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

NASA’s Artemis I launch is a major step forward in humans going deeper and spending longer in space than ever before.

Future Artemis missions plan to take crew to the Moon and eventually Mars, which is likely to be a three-year round-trip.

But what will the astronauts eat? There are only so many protein bars and vitamins one can tolerate and survive on for years on end.

Plants are the basis of life on Earth with their amazing ability to convert light, water and carbon dioxide (CO₂) into food, and are the logical solution to support humans in space.

The challenges of a space garden

Astronauts have already eaten space radish, chilli peppers and lettuce grown on the International Space Station, and having freshly grown veggies in microgravity can support health and wellbeing. But there are a number of challenges in growing a flourishing space garden.

Space environments are CO₂-rich, lack soil microbes, have altered gravity, are exposed to potentially harmful solar radiation, and need to use recycled, high-salt water. For plants to thrive in space and offer the full range of nutrients for human health, they need a redesign.

After months of freeze-dried or prepackaged space food, imagine going to your space garden, picking a ripe juicy tomato and spicy chilli to add to your tacos. Adding fresh produce has been a good way to improve astronaut wellbeing, supply essential vitamins and minerals, and add variety and flavour, especially as low-gravity environments affect our taste and smell.

A renewable source of fresh food is essential to future long-term space missions, to avoid astronauts experiencing “food fatigue”, malnutrition and weight loss.

Space plants are currently grown in closed boxes with low energy LED lights, porous clay “soil” with water, nutrients and oxygen supplied to roots; high-tech sensors and cameras monitor plant health. Plants did not evolve to grow in a box and use energy and resources in readiness for changes in light, temperature and disease, limiting full growth potential.

So there is great opportunity to adapt plant genetics to produce faster-growing “pick and eat” food crops such as tomato, carrot, spinach and strawberry designed to reach their maximum potential in closed, controlled environments.

A sustainable space plant future

Future plant growth systems for space will need to be entirely sustainable. That means working alongside all the other systems on a space station or a lunar/Martian base, recycling water and nutrients.

All plant parts will need to be food, compost or converted into useful products such as fuels and plastics. Human waste, including urine, offers a nutrient source for plants, yet they also need to be able to cope with this salty water supply. However, there’s one plant that could be particularly suited to the task.

Duckweed may not be available at your local supermarket, but this very fast-growing plant could be in all space gardens thanks to its ability to thrive in recycled water and be zero waste, with the whole plant being eaten.

Duckweed doubles its weight in just two days, is harvested continually, and is high in protein, nutrients, antioxidants and vitamins. Only a few essential elements (such as vitamin B12/D) are missing that could make it a reliable base source for complete human nutrition.

Read more:
Duckweed is an incredible, radiation-fighting astronaut food – and by changing how it is grown, we made it better

Recent technical advances in genome editing, gene regulation, and methods to analyse nutrients can be harnessed to adapt duckweed and other plants for optimal growth, minimal waste and complete nutrition.

New plants developed in this way can contain proteins perfectly balanced for human digestion and use, healthy plant oils for an energy boost, and soluble fibre for better gut and cardiovascular health.

Striving to explore space has brought us thousands of innovations we use in everyday life. We can expect that inventions we come up with to support humans thriving in space will deliver multiple and essential sustainability benefits to Earth, especially to on-demand supply of nutrition and biomaterials. Experts across the globe are working together toward these dual goals, including plant biologists, engineers, food chemists, psychologists, sensory experts, nutritionists, ethicists, and legal experts.

A new frontier of human achievement is on the horizon – humans will soon not only be looking up to the night skies in wonder, but also travelling to those destinations beyond our own atmosphere, and in so doing planting seeds of a new way of life on Earth and beyond.

Kim Johnson works for La Trobe University who are conducting work on growing plants in controlled environments. She collaborates with the Victorian Space Science Education Centre and investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence in Plants for Space.

Harvey Millar works for the University of Western Australia (UWA) conducting research on plant protein composition and modification of plants to suit environments. He is on the Board of the International Space Centre (ISC) at UWA and co-leads its Plants in Space research node. He receives funding from the Australian Research Council and is an investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence in Plants for Space.

Matthew Gilliham works for the University of Adelaide (UoA) who are conducting research into the use of plants to support of space exploration. He is Sustainability Lead for the Andy Thomas Centre for Space Resources at UoA and is on the Technical Advisory Group for Applied Space Medicine and Life Sciences at the Australian Space Agency. He is director of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Plants for Space.

– ref. Humans are going back to the Moon, and beyond – but how will we feed them? – https://theconversation.com/humans-are-going-back-to-the-moon-and-beyond-but-how-will-we-feed-them-189794

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Wood, Associate Professor, epidemiological modelling of infectious diseases, UNSW Sydney

Australia is now mid-way into its fourth wave of COVID in the Omicron era, driven by a rich soup of Omicron descendants. Unlike previous waves, where a single new variant of SARS-CoV-2 variant such as BA.2 or BA.5 was responsible, we have had an explosion of new variants such as XBB.1, BQ.1.1 and BR.2.1.

Read more:
From Centaurus to XBB: your handy guide to the latest COVID subvariants (and why some are more worrying than others)

However, despite this apparent diversity, these new variants all follow a similar script, where the same set of changes have evolved independently across multiple variants. This is called convergent evolution.

These changes make the virus better at infecting people with immunity to existing variants. Since mid-October, the subvariants’ ability to escape immunity from vaccination and/or previous infection has been potent enough to cause a new wave in Australia.

The graph below shows the series of 2022 waves, with the original Omicron the first wave, followed by the double-bump BA.2 (where Western Australia had different timing), the winter BA.5 wave, and now a new upswing in November.

In some good news, this wave is likely to be a shorter and smaller version of the BA.5 wave. Here’s why.

Cases are rising rapidly

In Australia, the wave is already growing rapidly, with indicators such as recorded cases and hospital occupancy showing significant increases in multiple states over the last two weeks.

New South Wales reports on the trend in the underlying variants, with a clear shift since early October.

Removal of mandatory reporting and isolation has led to fewer rapid antigen tests (RATs) being reported. So we may only be recording a smaller fraction of all community infections now than in previous waves.

Read more:
Previous COVID infection may not protect you from the new subvariant wave. Are you due for a booster?

In the graph below, I’ve used the EpiNow2 R package (an open-source estimation and forecasting tool) to calculate the trend in the effective reproduction number (Rt) using NSW case data since early September.

Rt represents the average number of people that a single COVID case infects at a given point in time. Epidemics decline when Rt is less than 1, while epidemic growth becomes likely once Rt is above 1 and is increasingly steep as Rt rises. This is now substantially above 1 in New South Wales:

Will the wave peak by Christmas? Lessons from Singapore

I think the most likely outcome is the wave will peak by Christmas. In my own work for NSW Health, I am currently projecting a peak in NSW for the first week of December.

But these predictions are uncertain because it is still difficult to estimate the level of protection against infection in our population, despite impressive near real-time laboratory science that is helping to characterise this.

Fortunately, despite the challenges with modelling, the recent Singapore wave can guide our expectations. Caused by XBB.1, this wave was short and sharp, peaking around October 18 and then dropping back almost to pre-wave levels by November 12.

Read more:
XBB and BQ.1: what we know about these two omicron ‘cousins’

Singapore has also seen a significant increase in hospitalisations, primarily in people aged above 70.

However cumulative cases, admissions and deaths are tracking to be about half those of their BA.5 wave, with no signs of increased severity.

Despite the ability of XBB.1 to evade vaccination and/or previous infection, in Singapore people with prior Omicron infections were about 75% less likely to test positive in this wave than in people without recorded prior infections.

Singapore has also had quite a similar COVID pandemic experience to Australia in terms of restrictions, vaccination and infection waves. One exception is that mask-wearing remains more prevalent in Singapore.

We should, however, expect some differences. Australia has about six times the resident population of Singapore with widely separated population centres. This might mean the wave duration across Australia is one to two weeks longer.

Australia also has a higher proportion of the population above 75, a large fraction of whom haven’t had COVID this year and therefore won’t have hybrid immunity (from both vaccination and prior infection). This could result in more hospital admissions and deaths per capita than in Singapore.

But in general, the Singapore wave supports the prediction this fourth Australian wave of 2022 will peak in early December and fall back below current levels by Christmas.

Is this the new normal? What can we expect in the years to come?

Beyond this year, I’m encouraged by the shift in pattern from single variants causing waves to the evolving variant soup. This evolution has been very rapid recently but there are signs this may slow considerably in 2023.

Firstly, the rate at which mutations occur is proportional to how much virus is circulating. The enormous number of COVID infections across this year mean that in 2022 this change has happened quickly but with each wave getting smaller, this rate of change should slow.

The recent variant soup evolution may also be a positive sign. The different variants in the soup have all gained a transmission advantage following the same immune-escape strategy. The set of relevant mutations were in fact predicted in advance by researchers at the University of Washington.

If you are infected with one of these new variants, you should also have strong protection to the rest of the soup. The absence of big mutational jumps in dominant variants suggests SARS-CoV2, the virus that causes COVID, may now be entering a period of slower, more continuous evolution. This is what we see for seasonal influenza.

COVID has been full of surprises but the evidence suggests we could see SARS-CoV-2 infections fall below our recent trough levels in 2023 and the beginning of a more seasonal pattern to COVID waves.

Read more:
Why haven’t I had COVID yet?

James Wood receives funding from NSW Health and the NHMRC. He is a voting member of the Australian Technical Advisory Committee on Immunisation and is a member of the Variants of Concern subgroup of the Communicable Diseases Genomics Network of Australia.

– ref. What can we expect from this latest COVID wave? And how long is it likely to last? – https://theconversation.com/what-can-we-expect-from-this-latest-covid-wave-and-how-long-is-it-likely-to-last-194444

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bradley J. Moggridge, Associate Professor in Indigenous Water Science, University of Canberra

Tap water in more than 500 remote Indigenous communities isn’t regularly tested and often isn’t safe to drink, according to a water industry report released last week. In some communities, drinking water contained unacceptable levels of uranium, arsenic, fluoride and nitrate.

