with Maurice making their films and doing most of the speaking tours, and Katia writing up and publishing their research.

Fire of Love plays incredibly well as a documentary. Miranda July’s narration is surprisingly restrained and the amazing footage of volcanoes captured by the couple on 16mm film blazes across the screen. The assembly of archival interview material is similarly first rate.

The enthusiasm the Kraffts have for volcanoes – and for each other – at all times underpins the film, lending it its energy, up to the tragic (and romantic) moment of the pair’s death, side by side, under the ashes of Mount Unzen in Japan in 1991.

The Passengers of the Night

Mikhaël Hers’ The Passengers of the Night is unapologetically sentimental with a degree of schmaltziness, I’m sure, bound to put off some viewers. But I loved it.

The narrative follows single mother Elisabeth (Charlotte Gainsboug, perfect as usual) as she takes on a job vetting calls for a late night talkback radio show to support herself, teenage son Matthias (Quito Rayon Richter) and daughter Judith (Megan Northam). Their family dynamic shifts when Elisabeth brings home charming drug addict waif Talulah (Noée Abita).

The film’s nostalgic recreation of 1980s Paris is punctuated by carefully observed (and at times genuinely touching) moments of connection between mother, son, daughter and friend. The blend of drama and comedy works so well because of Hers’ light touch, and the whole thing is refreshingly non-polemical (the current cinema of the Anglosphere could learn a lot).

It is certainly a fantasy – a fantasy of family, friends, and resilience, of Parisian romance, of the 1980s – and, like the most effective fantasies, sweeps us out of the present into a moment that may have never been, but is nevertheless pleasurable to imagine once was – or could have been.

Hinterland

Hinterland, directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky, is an impressive film on all counts. It is visually magnificent, with its deliberate recreation of a German expressionist aesthetic working seamlessly with its engrossing narrative.

Peter Perg (Murathan Muslu), a battle-scarred soldier returning to Vienna following the second world war, resumes his occupation as a detective to track down a serial killer murdering ex-soldiers in some of the most gruesome ways you’ll see at the movies. Various clues point him back towards his memories of the war – and an ultimate reckoning with his frailty.

The tone is grim and unrelenting, but everything is so stylish, the actors are so charismatic – Muslu offers one of the most commanding performances in recent cinema – and the detective narrative so compelling that the movie passes by in a flash.

Hinterland works as both a homage to the Golden Age of European cinema and a gripping serial killer thriller. It’s a splendid film, best seen on the biggest screen you can find, and continues Ruzowitzky’s legacy of making big budget Euro blockbusters.

The Forgiven

Sometimes John Michael McDonagh’s work fails to hit the mark – it can appear pretentious in its attempts at authenticity, in its deliberate political incorrectness and geezer-esque humour. This is certainly not the case with The Forgiven.

This is a near perfect film (marred by an imperfect ending), both a gruelling revenge and redemption film in the style of Calvary and a study – and critique – of the continued excesses of the Western elite in one of the former colonial outposts of Empire, Morocco.

Most of the film takes place during a party at affluent Richard Galloway’s (Matt Smith) villa-cum-pleasure palace in the High Atlas Mountains. When alcoholic grump David (Ralph Fiennes) and his wife Jo (Jessica Chastain) run over a local boy on their way to the party, David is forced to set off on a ritual journey involving his return to the boy’s home to help bury the body, while Jo stays behind at the party – and parties!

Read more:
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The contrast between Fiennes’ development from antisocial curmudgeon to empathetic humanist might appear too neat on paper (with whiffs of colonialism about it – the Arab body is good only for the redemption of the white master), but it is so skilfully rendered by McDonagh (and Fiennes) that it packs an emotional wallop for the viewer.

The Forgiven has all of McDonagh’s signature traits – gallows humour, lots of drinking, and a Catholic commitment to the possibilities of redemption in spite (or because) of the horrors of life. But its stark structure in which the earnestness of David’s journey is savagely contrasted with the bourgeois decadence of the party makes it more effective than his earlier films.

The Best of the Rest

There were several other films that could replace any from the list above.

The astonishing documentary Into the Ice, for example, featuring breathtaking footage of scientist Alun Hubbard as he abseils into the moulins in Greenland, or the Danish period drama Godland, stunningly shot on celluloid film following a priest’s frost-bitten journey across Iceland.

Day After… written and directed by Kamar Ahmad Simon is a striking picaresque documentary-fictional hybrid, following passengers on a paddle-steamer travelling from Chaka to Khulna in Bangladesh.

The Spanish horror thriller Piggy is one of the best of the genre I’ve seen and Inu-Oh, a bizarre anime rock opera, shows director Masaaki Yuasa to be one of the most original voices working in the medium today.