While these findings are dire, they aren’t news to us. There have been myriad reports over the years on the poor status of safe drinking water in Australia’s remote communities all pointing to inequity of essential services with implications for health. But little has been done to rectify this.

Safe drinking water is a basic human right, no matter where people live. First Nations communities have campaigned for decades for clean water on their Country. As Alyawarre Elders, Jackie Mahoney and Pam Corbett, from Alpurrurulam community in the Northern Territory explained during the report’s launch:

That’s why we’re fighting for this water. It’s not only for us, it’s for them too […] For our old people who fought before us and our kids’ future.

A bureaucratic inquiry cycle

The new report, by Water Services Association of Australia, is the latest to detail this ongoing health crisis. Water can be both unsafe to drink (unpotable) and unacceptable to drink due to taste, colour and feel (unpalatable).

Its findings are consistent with a report by the Western Australian Auditor General last year. It found 37 communities had an unfit drinking water supply due to contamination by microbes (bacteria and viruses), nitrates or uranium – and there had been no improvement since the issue was reported in 2015.

Similarly, a research paper published earlier this year found drinking water supplied to 25,000 people in 99 small communities in 2018-19 didn’t pass Australian guidelines.

Numerous other reports have delivered similar findings. For example, a report in 1994 by the Australian Human Rights Commission examined ten communities and the condition of water and sanitation services, highlighting specific areas of concern.

In 2018, a review of Australia’s progress on the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals confirmed that many remote communities don’t have the same level of access to water and sanitation services as urban centres, with flow-on effects to human health.

Read more:
Aboriginal voices are missing from the Murray-Darling Basin crisis

And in 2020, a Productivity Commission report proposed new objectives to deliver safe and reliable drinking water in remote communities, noting the additional stressor of climate change.

These earlier reports show the drinking water crisis was identified decades ago. Last week’s report reveals not much has changed.

Not every tap delivers safe water

The reasons for undrinkable water in remote communities are multiple and interlinked. We can group them into four broad areas.

The first is physical. This is when the original water source (from the surface or groundwater) may be contaminated with excess levels of chemicals, such as agricultural or industrial chemicals.

The water may also have biological contaminants due to hot weather or faeces from birds and other animals, increasing microbial growth.

And freshwater may become contaminated with salt as the sea level rises and affects natural freshwater wells. This is a major issue for some Torres Strait islands.

The second issue is technical. Local water operators are located remotely, and don’t always get appropriate resources, training and support.

Third, there are financial issues. It’s very expensive to deliver essential services, including water, to remote community councils within large states. For example, in Queensland’s remote Indigenous councils, these services are typically funded sporadically via short-term grants.

Read more:
Some remote Australian communities have drinking water for only nine hours a day

The final issue is social and governance. Water needs and practices on a cultural level are often poorly understood by service providers.

For example, during the recent drought, severe water restrictions left remote communities without treated and accessible water for hours on end, every day. This not only limited water available for drinking, but also for cultural events such as sorry camps (when the community mourns a loss).

A system that’s fit for purpose, place and people

A feature of successful sustainable water in remote communities is to tailor initiatives for each location. Such initiatives would be shaped by available local staff, water sources, cultural and governance structures and types of pollutants.

All external partners should aim to build long-term working relationships with the communities to avoid the “new face syndrome”. This is a common experience where different representatives visit communities without consistency, inhibiting long-term and trusted working relationships.

Sufficient funding will also be crucial for ongoing, sustainable delivery, with the ambition that water quality is the same as urban supplies.

And additional stressors, especially water insecurity due to climate change, need to be incorporated into water supply and related energy and sanitation planning.

Importantly, all remote essential service delivery and management actions, including water, need to be undertaken collaboratively. They should be led and authored by First Nations researchers, and draw from community strengths and knowledge wherever possible.

This shifts water service efforts being for communities, to being with communities. Indeed, cultural sensitivity and guidance is essential to ensure mutual respect and learning forms the basis of all supply delivery.

Read more:
IPCC reports still exclude Indigenous voices. Come join us at our sacred fires to find answers to climate change

In keeping with this cultural awareness is an action-based commitment by water suppliers to develop and thoroughly implement “Reconciliation Action Plans”. These are plans in organisations aimed at embedding meaningful actions to advance relationships, respect and opportunities with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

These plans should include Indigenous-led, co-designed solutions throughout the process. They should be achievable and place-based, however challenging that may be for water utilities and organisations.

Walking the talk

The Water Services Association of Australia’s report was launched by Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney in Parliament this month. This was a powerful call to action on safe drinking water for all Australians to protect health, uphold human rights and implement sustainable development.

It is the responsibility of water service providers and their industry advocates to step up beyond their Reconciliation Action Plan obligations and “walk the talk” to collaborate with communities.

Let’s hope the next report on remote drinking water provision will describe successful and sustainable outcomes.

This article was co-authored with Charles Agnew, a water scientist.

Bradley J. Moggridge is affiliated with the University of Canberra, is a Governor with WWF Australia and a Member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists

Cara Beal receives funding from the Australian Research Council for research in remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island communities. She is a member of the Australian Water Association.

Nina Lansbury is an IPCC Lead Author and receives funding from the NHMRC for environmental health research in remote communities.

– ref. Countless reports show water is undrinkable in many Indigenous communities. Why has nothing changed? – https://theconversation.com/countless-reports-show-water-is-undrinkable-in-many-indigenous-communities-why-has-nothing-changed-194447

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Wenju Cai, Chief Research Scientist, Oceans and Atmosphere, CSIRO, CSIRO

You’ve probably heard a lot about La Niña lately. This cool weather pattern is the main driver of heavy rain and flooding that has devastated much of Australia’s southeast in recent months.

You may also have heard of El Niño, which alternates with La Niña every few years. El Niño typically brings drier conditions to much of Australia.

Together, the two phases are known as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation – the strongest and most consequential factor driving Earth’s weather. And in recent years there has been much scientific interest in how climate change will influence this global weather-maker.

Our new research, released today, sheds light on the question. It found climate change will clearly influence the El Niño-Southern Oscillation by 2030 – in just eight years’ time. This has big implications for how Australians prepare for extreme weather events.

A complex weather puzzle

The El Niño-Southern Oscillation occurs across the tropical Pacific, and involves complex interplays between the atmosphere and the ocean. It can be in one of three phases: El Niño, La Niña or neutral.

During an El Niño phase, the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean warms significantly. This causes a major shift in cloud formation and weather patterns across the Pacific, typically leading to dry conditions in eastern Australia.

During a La Niña phase, which is occurring now, waters in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean are cooler than average. The associated changes in weather patterns include higher than average rainfall over much of Australia.

When the oscillation is in the neutral phase, weather conditions hover around the long-term average.

Previous research has suggested El Niño and La Niña events may vary depending on where in the tropical Pacific the warm or cold ocean temperatures are located.

But climate change is also affecting ocean temperatures. So how might this play into El Niño and La Niña events? And where might the resulting change in weather patterns be detected? These are the questions our research sought to answer.

Read more:
3 things a climate scientist wants world leaders to know ahead of COP27

What we found

We examined 70 years of data on the El Niño–Southern Oscillation since 1950, and combined it with 58 of the most advanced climate models available.

We found the influence of climate change on El Niño and La Niña events, in the form of ocean surface temperature changes in the eastern Pacific, will be detectable by 2030. This is four decades earlier than previously thought.

Scientists already knew climate change was affecting the El Niño–Southern Oscillation. But because the oscillation is itself so complex and variable, it’s been hard to identify where the change is occurring most strongly.

However, our study shows the effect of climate change, manifesting as changes in ocean surface temperature in the tropical eastern Pacific, will be obvious and unambiguous within about eight years.

So what does all this mean for Australia? Warming of the eastern Pacific Ocean, fuelled by climate change, will cause stronger El Niño events. When this happens, rain bands are drawn away from the western Pacific where Australia is located. That’s likely to mean more droughts and dry conditions in Australia.

It’s also likely to bring more rain to the eastern Pacific, which spans the Pacific coast of Central America from southern Mexico to northern Peru.

Strong El Niño events are often followed by strong and prolonged La Niñas. So that will mean cooling of the eastern Pacific Ocean, bringing the rain band back towards Australia – potentially leading to more heavy rain and flooding of the kind we’ve seen in recent months.

Read more:
Loss and damage: Who is responsible when climate change harms the world’s poorest countries?

What now?

Weather associated with El Niño and La Niña has huge implications. It can affect human health, food production, energy and water supply, and economies around the world.

Our research suggests Australians, in particular, must prepare for more floods and droughts as climate change disrupts the natural weather patterns of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation.

Our findings should be incorporated into policies and strategies to adapt to climate change. And crucially, they add to the weight of evidence pointing to the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to stabilise Earth’s climate.

Read more:
Effects of climate change such as flooding makes existing disadvantages for Indigenous communities so much worse

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

– ref. Climate change will clearly disrupt El Niño and La Niña this decade – 40 years earlier than we thought – https://theconversation.com/climate-change-will-clearly-disrupt-el-nino-and-la-nina-this-decade-40-years-earlier-than-we-thought-194529

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ragan Petrie, Professor, Texas A&M University; Professorial Fellow, The University of Melbourne

Since 2008, Australia has spent more than A$11 billion dollars over ten years to expand government-funded preschool (or kinder in Victoria) for four-year-olds to better prepare children for school.

But as our new study finds, to date, there is no rigorous evidence to suggest this investment was warranted in the first place or that it has paid off.

The case for preschool funding

Almost every policy report arguing for expansion of early childhood education cites the Perry Preschool Project.

This study was a randomised controlled trial in the 1960s that provided high-quality preschool education to 123 (a small sample) low-income, three- and four-year olds at risk for school failure in Michigan in the United States.

A randomised controlled trial randomly assigns participants into an experimental group that receives a treatment or intervention or a control group that does not. Randomisation balances participant characteristics between the groups, so any differences in outcomes can be attributed to the study intervention.

Randomised controlled trials are considered the gold standard for policy evaluation because they provide direct, causal evidence of the effectiveness of a policy.

The Perry Preschool Project found that by age five, 67% of those who attended the program had an IQ above 90, compared to 28% in the non-program group. Almost 80% of the program group graduated from high school, compared to 60% in the non-program group. The program group also performed better on income at age 40.

While the returns to Perry are impressive, it remains unclear how generalisable these returns are to other contexts and populations.

Preschool in Australia

The federal government expanded preschool funding for four-year-olds in 2008 to improve the supply of early childhood services to all children. Since then, it has also billed the program as better preparing children for school.

Victoria is currently rolling out funded preschool to three-year-olds under the argument that “two years are better than one”.

Recently, New South Wales and Victoria announced government-funded preschool would extend to 30 hours a week (from the current 15) for four-year-olds. More than $9 billion is committed over the next decade in Victoria for early childhood education, and NSW has committed $5.8 billion to expand four-year-old education.

Read more:
‘Greatest transformation of early education in a generation’? Well, that depends on qualified, supported and thriving staff

But this has not been accompanied by randomised evaluations of these universal programs.

A common approach to evaluate programs is to conduct a “before and after” evaluation that relies on statistical methods. These methods compare those who chose to be in a program to those who did not and make statistical adjustments.

This approach is second best because the methods are not designed to provide causal evidence of a program’s effectiveness.

Our study

Despite the large investment, and significant increase in preschool enrolment, school readiness scores have remained flat for more than a decade.

Just over half (55%) of Australian children are developmentally on track to start school, based on the most recent Australian Early Development Census of five-year-olds entering school. In 2009, 51% of children were on track.

Being on track means a child has met development milestones across five important areas of early childhood development. These are:

• physical health and wellbeing (such as motor skills and energy levels)
• social competence (getting along with other children and adults)
• emotional maturity (being kind to others, not having tantrums)
• language and cognitive skills (interested in books, recognising numbers)
• communication skills and general knowledge (can tell a story and have knowledge for that age, such as knowing dogs bark or apple is fruit).

To understand this issue further, we conducted a population-level analysis of preschool expansion for four-year-olds on measures of child development. That is, we looked at changes in school readiness as four-year-old preschool/kinder enrolment increased.

We used Australian census data on preschool enrolment and Australian Early Development Census data on the five development outcomes, and mapped them to local government areas.

The goal was to see if there is any evidence areas in which preschool has expanded also has improved school readiness. The analysis is not causal, but it illustrates associations at the population level for children who did and did not attend preschool. Plus, it accounts for differences across regions.

Our findings

We found there are no, or negative, effects of preschool on child outcomes.

Areas which had increased preschool enrolment by ten percentage points saw a decrease in school readiness by half-a-percentage point. This implies billions spent with no evidence children are better prepared for school.

If we only look at areas outside of Victoria and NSW, the results are worse. The decline in school readiness doubled to a decrease of one percentage point.

Of course, this analysis cannot speak to how school readiness would have evolved without preschool expansion. We do not observe this. The analysis cannot say if children would have been less, similarly or better prepared without investment in preschool.

What we can say is that areas that saw an increase in preschool enrolment did not see a corresponding increase in school readiness, which you would assume from the level of investment. Preschool expansion, as it happened in Australia, has not better prepared kids for school.

More research is needed to determine whether and how to expand preschool offerings.

More evidence needed

We are not arguing governments should not invest in children or their early education.

On the contrary. Evidence exists that high-quality preschools delivered at small scale to targeted groups can have positive returns to child development.

Preschool might have other benefits – such as more affordable childcare or workforce participation for families. But we have found universal preschool, rolled out to everyone, does not necessarily pay off for development.

Investment should be made based on scientific evidence and take into account how programs will be affected as they are scaled up.

Without rigorous evidence from randomised controlled trials, money may be spent unwittingly on programs for Australian children that have no effect on development when the money could have been spent on alternative programs that yield positive results.

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 study finds Australia’s preschool expansion ‘has not better prepared’ kids for school – https://theconversation.com/new-study-finds-australias-preschool-expansion-has-not-better-prepared-kids-for-school-194048

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrea Jean Baker, Senior Lecturer in Journalism, Monash University

There is no spoiler alert in the Hollywood adaptation of the award-winning book She Said.

We know the story and the perpetrator, which is unusual. 80% of sexual violence cases go unreported. Perpetrators are rarely charged and continue to participate in society.

The perpetrator in She Said is the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein.
In 2020, Weinstein was found guilty of sexually assaulting two women in New York, and was sentenced to 23 years in prison.

She Said is based on the 2019 book of the same name by New York Times journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey.

Their Pulitzer prize winning investigative reporting in 2017, along with Ronan Farrow’s reporting for The New Yorker, uncovered Weinstein’s predatory behaviour and helped to ignite the #MeToo movement.

She Said follows in the footsteps of Spotlight (2015) and The Post (2017), films reflecting rigorous journalism: months of research, fact checking and persuading people to go on the record.

But newsrooms are overwhelmingly headed up by male senior staff. This impacts on whether stories about sexual abuse are covered and how they are covered.

She Said shines an important light on the need for rigorous journalism in holding the powerful to account.

Read more:
Weinstein conviction a partial victory for #MeToo, but must not overshadow work still to be done

A formidable cast and crew

She Said was created by a formidable female cast and crew. Director Maria Schrader, cinematographer Natasha Braier and writer Rebecca Lenkiewicz adapt the journalists’ fourth estate ethos with emotional intelligence.

Patricia Clarkson is savvy as the paper’s editor, Rebecca Corbett, who guides Kantor (Zoe Kazan) and Twohey (Carey Mulligan) through gruelling months of rejections, trying to bypass the nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) signed by Weinstein’s survivors.

Mulligan is cool and sophisticated as Twohey forensically grills Weinstein’s lawyer about the NDAs, while suffering from post natal depression after having her first baby.

Kazan is diligently feisty as Kantor, a mother of two young girls who is shocked when she finds out her eldest discusses what rape is at school.

Disheartened by the manipulative misogyny in the Weinstein saga, Kantor is frustrated by the women who are reluctant to go on the record. One of these women, the actor Ashley Judd, eventually shared her story about Weinstein’s sexual misconduct and plays herself in the film.

Throughout the film, we watch as the code of silence continues: victim-survivors are reluctant to come forward about accusations for fear of the ramifications they will face.

In a 2019 documentary about Weinstein, Untouchable, he is reported saying to journalists who have been chasing the allegations for 15 years: “Don’t you know who I am!?”.

Despite the US legal system giving journalists broad leeway when publishing allegations that may be construed as defamatory, Weinstein’s behaviour went unchecked for decades.

#MeToo

She Said ends when the story about Weinstein by Kantor and Twohey is published in the New York Times in October 2017.

African American activist Tarana Burke began the MeToo movement in 2006 to address the sexual violence against Black women and girls. In 2017, in response to the Weinstein reporting, Alyssa Milano used this phrase to tweet about predatory sexual behaviour by men in Hollywood.

There would go on to be 85 million tweets about #MeToo.

This hashtag became a prominent example of digital feminism activism, where citizen activists created hashtags to highlight social issues the media was failing to report on. With “hashtag journalism”, reporters followed Twitter-led hashtag trends to assess what issues to cover in the news cycle.

Despite the diversity of stories which came out of the #MeToo hashtag, initial reportage was primarily focused on white, middle-class women.

As Burke said:

I have no expectation of mainstream media to tell the stories of marginalised people unless it serves them.

The ‘Weinstein effect’

She Said vaguely reflects on the need for diversity in this reporting, but focuses on other difficulties of working in this space.

Kantor and Twohey come up against defamation issues, as well as the NDAs signed by the women. The film suggests certain laws need to be revised so journalists can continue to shine a light on injustices.

The “Weinstein effect” is the name which has been given to the increased reporting on systemic abuse following the journalism of Kantor, Twohey and Farrow.

Dozens of prominent men in the US have been held to account through the media.

In Australia, there is a lower level of protection from litigation, which has lead to an environment where there was been less reportage on those accused of sexual assault.

In both countries, those reporting on sexual violence are also increasingly aware that journalism must consider factors tied to race, sexuality and socioeconomic backgrounds.

There have been significant legal changes, too. Since #MeToo, 17 states in the US have restricted the use of NDAs, so more victim-survivors can speak out.

In Australia, we have seen the Respect at Work Bill, making employers legally responsible for eliminating workplace sexual harassment.

She Said is a compelling reminder of the catalyst for these changes.

Read more:
#MeToo has changed the media landscape, but in Australia there is still much to be done

She Said is in Australian cinemas now.

The National Sexual Assault, Family & Domestic Violence Counselling Line – 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) – is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week for any Australian who has experienced, or is at risk of, family and domestic violence and/or sexual assault.

Andrea Jean Baker 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. She Said is a formidable retelling of the journalism which sparked #MeToo – but also shows us how far we have to go – https://theconversation.com/she-said-is-a-formidable-retelling-of-the-journalism-which-sparked-metoo-but-also-shows-us-how-far-we-have-to-go-194045

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Wheeler, Associate Professor of Paediatric Endocrinology, University of Otago

This year marks a century since an extraordinary medical breakthrough – the use of insulin to treat diabetes mellitus. Some physicians at the time described the effect of administering this hormone as like witnessing “resurrection experiences”. Children near death were given a chance at life.

As we mark the centenary, we also need to focus on the pressing need in Aotearoa New Zealand to make the latest treatments and technologies available to all – and not just those who can afford them.

It is a remarkable story of medical and scientific progress.

The term “diabetes” was used from the first century BC to describe a condition characterised by polydipsia (thirst) and polyuria (passing large quantities of dilute urine); “mellitus” was added in the 1600s to indicate that sweetness in the urine differentiated this condition from other causes of these symptoms.

But it took another 300 years for a link between diabetes and the pancreas to be discovered. The term “insulin” was coined in 1909 by the Belgian scientist Jean de Meyer who speculated that a secretion from the pancreas could regulate the amount of glucose (sugar) in the blood.

Insulin was finally isolated from the pancreas in 1921 and was shown to keep dogs without a pancreas alive for several months. Rapid progress followed. In January 1922, 14-year-old Leonard Thompson, hospitalised and near death in Toronto, became the first person to receive insulin and survive diabetes.