The only two disappointments were Unrest and Elvis. The premise of Unrest is excellent – in the late 19th century in Switzerland, we follow the work of clock makers as revolution brews – but its treatment is so dull it’s painful to watch. Elvis is similarly hampered by banal treatment, surprising given director Baz Luhrmann’s usual flair, and is almost sunk by a painful and irritatingly knowing performance from Tom Hanks as the Colonel, Elvis’ cut-throat manager.

One of the pleasant tragedies of most film festivals is that one can never see everything one wants to see, and some of the major films that I missed include Close, the winner of the Sydney Film Prize, Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness that won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, and Julia Davis’ crowd-pleaser Nude Tuesday. Given their international success, these films are sure to be released to theatres soon.

Ari Mattes 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. The 5 best films from the 2022 Sydney Film Festival – https://theconversation.com/the-5-best-films-from-the-2022-sydney-film-festival-185382

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mike Lee, Associate Professor of Marketing, University of Auckland

Aotearoa New Zealand will enjoy a new official public holiday on June 24, with the country marking Matariki – the start of the Māori New Year. But with it comes the temptation for businesses to use the day to drive sales.

Some Māori have already expressed concern that businesses were positioning themselves to market Matariki as a shopping event.

On the back of those concerns, Skye Kimura, chief executive of Māori cultural marketing and communications agency Tātou, launched a campaign called “Matariki is not for sale”. “No one wants to see a Matariki Big Mac,” she argued.

But those trying to defend Matariki from mass commercialisation could be fighting a difficult battle.

Few public holidays, either in New Zealand and elsewhere, have been immune to commercial interests. In the United States, for example, businesses are facing criticism for attempting to make money from Juneteenth, a holiday to celebrate the emancipation of slaves.

Human tendency to mark the change

One of the difficulties facing critics of the commercialisation of public holidays is that they may be fighting deep habits born out of capitalism and human nature.

A lot of our special occasions are structured around various parts of the year and changes in the pattern of life. The earliest pagan rituals were about the change in seasons and to mark what was different from one period of life to the next.

Read more:
Australia Day, Invasion Day, Survival Day: a long history of celebration and contestation

From a social and possibly evolutionary perspective, we are already primed to do something different from our day-to-day activities to mark the significant changes we see around us.

When we have these seasonal celebrations, it doesn’t take much of a nudge for retailers to say, hey, people are looking to mark the change and shopping is a really good way to enact that transition between two phases – an “out with old, in with the new” message.

Shopping to celebrate is what we do

Each year is already punctuated with several cultural celebrations that have, over time, become shopping events. The most classic example is the commercialisation of Christmas.

Even though there is the Christian tradition of the three wise men giving gifts at the birth of Christ, establishing the ritual of gift giving, the three months leading up to December 25 have become about sales and opportunities to spend.

Easter, Valentine’s Day, Queen’s Birthday weekend and even Labour Day have all become sales events for retailers.

Matariki also lands in a quiet time of the year for retail – right in the middle of winter and between the big shopping weekends of Queen’s Birthday and Labour Day.

Potential for blowback against retailers

But when businesses commercialise anything there is always the question of whether they have the legitimacy to do so, or whether they’re bastardising the event for commercial gain.

There is the potential for significant blowback for businesses looking to cash in on Matariki. And they only need to look at Anzac Day as an example of commemoration that remains off limits to blatant commercialisation.

Yes, it’s fine to sell poppies or to have a donation box at your point of sale. It’s even okay to advertise with a “thank you for your service” banner. But if a business tries obviously to make money on the back of Anzac Day, people start to get a little upset.

Read more:
Matariki: reintroducing the tradition of Māori New Year celebrations

That doesn’t mean businesses don’t try to get around public sentiment. Every year there is an element of “Anzac washing”, where companies try to make it look like they’re supportive of veterans, even if they have otherwise done nothing to support former and current military personnel.

It is likely that how we handle Anzac Day will provide a baseline for critics assessing businesses that try to use Matariki as a way to drive sales.

Businesses could be judged by whether or not they have Matariki sales, or whether there is some sort of attempt to “Matariki-wash” their other commercial offerings.

Businesses should tread carefully

It is an area full of potential landmines, with little clear benefit at this stage.

Not only is there the commercialisation of a public holiday, which some people find annoying already, but there’s also the debate about cultural appropriation versus cultural appreciation.

Companies need to realise the potential for blowback and controversy is multiplied above other, more established public holidays. There are those who are annoyed about another public holiday adding labour costs for businesses. And there even are those objecting to the supposed “wokeness” of celebrating Matariki.

At a bare minimum, then, businesses determined to use Matariki as part of their sales pitch need to understand what the celebration is really about and its significance within the community.

It will be interesting to see if any are willing to risk the minefield for the sake of sales that come from an extra three-day weekend, or whether they’ll wait and see what happens to those who take the risk first.

Mike Lee 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. Matariki falls during a quiet retail season – but businesses should be wary of cashing in – https://theconversation.com/matariki-falls-during-a-quiet-retail-season-but-businesses-should-be-wary-of-cashing-in-185398