Insulin arrives in New Zealand

By the end of 1922, insulin was being commercially produced and distributed worldwide. It is generally accepted that the first use of this miraculous substance in New Zealand was in 1923 when Dr (later Sir) Charles Burns injected Isobel Styche with insulin in Dunedin Hospital.

There’s some debate about this, however, with another patient possibly receiving treatment as early as 1922.

A young New Zealand doctor named Thomas Johnson, at that time working in London, heard about the discovery of insulin and realised it might save the life of Jake Cato, a young man he had been looking after in Napier.

In collaboration with Cato’s father, who happened to be the head of the New Zealand Shipping Company based in Napier, Johnson arranged for one of the company’s ships to bring the precious substance to New Zealand.

Breakthroughs in glucose monitoring

At the same time as insulin therapy was being developed, glucose-monitoring technology was also progressing. Crude assessment of glucose in the urine, used in New Zealand until the early 1980s, was superseded by the development of finger-prick blood-glucose measurements.

Performed up to ten or more times daily on hand-held meters, finger-prick measurements remain the reality for most of the 25,000 children and adults who live with type 1 diabetes in New Zealand.

This particular form of diabetes results in an absolute deficiency of insulin. It’s caused by the body’s immune system attacking and destroying the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas.

Read more:
The discovery of insulin: a story of monstrous egos and toxic rivalries

Over the past ten years, the pain and burden of finger-prick glucose monitoring have encouraged the development of continuous glucose monitors (CGMs). These small patches, worn on the skin, measure glucose levels continuously and are replaced every seven to 14 days.

CGM devices can now “talk” to insulin pumps, devices worn on the body that provide continuous subcutaneous insulin instead of the many injections required daily. These technologies act like a partially automated artificial pancreas, reducing the large number of complex decisions people with diabetes have to make daily to remain healthy.

Treatment and equity

While insulin pumps are funded in New Zealand, the government drug-buying agency Pharmac does not fund CGMs. That’s despite CGMs being funded in the UK, Canada, Australia (since 2017) and much of Europe, and being the recommended method of glucose monitoring in all major diabetes guidelines worldwide.

However, CGMs are widely used in New Zealand by those who can afford them. They help prevent the unpleasant effects of low blood glucose and can give advance warning of less common but serious risks of collapse and seizures, and occasionally death.

Read more:
New Zealand needs urgent action to tackle the frightening rise and cost of type 2 diabetes

CGMs also help mitigate long-term complications and early death from too much glucose.

The lack of government funding has led to widespread inequity. Māori, Pacific peoples and those on lower incomes are less able to access life-enhancing CGM devices. Recent New Zealand research has highlighted that glucose outcomes for Māori, if they are wearing a CGM, appear equal to those for non-Māori.

Better health for all

Jake Cato’s life-saving insulin therapy was made possible by the wealth and connections of his parents. We would like to think that in 2022, a century on from the first person in the world receiving insulin, this should not still be a factor.

Access to life-saving and disability-preventing therapies for the one-in-500 New Zealand children (and thousands of adults) living with type 1 diabetes must not be restricted to those with money and connections.

That’s why the wider availability of diabetes management technologies – taken for granted in other comparable countries – is the big issue this Diabetes Action Month, and will be highlighted at the forthcoming Transforming lives: 100 years of insulin event in Wellington.

While there is much to celebrate during this centenary year, the good health promised by these medical breakthroughs is still not available to all in Aotearoa New Zealand. We can and should do better.

Ben Wheeler has received research funding from Medtronic, Dexcom, and iSENs, manufacturers of continuous glucose monitoring devices and other advanced diabetes technologies.

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

– ref. 100 years after insulin was first used, why isn’t NZ funding the latest life-changing diabetes technology? – https://theconversation.com/100-years-after-insulin-was-first-used-why-isnt-nz-funding-the-latest-life-changing-diabetes-technology-194246

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Laurenceson, Director and Professor, Australia-China Relations Institute (ACRI), University of Technology Sydney

There were smiles all round as the Australian and Chinese leaders met formally for the first time in more than six years.

The meeting was brief, just 32 minutes, but Prime Minister Anthony Albanese led afterwards with the message that it “was a positive and constructive discussion”.

President Xi Jinping said in his opening remarks that the difficulties in the bilateral relationship were not what the Chinese side wanted to see.

Yet beyond conciliatory words and photo opportunities, the Australian public is being hit with contrasting takes on what the meeting means for relations with our most important trading partner and the “big guy” in the regional room.

On one hand, it’s been described as a “landmark” and “historic” event – a “huge reset” of Australia-China ties.

What’s conjured up is images of wine and rock lobster flowing freely through Chinese customs once again, and the detained Australians Yang Hengjun and Cheng Lei stepping off the prime ministerial jet alongside Albanese when it lands in Sydney later this week.

Others, however, are keen to moderate expectations. Treasurer Jim Chalmers warned earlier this week that

I don’t think anybody pretends that some of the issues that China has raised, certainly some of the issues that we have raised, will be solved overnight.

A diplomatic off-ramp

The reality is that Canberra and Beijing’s assessments of their respective interests remain far from aligned.

For starters, let’s be clear on what led to a meeting even taking place. Two factors combined, with neither being sufficient alone.

First, by the end of 2021, Beijing had ample evidence the hardline approach it was taking to shifting Canberra’s positions wasn’t working.

The trade sanctions deployed in 2020 were having no discernible impact on the Australian economy at large. They were, however, generating plenty of negative headlines for China internationally.

Meanwhile, Australian public opinion towards China collapsed. By early 2022, polling revealed that far from backing down, 58% of Australians supported the adoption of a “harder Australian government line on China”, compared with just 17% who disagreed.

This meant Beijing was alive to face-saving off-ramps.

Second, by restoring diplomacy to centre stage in managing China relations, the new Australian government delivered such an off-ramp. Australian political leaders were now once again referring to China as a “comprehensive strategic partner”, while emphasising that “both sides”, not just China, would need to reflect on their handling of differences. Challenges posed by China’s behaviour are acknowledged by the current government but not talked up for domestic political gain.

It’s no coincidence that needlessly provocative rhetoric provided the trigger for Beijing cutting off senior-level political dialogue in early 2020. A tighter diplomatic ship overseen by Foreign Minister Penny Wong has now permitted its restoration.

Read more:
With a new Australian government and foreign minister comes fresh hope for Australia-China relations

A step forward

The next question is, will the meeting make a practical difference?

Albanese himself said that simply “having the meeting is a successful outcome”.

That’s not as trite as it might sound.

A meeting does not guarantee the Australian grievances will be addressed. But there’s no doubting that in China in 2022, the person these grievances need to be put to, and who has the authority to address them, is the Chinese president.

Even superpowers understand this. In the lead-up to a meeting between US and Chinese leaders on Monday, President Joe Biden’s national security advisor Jake Sullivan emphasised that

There just is no substitute for this kind of leader-to-leader communication in navigating and managing such a consequential relationship.

We can also be confident that a decisive signal has now been sent throughout the Chinese bureaucracy that there’s official blessing to engage with Australia again.

A meeting of trade ministers to dig into ongoing disputes would naturally follow.

Australia’s ambassador in Beijing, Graham Fletcher, can expect to see his access improved.

Even Chinese companies considering investing in Australia, and parents weighing up whether to send their children to study here, will now be revising their assessments of risk downwards, the opposite of the trend in recent years.

Another factor giving cause for optimism is that while the Australian government hasn’t offered up compromises to get trade sanctions removed or detainees released, Albanese will have been able to credibly deliver messages directly to Xi that assuage core Chinese sensitivities.

Behind closed doors, he would have been able to say that Australia’s position on Taiwan and our “One China” policy has not changed since diplomatic relations were struck 50 years ago. The Australian government unequivocally does not support Taiwanese independence.

And in contrast to the US, nor do we support the economic containment of China. On Monday, Trade Minister Don Farrell went as far as describing recent trade sanctions on China imposed by the Biden administration as “draconian”.

The meeting isn’t a “reset” back to the sunny days of 2015. But it is on the dysfunction since 2020. Australia is a step closer to having a relationship with China on par with what other US allies and partners in the region have been able to maintain all along. And that’s unambiguously a positive step forward.

James Laurenceson 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. Albanese-Xi meeting won’t resolve Australia’s grievances overnight. But it is a real step forward – https://theconversation.com/albanese-xi-meeting-wont-resolve-australias-grievances-overnight-but-it-is-a-real-step-forward-194511

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Shaw, Honorary Senior Fellow in Urban Geography and Planning, The University of Melbourne

Last month Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers unveiled the National Housing Accord, intended to build a million new homes in Australia. Part of the plan is to encourage superannuation funds to invest in social and affordable housing.

The proposal was met with criticism from some quarters, with critics arguing Australia’s superannuation savings belongs to its members:

it is their money, not Labor’s play money.

These critics are forgetting it was not so long ago people’s taxes (which can also be seen as “their” money) paid everyone’s pensions. And while in consolidated revenue on their way to keeping us in comfort in our old age, these taxes helped build extensive public and social infrastructure.

Read more:
Albanese government’s first budget delivers election promises but forecasts soaring power prices

The transfer of retirement funding from the national government to non-government super funds is just one example of the shift from public provision of social goods towards individual accumulation that has defined Australian politics for four decades. This shift, along with associated income tax cuts, has contributed directly to the housing affordability crisis via the emphasis on property as an investment.

Australia’s super funds now control $3.3 trillion – the fourth-largest pool of retirement savings in the world.

Most of them invest in fossil fuels and some, directly or indirectly, in armaments, exploited labour and old-growth logging. All of them invest internationally where, if they are not doing actual harm, they are still not doing any good for their members in Australia beyond delivering financial returns.

Super funds are regulated by federal legislation which originally stipulated they must act in the “best interests of their members”. This was changed by the Coalition government in 2020 to read “best financial interests”. It is this requirement that has the critics of Chalmers’ plan baulking: how can it be in members’ best financial interests to invest in social housing?

Read more:
Labor is winding back reforms meant to hold super funds accountable to their members

Why super funds should invest in social housing

If even 1% of the $3 trillion – $30 billion – were invested in social housing, rental pressures in the private housing market would be massively reduced as tens of thousands of households currently in the private rental market vacated those dwellings for new social housing.

The flow-on effects of decent secure housing, including improvements in physical and mental health, and general social welfare are well documented.

The Albanese government could re-amend the regulations to their earlier form, and could require all super funds to invest a proportion of their portfolios in socially and ethically beneficial activities.

Super fund members are workers and members of society too, making up most of the adult population. They would all benefit from a more equal society.

Investing for social good is already happening

Some local funds and other financial institutions are already investing in social goods. Various super funds like CBus and community banks like Bank Australia invest in or give low-interest loans to community housing associations. Australian Super has a 25% stake in Assemble, an affordable housing developer – bought before the 2020 amendment.

They are taking small steps in a direction that is well-established in many European countries, where the notion of corporate responsibility has much greater resonance. This can be seen in the German constitution, which stipulates property ownership entails obligations, and “its use shall also serve the public good.”

European funds are finding low-yielding, slow-returning investments in social and co-operative housing complement their diverse portfolios well. Germany’s UmweltBank supports various housing initiatives including the famous Spreefeld co-op in Berlin, which provides a steady, low-risk return.

Investments in social housing are regarded as the lowest risk of all, as rents are mostly paid from financial assistance guaranteed by the state. Pension funds and community banks can commit to the long term, unlike corporate investors that purchase social housing for a limited period before selling it on the private market.

Oversight of these initiatives must be careful and regulated, but there is no reason why they should not be implemented. Chalmers’ plan should be applauded, and could go much further.

Kate Shaw has received funding from the ARC.

– ref. Super funds should use their substantial holdings for public good – https://theconversation.com/super-funds-should-use-their-substantial-holdings-for-public-good-194443

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Selinske, Postdoctoral research associate conservation science, RMIT University

Today is the Day of Eight Billion, according to the United Nations.

That’s an incredible number of humans, considering our population was around 2.5 billion in 1950. Watching our numbers tick over milestones can provoke anxiety. Do we have enough food? What does this mean for nature? Are more humans a catastrophe for climate change?

The answers are counterintuitive. Because rich countries use vastly more resources and energy, greening and reducing consumption in these countries is more effective and equitable than calling for population control in low income nations. Fertility rates in most of the world have fallen sharply. As countries get richer, they tend to have fewer children.

We can choose to adequately and equitably feed a population of 10 billion by 2050 – even as we reduce or eliminate global greenhouse gas emissions and staunch biodiversity loss.

Why is the world’s population still growing?

We hit 7 billion people just 11 years ago, in October 2011, and 6 billion in October 1999. And we’re still growing – the UN predicts 9.7 billion humans by 2050 before potentially topping out at 10.3 billion at the end of the century. But modelling by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation predicts the population peak much earlier, in 2064, and falling below 9 billion by century’s end.

Why is it still growing? Momentum. The number of women entering child-bearing age is growing, even as the average number of children each woman is having falls. Plus, we are generally living longer.

In 1950, the world’s population was growing at almost 2% a year. That growth rate is now less than 1%, and predicted to keep falling. There’s little we can do to change population trends. Researchers have found even if we introduced harsh one-child policies worldwide, our population trajectories would not change markedly.

In many ways, the story of population growth is evidence of improvement. Better farming techniques and better medicine made the population boom possible. And slowing population growth has come from falling rates of poverty, as well as better health and education systems, especially for women.

Increased gender equality and women’s empowerment have also helped. Put simply, if women can choose their own paths, they still have children – just fewer of them. That’s why climate solutions group Project Drawdown ranks female education and family planning as one of the top ways to tackle climate change.

Should we worry about overpopulation at all?

You are now one of 8,000,000,000 humans alive today. How should we feel about this?

The modern fear of overpopulation has old roots. In 1798, Reverend Thomas Malthus warned population grows exponentially while food supply does not. Close to two centuries later, Paul and Anne Erlich’s 1968 book The Population Bomb triggered a new wave of concern. As our numbers skyrocketed, they argued, we would inevitably hit a Malthusian cliff and run out of food. Famine and war would follow. It didn’t happen.

What resulted was inhumane population control policies. The book – replete with racially charged passages about a crowded Delhi “slum” –  directly influenced India’s 1970s forced sterilisation policies. China’s notorious one-child policy emerged from similar concerns.

Read more:
‘Overpopulation’ and the environment: three ideas on how to discuss it in a sensitive way

Low- or middle-income countries are most often called on to tackle overpopulation. And the people calling for action tend to be from high-income, high-consumption countries. Even David Attenborough is concerned.

Recent calls by Western conservation researchers to tackle environmental degradation by slowing population growth repeat the same issue, focusing on the parts of the world where populations are still growing strongly – sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and some Asian countries.

People from lower income countries reject these calls. In 1996, Pakistani academic Adil Najam wrote these countries were “weary of international population policy in the name of the environment.”

Overall, the world’s wealthiest 1% account for 15% of the world’s carbon emissions. That’s more than double the emissions of the poorest 50% of the planet – who are the most vulnerable to climate change.

Prince William, for instance, has linked African population growth to wildlife loss – even though he has three children and comes from a family with a carbon footprint almost 1,600 times higher than the average Nigerian family.

What about saving wildlife? Again, a mirror may be useful here. It turns out demand from rich countries is the single largest driver of biodiversity loss globally. How? Your beef burger may have been made possible by burning the Amazon for pasture for cows, as well as many other global supply chain issues. Rich countries like Australia are also notoriously bad at protecting their own wildlife from agriculture and land clearing.

This is not to say population growth in lower income countries isn’t worth discussing. While many countries have seen their populations taper off naturally as they get wealthier, countries like Nigeria are showing signs of strain from very fast population growth. Many young Nigerians move to cities seeking opportunities, but infrastructure and job creation has not kept pace.

For Western environmentalists and policymakers, however, it would be better to shift away from a blame mentality and tackle drivers of inequality between and within nations. These include support for family planning, removing barriers to girls’ education, better regulation of global financial markets, reduced transaction costs for global remittances, and safe migration for people seeking work or refuge in higher income countries.

As we pass the eight billion mark, let’s reconsider our reaction. Blaming low-consumption, high-population growth countries for environmental issues ignores our role. Worse, it takes our attention away from the real work ahead of transforming society and reducing our collective impact on the planet.

Read more:
Why we should be wary of blaming ‘overpopulation’ for the climate crisis

Matthew Selinske receives funding from the Australian Research Council and is a board member of the Society for Conservation Biology’s Social Science Working Group.

Leejiah Dorward is a researcher at Bangor University and receives funding from the European Research Council

Paul Barnes has received funding from the UK Natural Environment Research Council . He is affiliated with The Zoological Society of London.

Stephanie Brittain is a researcher at the University of Oxford. She receives funding from the German government’s international Climate Initiative and is a board member of the Society for Conservation Biology’s Social Science Working Group.

– ref. You are now one of 8 billion humans alive today. Let’s talk overpopulation – and why low income countries aren’t the issue – https://theconversation.com/you-are-now-one-of-8-billion-humans-alive-today-lets-talk-overpopulation-and-why-low-income-countries-arent-the-issue-190907

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Humphery-Jenner, Associate Professor of Finance, UNSW Sydney

“What is a grok?” asked a shareholder at AGL’s 2022 annual general meeting at the Melbourne Recital Centre on November 15, as those assembled struggled with the reality being forced on Australia’s biggest carbon emitter by Australia’s third-richest person.

Grok is, in fact, a word invented by science-fiction writer Robert Heinlein for his 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land. To “grok” means to understand something intuitively.

Which is not something likely to be said about how AGL’s leadership has appreciated the ambition of software billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes to have Australia’s biggest energy retailer lead the nation’s transition to renewable energy.

At the meeting, Cannon-Brookes used the 11.3% shareholding he has collected through his investment company Grok Ventures – plus proxies and support from other shareholders sympathetic to his cause – to reshape the company’s board.

Before the meeting AGL had five directors, including chairperson Patricia McKenzie. It now has four new independent directors – all nominated by Cannon-Brookes.

McKenzie and her other directors endorsed just one of those nominees – Mark Twidell, a renewable energy expert who works for Tesla Energy. The other three new directors are: Kerry Schott, past chair of the federal Energy Security Board; John Pollaers, Swinburne University’ chancellor; and CSR director Christine Holman.

The existing board also suffered the indignity of a significant minority vote against its executive compensation plan, as well as against AGL’s energy transition plan, which commits to quitting fossil fuels by 2035. For some, the plan was not ambitious enough. For others, the business case was unclear.

Shareholders divided

Yet as Cannon-Brookes’ forces swept the field, the same shareholder wondering about the meaning of “grok” also wondered whether the new directors would work for Cannon-Brookes or for AGL. So too did others. Division was palpable.

Shareholders now seem almost caught in a civil war.

On one side are those focused on sustainability, and carbon emissions, who support Cannon-Brookes in his mission to see AGL to divest fossil fuels quicker. Though his takeover bid failed, in May he successfully blocked AGL’s demerger plan, which he argued would delay divestment.

Read more:
Australia’s biggest carbon emitter buckles before Mike Cannon-Brookes – so what now for AGL’s other shareholders?

On those other side are those focused on returns, and concerned about “board capture”.

These interests need not be mutually exclusive. A company can operate sustainably and be profitable at the same time. But its leadership must explain this and make the strategy clear, cohesive and credible.

Board missed its opportunity

McKenzie talked strongly about the need to move towards renewable energy. She said AGL’s transition plan must be “sensible”. But there was a lack of focus on financials.

Directors owe a duty to all shareholders to act in the best interests of the corporation. This requires directors to focus on opportunities to maximise shareholder wealth, but doesn’t negate doing so sustainably.

New director John Pollaers came closest to articulating the challenge facing AGL. This was a time for strategic change, he said. AGL had an opportunity to generate returns and find a path to profitable growth.

McKenzie and her fellow directors could have used the opportunity to show how the renewable energy transition is necessary for AGL’s ongoing financial success, or provide new avenues for wealth creation.

But they awkwardly tried to find a middle ground, promoting the clean energy transition without fully outlining the financial underpinnings until pressed: McKenzie ultimately noted the transition must be “reasonable” to be financially viable.

Finding a shared vision

In lieu of this vision, questions revolved around the board’s competence and record.

Shareholders went into the meeting with AGL’s stock worth A$7.70. That’s better than the $5.30 it was worth a year ago, but about 70% less than the $25.81 it traded at five years ago.

The vote against the board’s executive compensation plan sets the scene for further boardroom upheaval.

Under Australia’s “two-strike” rule on executive pay, at least 75% of shareholders must approve a board’s compensation plan. More than 25% opposition results in a strike. A second strike leads to a “spill resolution” – a vote on whether all directors must stand for re-election.

Whether that occurs will depend on how successfully old and new directors can work together – something incoming director Christine Holman noted in her pitch to shareholders.

Read more:
The end of coal-fired power is in sight, even with private interests holding out

First they must find a new chief executive, to replace Brett Redman who resigned in April. A new CEO can give clarity over AGL’s future priorities – but to do so he or she will need to be palatable to both sides.

If they can’t find agreement, then AGL’s next meeting of shareholders promises to be even more spectacular.

Mark Humphery-Jenner 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. Cannon-Brookes shakes up AGL: what now for Australia’s biggest carbon emitter – https://theconversation.com/cannon-brookes-shakes-up-agl-what-now-for-australias-biggest-carbon-emitter-194625

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare M. Cooper, Design Lecturer, University of Sydney

After more than 250 days of assaults from Russian forces, Ukrainian resistance is taking more surprising forms. In an attempt to reconnect to their pre-invasion cutting-edge techno scene a group of young activists have been organising “repair raves” to attract people to help with the massive clean-up effort, dancing together while they do it.

Back in August, it was estimated that over 100,000 Ukrainian houses have been destroyed, but also over 700 key cultural facilities and 20 youth centres are now in ruins. The teens and 20-somethings who would be clubbing in these spaces, are now flocking to volunteer to clear rubble, and repair infrastructure at strategically targeted raves, all while dancing to their favourite DJs.

The group of young activists and music-lovers behind Repair Together are joining a long line of grassroots design activists drawing on joy, humour and friendship – what we refer to as pleasure tactics – to attract and sustain a people-powered movement that is helping to repair a war-torn country.

What is the ‘repair rave’ movement in Ukraine?

For those new to this term – a rave is a dance party (often free, sometimes not entirely legal) where DJs play electronic music (mostly techno) to people who are committed to dancing together – and dancing hard.

After the recovery began in many of the war-ravaged towns, a group of young passionate ravers started hosting targeted repair raves to meet the need for community labour. As winter approaches, the need for clearing rubble and building housing is becoming increasingly urgent. The most recent Instagram post from Repair Together invites followers to join the raves now focused on Kyiv.

In an recent interview with Dazed one of the organisers, Marina Grebinna, shared that the raves grew from 50 volunteers at their first event in Yahidne in July 2022, to hundreds travelling from as far afield as the USA more recently.

Grebinna explains they were cautious about planning parties in places where people had died:

But it was a good way to involve a lot of people, and we really wanted to make volunteering seem like a lifestyle choice… Now, after three months of work on this project, we see a lot of familiar faces. A lot of people do it on a regular basis now.

Responsive, creative, community-driven events like these have two powerful effects. The first is for those directly affected by the violence of war – reconnecting to one another and to a culture and music that they love, resisting the physical and spiritual oppression of war.

The second is for those who have become desensitised to the tragic news of the ongoing conflict, who are drawn in once again due to the seeming incongruity of the pleasure alongside the violence and loss. The idea that people could be enjoying themselves – even raving – during wartime efforts to restore some sense of “home” doesn’t fit with what we consider a picture of conflict, grief, and suffering.

Dancing the talk

The Repair Together events are a perfect example of the kind of grassroots design activism that is not instantly recognised as activism.

Volunteers connect to one another through music, but also spend time listening to stories of the survivors in these towns as they work, bolstering their resolve to create their “new Ukraine”. The visual communication (collages on social media, videos of events) are all invitations to combat the paralysis of oppressive violence and be a proactive part of this future.

It is a beautiful example of the proactive design futuring I research and teach – where people share detailed parts of the futures or society they desire, and then get their hands dirty building it together – not waiting around for it to be done for them/us.

These repair raves sit within a rich history of activism that takes on surprising forms, intersecting with cultural events in new ways, and involving people beyond fundraising, rallies, or petitions by focusing on what design researcher Lenskjold refer to as denoting “collaboration rather than persuasion” in this 2015 journal article.

Parties with purpose, and transitional neighbourhoods

Here in Australia we’re familiar with parties with purpose. Queer and First Nations communities have led the way with Sydney Mardi Gras, and free party crews like Ohms Not Bombs (“dig the sounds not uranium”) have been attracting people to party while protesting for over 30 years.

Read more:
The city as laboratory: what post-quake Christchurch is teaching us about urban recovery and transformation

The direct community clean-up, design, and rebuilding of the Repair Together movement mirrors the creative collaboration of post-quake Christchurch residents. After 80% of the central city was destroyed, and over 10,000 houses demolished, the “urban recovery and transformation” took surprising forms such as washing-machine powered dance-o-mats, and port-a-loo beautification.

Several years after the quake, chair of the Christchurch Transitional Architecture Trust (Dr Barnaby Bennet said,

Hundreds of temporary and transitional projects continue to pop up in the city. International interest in forms of adaptive urbanism and temporary architecture have led to media outlets such as The New York Times and Lonely Planet hailing the vibrant and innovative nature of this projects as a symbol of recovery.

Earnest activism is over, bring on the pleasure

Fatigue and paralysis are common responses to overlapping crises and horrific information.

This is especially true for long-term and overlapping struggles. If your actions and activism don’t bear fruit then it is hard to keep it up. A common approach is to burn hard, and burn out, with the next batch of volunteers following suit. This has been endemic in environmentalist fights, and certainly exists in all battles against systemic problems like racism and sexism, which at times – even with small wins – seem insurmountable.

But activism can take surprising and joyful forms, intersecting with cultural events and ways of being together that actually energise, connect and inform people.

We need to learn from these creative approaches – especially as anti-protest laws (particularly relating to climate activism) continue to escalate.

The author does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article. Relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment are with the following climate justice and worker’s rights organisations: Community Environmental Monitoring (co-founder), Workers for Climate Action (member), National Tertiary Educators Union (member), National Association for Visual Arts (member).

– ref. Raves, repairs, and renewal: how young Ukrainians are bringing joy to the rebuilding effort – https://theconversation.com/raves-repairs-and-renewal-how-young-ukrainians-are-bringing-joy-to-the-rebuilding-effort-193842

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

Treasurer Jim Chalmers says he’ll have a system in place to deal with rising energy prices by
Christmas.

He can’t yet tell us what it will be, because that will depend on the outcome of negotiations with gas and electricity companies, and possibly on legislation he might have to get through parliament.

But thanks one of the treasurer’s most trusted confidants, we can now piece together a pretty good picture of what lies ahead.

Clues from the head of Treasury

The head of the treasurer’s department, Treasury secretary Steven Kennedy, shared his thoughts with a Senate estimates committee last week.

While Kennedy presented them as his own thoughts, Kennedy’s day job is helping Chalmers work out what to do.

The first thing to note is that Kennedy, like Chalmers, doesn’t like the idea of intervening in markets just because prices are high.

As he told the Senate, usually the solution to high prices “is high prices”.

What he means is that usually when prices jump it’s because there isn’t enough of something. The high prices encourage new suppliers to get into business supplying that thing, and that forces prices down.

If that can’t happen quickly enough, the high prices will encourage users of that something to switch to a substitute, as we did when cyclones hit Queensland’s banana crops in 2006 and 2011. We switched to other fruits grown elsewhere.

Interfering with high prices interferes with those adjustments. Usually.

Read more:
Cheaper gas and electricity are within our grasp – here’s what to do

However, at the moment, there needn’t be an Australian gas shortage. Australia’s east coast produces roughly three times as much gas as it uses each year.

Although most of the rest of the gas is exported in accordance with long-term contracts, an increasing amount is being exported over and above those contracts to take advantage of the temporary spike in international prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

If that gas was sold here at pre-invasion prices, there wouldn’t be a shortage, and Australian prices wouldn’t be up to four times what they used to be, pushing manufacturers to the brink and pushing electricity prices way beyond normal.

Whatever is done will be temporary

Kennedy’s first point is that the global price hike is likely to be temporary, or as he put it, “hopefully temporary”. Even if the conflict persists, international supply and demand are likely to adjust to bring global prices back down. That means any intervention should be temporary, so it doesn’t distort markets forever.

Kennedy’s second point is that the gas exporters selling for ultra-high prices over and above what they are contracted to sell are making exceptionally high profits – “well beyond the usual bounds of investment and profit cycles”. They would do just fine if their profits were merely ordinarily high rather than super high.

His third point is that the temporarily high prices are hacking into the profits of other Australian businesses and “raising questions about their viability”.

Read more:
Leading economists back federal government action to curb rising gas and electricity prices

Households, especially lower-income households, will be severely affected.

Summing up more clinically, Kennedy says what’s happening in Ukraine is “leading to a redistribution of income and wealth, and disrupting markets”.

The national interest case for this redistribution is “weak, and it is not likely to lead to a more efficient allocation of resources”.

Beyond a gentleman’s agreement

In August the government signed a sort of gentleman’s agreement with the three east coast gas exporters in which they’ve agreed to offer uncontracted gas to local customers first, before offering it overseas.

But (and it’s a big but) they’ll offer it at international prices, with the only stipulation being that local customers “not pay more” than overseas customers.

Although well-intentioned, it will allow prices many times higher than the A$8 a gigajoule that was common before COVID – high enough to send some customers to the wall.

The two-step solution Kennedy is pointing to goes further, temporarily.

Agreement on lower prices – or a tax might be next

The first step is likely to be to ask the producers to supply enough gas to local customers to get local prices down to A$10 a gigajoule, an idea suggested by the former Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chief Rod Sims.

Sims thinks the producers are likely to agree. The Commonwealth has the power to impose export controls. If they don’t agree, Kennedy has hinted at stage two.

Read more:
Politics with Michelle Grattan: Rod Sims on the gas price crisis

That fallback position would be a temporary tax on the excess profits of exporters and use it to subsidise domestic prices, along the lines of the temporary tax in the United Kingdom.

Economic purists, including those surveyed by The Conversation this month, would prefer the tax was paid to the victims of ultra-high prices in cash, rather than in subsidised prices, because it would encourage them to get off gas.

But Kennedy (and probably Chalmers) believe the ultra-high prices are temporary. Both want to bring down the current ultra-high rate of recorded inflation. It’s something price subsidies would do, but cash handouts would not.

Read more:
Grattan on Friday: We must find a way to get gas prices down, but how?

The two-step nature of the process is probably why it is taking so long.

Chalmers and colleagues need both to ascertain what the exporters are prepared to do about prices if merely asked, and to prepare legislation for a temporary tax should they need to take that final step.

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

– ref. To start cutting gas and electricity prices, here’s what the government looks likely to deliver by Christmas – https://theconversation.com/to-start-cutting-gas-and-electricity-prices-heres-what-the-government-looks-likely-to-deliver-by-christmas-194522

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Owen Peter Missen, Research Assistant in Geochemistry, Monash University

New technologies often mean elements start moving through the environment in new ways. Take lead plumbing: it helped provide access to fresh water for the masses, but left a toxic legacy that remains to this day.

As we transition away from fossil fuels, we are turning to technologies reliant on rare elements that had few uses in the past. One of these is tellurium, an element found in an increasing number of solar panels.

How do we anticipate the potential pitfalls of a dramatic increase in the flux of tellurium through the biosphere? And how do we secure safe and reliable supplies of this commodity?

To start answering these questions, we travelled to an abandoned gold mine in Mexico – and discovered how metal-munching microbes are moving this elusive element through the environment.

Elements on the move

Tellurium is as rare as gold in Earth’s crust, with only around 1 milligram in each metric tonne of average crustal rock. The silvery substance was discovered only in 1783, and until recently its main claim to fame was the fact it can make you smell unpleasantly like garlic if you handle it.

Tellurium is often found in gold deposits. Despite gold’s famous reputation for durability, over the past 15 years we have discovered the precious metal is remarkably mobile in the environment – even growing in trees!

Read more:
Gum trees reveal possible gold ore deposits

It turns out certain microbes can effectively munch on gold, slowly transforming gold nuggets into chemical forms that can move through the environment. These mobile gold compounds (particularly ones that can dissolve in water) are quite toxic: only a few metal-resistant microbes can thrive in the unique micro-environment found on the surface of a grain of gold.

Can tellurium move like gold?

We wanted to test whether microbes can cycle tellurium through the environment in the same way they do for gold. We used natural ore deposits to do this, but this gives us information about what would happen if tellurium-rich materials were dumped by humans.

Finding a suitable site was a challenge. Since high tellurium content is associated with high gold content, most tellurium deposits close to the surface (such as those near Kalgoorlie, Western Australia) have been mined out a long time ago.

Eventually our quest led us to Moctezuma in Mexico, where there is a small former gold mine that is exceptionally rich in tellurium.

At the mine, we studied ores and soils away from the main vein of gold and tellurium. We found tellurium was moving away from the richest ore, and discovered the first evidence of natural tellurium nanoparticles on the surface of pieces of native tellurium.

This discovery is significant because nanoparticles play a special role in the environment, as they have different properties compared to macro-particles. For example, they tend to be more reactive than larger particles, and they may be toxic in their own right.

The tellurium nanoparticles we found appeared very similar to gold nanoparticles that have previously been found on the surface of gold grains.

Nanoparticles and microbes

We also showed that gold and tellurium have rather different modes of transport in soils and groundwater.

Gold particles can be carried a long way in rivers, for example. However, tellurium metal oxidises quickly when exposed to air, forming highly soluble – and toxic – compounds. Hence, there is no physical transport of grains of tellurium in metallic form.

The movement of tellurium is also limited by reaction with common minerals in soils. This is a good thing, since tellurium’s limited mobility keeps concentrations in groundwater low, and hence limits toxic effects.

In our latest research, we have detected tellurium nanoparticles in the soil of Moctezuma, away from the metal-rich outcrops.

Because metallic tellurium nanoparticles are highly reactive and not expected to survive for long in soils, this discovery provides the strongest evidence yet that microbes are actively helping to cycle this rare element through the environment. Tellurium in these soils in most likely subject to a dynamic cycle of oxidation and dissolution followed by reduction and precipitation, all controlled by microbial activity.

Cleaner mining

We are only now beginning to understand how microbes cycle “exotic” elements such as tellurium. Understanding these “biogeochemical” processes is important to understand how elements move in our landscapes. We can then assess potential risks, and design efficient mitigation strategies.

Read more:
We’re using microbes to clean up toxic electronic waste – here’s how

This understanding can also aid in developing more sustainable mining (and recycling) technologies. Around Moctezuma, at least, microbes effectively separate gold from tellurium in soils.

Innovative solutions will be required to address our planet’s need to generate more energy more sustainably, and cleaning up mine product processing to better separate all potential commodity elements is just one of these ways.

The authors thank Angel Rea (Flinders University & CSIRO) and Ella Lausberg (Monash University) for their assistance with analytical measurements and figure generation.

Barbara Etschmann receives funding from the Australian Research Council and from a range of mining companies.

Jeremiah Shuster and the Tübingen Structural Microscopy Core Facility are supported by the Excellence Strategy of the German Federal and State Governments.

Joel Brugger receives funding from the Australian Research Council and from a range of mining companies.

Stuart Mills receives funding from The Ian Potter Foundation.

Owen Peter Missen 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 metal-munching microbes help the rare, toxic element tellurium circulate in the environment – https://theconversation.com/how-metal-munching-microbes-help-the-rare-toxic-element-tellurium-circulate-in-the-environment-194518

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Aprajita Sarcar, Laureate Postdoctoral Fellow, UNSW Sydney

India will surpass China as the country with the world’s largest population in 2023, according to the United Nations World Population Prospects 2022 report.

The UN also projects the global population has reached eight billion as of Tuesday.

As early as March 2022, reports circulated on Chinese social media that India’s population had already surpassed China’s, though this was later dispelled by experts.

Women in India today are having fewer children than their mothers had. But despite a lower fertility rate, the country’s population is still growing.

The idea the country should adopt something like China’s former “one-child policy” has been moving from the fringe to the political mainstream.

But the notion that India should emulate China’s past population policies is misguided at best, and dangerous at worst.

Both countries are struggling with the legacy of harsh population policies, and stricter population controls in India could have disastrous consequences for women and minority communities.

Given Australia’s growing ties to India, it should be concerned about what population policy could mean for the erosion of democratic norms in India.

Read more:
8 billion humans: How population growth and climate change are connected as the ‘Anthropocene engine’ transforms the planet

Unintended consequences

India implemented the world’s first national family planning program in 1952. The birthrate began to drop, but only gradually, and family sizes remained stubbornly high. The government then implemented widespread forced sterilisation particularly of Muslims and the urban poor, especially during “The Emergency” years of 1975-77.

After the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, infant mortality dropped significantly. Between 1950 and 1980, China’s population almost doubled. The “one-child policy” – limiting births per couple through coercive measures – was implemented in the early 1980s, and fertility dropped dramatically.

In both India and China, these population policies had unintended consequences.

In China, the government found that once fertility rates dropped, they were faced with an ageing population. Even after relaxing birth control policies to allow all couples to have two children in 2015, and three children in 2021, birth rates remain low, particularly among the urban middle class favoured by the government.

In both countries, skewed sex ratios caused by sex selective abortions have led to a range of social problems, including forced marriages and human trafficking.

China has found that despite reversing course, it cannot undo this rapid demographic transition. Urban, middle-class couples face mounting financial pressure, including the cost of raising children and of caring for the elderly. While the government has encouraged “high quality” urban women to give birth, rural and minority women are still discouraged from having more children.

As in China, in some states in India, women’s education and their aspirations for their children have contributed to lower birth rates. Like China, these states now face an ageing population. Birth rates in other states with high Muslim populations have also declined, but at a slower rate.

Unfair impact

Despite declining birth rates, some politicians have advocated for the adoption of something like China’s former one-child policy in northern states with large Muslim populations. These calls have less to do with demographic reality, and more to do with majoritarian Hindu nationalist concerns around Muslim and “lower-caste” fertility.

The worry here is that the coming population milestone will push India to adopt knee-jerk population policies. These could in turn unfairly affect women and minorities.

Four Indian states with large Muslim populations have already passed versions of a “two-child policy”. What’s more, built into many of these policies are incentives for families to have just one child. And in 2021, a senior government minister proposed a national “one-child” policy.

Like past population control policies, they’re targeted at Muslim and lower-caste families, and illustrate a broader Hindu nationalist agenda with anti-democratic tendencies.

As happened at the height of China’s one-child policy, Indians could lose government jobs and more if such laws were passed at the national level. Some Indian states and municipalities have already legislated that people with more than two children are ineligible for government jobs and to stand for political office.

The irony is that India’s birth rate and the size of families are decreasing because of women’s own reproductive choices. Many women are getting surgical contraception after having two children (or after having a son).

However, financial inducements for doctors and the women means poorer women are pressured to undergo these procedures.

In other words, the trend in India is towards smaller families already. As the 2022 UN report itself notes, no drastic intervention from the state is required.

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. Calls for a ‘one-child policy’ in India are misguided at best, and dangerous at worst – https://theconversation.com/calls-for-a-one-child-policy-in-india-are-misguided-at-best-and-dangerous-at-worst-193854

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Colin D. Butler, Honorary Professor, Australian National University

The United Nations Environment Programme recently published a scientific review that looks at environmental threats and risks in light of the COVID pandemic. It analyses links between human infectious diseases and nature and what we know about how diseases (zoonoses) can transfer from animals to humans.

The report (which I wrote) argues laboratory procedures (including “gain of function” research) should be recognised as one potential driver of zoonotic “spillover”.

The term “gain of function” applies to the functional consequences of changes in the genetic makeup of an organism, including viruses. Such changes can be harmless, or even beneficial. They can occur naturally, when organisms mutate and evolve.

But experiments to deliberately induce mutations are increasingly done in laboratories. In that context, gain of function generally refers to attempts to confer greater transmission and/or virulence to a virus.

Supporters of such research argue it promises to help us be better prepared for pandemics. They acknowledge risks, but argue these can be managed by the use of highly regulated secure laboratories. Others maintain that the potential risks are simply too high and this type of research should be banned.

Read more:
Why gain-of-function research matters

How DNA discoveries led to ‘gain of function’ research

During the second world war, DNA (and later RNA) was identified as the key genetic molecule. DNA’s (and RNA’s) structure provides unique “instructions” for every living organism.

Within just three decades “recombinant” technology made it possible to splice together genetic material from different species. Today, this can be done with consummate ease.

Numerous benefits followed, such as the insertion of insulin-producing genes into bacteria. This enabled cheaper, large-scale production of this hormone, essential to treat type I diabetes.

A 2019 report valued the market in therapeutics, mostly arising through recombinant genetic technologies, at more than US$315 billion (A$490 billion). The use of crops genetically engineered to resist disease is also increasing.

However, this type of research also sparked debate and concern.

A key figure in this emerging technology was Paul Berg, a biochemist who shared the 1980 Nobel Prize. Berg’s early work focused on modifying the SV-40 virus, known to be involved in tumour growth. Berg abandoned an experiment, inserting SV-40 into a bacterium, for fear, expressed by “many colleagues” that the newly created organism might infect humans, causing cancer.

For the next few decades, scientists navigated the complex ethics and developing technology around gene splicing, under increasingly secure conditions to limit foreseeable biohazard risks.

Bird flu

Then, in 2011, researchers performed experiments with a bird flu virus called H5N1. The virus killed an alarming percentage of humans diagnosed with it. Its saving grace was that it had very poor human-to-human transmission.

Controversy arose when two teams of researchers explored and found ways to make H5N1 transmissible between mammals. After first genetically modifying H5N1 researchers performing “serial passage” experiments in a mammalian model (ferrets) to see if they could further adapt it for mammalian to transmission. They succeeded.

Although it wasn’t clear the virus would be as deadly in humans, critics worried this new strain might escape (even from highly secure labs) and cause millions of deaths.

These concerns led US authorities to delay the studies’ full publication and to later restrict funding guidelines. This was intended to reduce genetic experiments perceived as risky.

Bans imposed, lifted and re-imposed

A brief, voluntary ban on such research was introduced then lifted in 2012. This type of work was generally called “dual use” because it may be intended for good but could be either misused for harm or inflict harm poorly due to bad luck.

However, lapses in US biosecurity in 2014 strengthened the case for a more careful stance. A US ban on funding for such work was imposed later that year. This time it was not voluntary. Also in 2014, the Cambridge Working Group declaration called for a global ban on work that might lead to the creation of “potential pandemic pathogens”.

Supporters of unfettered genetic research continued to insist the benefits outweighed the risks. They also said the risks were manageable if research was conducted in highly secure laboratories. In 2017, the US ban was overturned.

Read more:
Working with dangerous viruses sounds like trouble – but here’s what scientists learn from studying pathogens in secure labs

Now COVID

Today, COVID has magnified anxiety around this type of genetic research, irrespective of the pandemic’s true origin.

In September, the World Health Organization published a framework to help scientists mitigate biorisks and govern dual-use research of concern. It recognised that gain of function of concern is a real issue, with potentially catastrophic consequences. Global biosecurity expert Raina MacIntyre has discussed these concerns recently.

The National Health and Medical Research Council recently completed a review of Australian gain of function research. Such research relies on the integrity of researchers and that all such work must be done in an appropriately safe environment. Approval is also needed from a central authority.

My ongoing work argues we may be nearing a return to an earlier, more cautious approach to biorisks. In our globally connected context, the potential risks are just too high.

Read more:
The COVID lab leak theory is dead. Here’s how we know the virus came from a Wuhan market

Colin D. Butler is a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee for Doctors for the Environment, Australia.

– ref. ‘Gain of function’ research can create experimental viruses. In light of COVID, it should be more strictly regulated – or banned – https://theconversation.com/gain-of-function-research-can-create-experimental-viruses-in-light-of-covid-it-should-be-more-strictly-regulated-or-banned-193306

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Melody Smith, Professor, Co-Associate Head (Research), University of Auckland

C+ – that’s Aotearoa New Zealand’s overall grade in the most comprehensive global assessment of physical activity in children and adolescents. Even more worryingly, the 57 participating countries scored a D average overall.

The Active Healthy Kids Global Alliance’s Global Matrix 4.0 used ten indicators related to physical activity to score countries’ performance. The findings are consistent with earlier assessments and show children and adolescents around the world are not moving enough to promote healthy growth and development.

The report’s authors say young people worldwide have formed new habits “in response to the new normal, provoked by a socially accepted screen-centric indoor living society, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, global conflicts and severe weather associated with climate change”.

Aotearoa’s grade was better than the global average because of our high rates of participation in organised sports and physical activity, where we tied for fifth place (B-), compared with a C- overall.

An indicator that scores government initiatives related to physical activity placed Aotearoa at the top of all countries, in part thanks to Ihi Aotearoa/Sport NZ’s development of a national outcomes framework and Waka Kotahi’s programme to make streets safer for people, rolled out in early 2020.

A dismal D for active transport

Despite these investments, Aotearoa had one of the lowest grades for active transport (D), with only five countries performing more poorly. This is in keeping with a trend of low and declining active transport over the last decade.

Read more:
NZ’s most walkable towns and cities ranked: see how your neighbourhood stacks up

Denmark and Japan topped the table for active transportation with an A-, compared with a C- average overall. Denmark noted their comprehensive networks of cycle lanes and their government’s persistent efforts to implement safe routes to school as key contributors to their success.

Research in Aotearoa with children, schools and whānau/families consistently shows we need improved traffic safety to facilitate active transport. There is a dearth of connected and safe cycling infrastructure across the country, resulting in extremely low rates of biking.

In earlier research we also identified safe road crossings as a priority and called for more signalised crossings and raised zebra crossings to slow traffic down. Initiatives to improve driver behaviour are also essential – speeding, inattentive driving, red-light running and failing to stop at pedestrian crossings are all common.

Other factors also come into play. School leadership and partnerships with community groups and agencies can both play an integral role in the success of initiatives that promote active transport. Ultimately, getting to and from school actively needs to be a safe and easy option.

It is worth noting that transformative changes have happened since we collated evidence for our report card, including the government’s NZ$350 million transport choices programme. But even when better active transport options are in place, it takes time for people to change how they travel. We can expect an increase in active transport to lag behind the completion of infrastructure.

Addressing inequities for adolescents

We have identified several inequities for young people in Aotearoa across all indicators.

We found striking differences for sedentary time across age groups, with the worst outcomes for rangatahi/adolescents in school years 11-13 (aged about 15-17 years). In this group, only 12% met the threshold of no more than two hours per day of recreational screen time, compared with 36% of those in school years 7-10 and 61% in years 0-6.

Read more:
Kids’ screen time rose by 50% during the pandemic. 3 tips for the whole family to bring it back down

This teenage group was also less likely to report being active in physical education at school or to participate in organised sport (31% and 44% respectively), compared with younger children (years 0-10) whose rates were between 64%-74% for these indicators.

Active transport was also lower, at 22%, compared with 30% of children in school years 0-6 and 34% in years 7-10. Unsurprisingly, overall physical activity was also lower for those in school years 11-13, at 47% (C-), compared with around 60% for their younger counterparts.

Considering physical inactivity tracks from adolescence into adulthood, we urgently need effective mechanisms to facilitate activity in ways that work for adolescents.

It is likely the shift away from compulsory physical education from year 11 has a significant impact on school-based activity. Physical education and organised sports can also be unwelcoming and unsafe spaces for many young people, particularly if they don’t fit the norm, for example around athleticism and gender, (dis)ability and body size.

Adolescents are a diverse group with numerous competing priorities, notwithstanding the significant impact of transitioning through this life stage in the context of climate change and a global pandemic. Providing a range of safe and welcoming opportunities for physical activity that meet young peoples’ needs is essential.

Melody Smith receives funding from the Health Research Council of New Zealand, Lotteries Health Research, and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.

– ref. New Zealand scored C+ for physical activity in children and teens – what’s driving this and what can be done? – https://theconversation.com/new-zealand-scored-c-for-physical-activity-in-children-and-teens-whats-driving-this-and-what-can-be-done-194241

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Saman Khalesi, Postdoctoral Fellow of the National Heart Foundation & Senior Lecturer and Discipline Lead in Nutrition, School of Health, Medical and Applied Sciences, CQUniversity Australia

If your tummy seems to feel full or stretched and is rumbling all the time, you’re not alone. Up to 30% of people of all ages experience bloating, with symptoms such as gassiness, a sense of fullness and pressure.

This can be with or without distention (a visible increase in abdominal girth).

So what might be behind your bloating?

Read more:
A poo dose a day may keep bipolar away. When it comes to mental health, what else could poo do?

The role of gas

Bloating is in fact a complex condition that can be caused by several direct and indirect factors. Gas often plays a role.

Gas production in the digestive system is part of the normal digestion process, and is released through the mouth (burps) or anus (farts).

On average, our gas expulsion is around 600–700 millilitres per day, resulting in around 14 farts a day. That said, there isn’t a set number for the normal amount of gas or expulsions; each body is different.

Bloating can occur as a result of retained gas, excess gas production, altered gas transit (changes in the speed and movement of gas), or intestinal hypersensitivity.

An imbalanced gut microbiome can lead to the overproduction of gas.

We have more than 40 trillion microbes living in and on our body. They can be helpful or harmful. The balance between these helpful and harmful microbes plays an important role in our immune response, metabolism and health.

These bacteria need food to survive. Their food comes from fermenting carbohydrates such as dietary fibre from the plants we eat.

One of the byproducts of this fermentation process is hydrogen gas.

Most of these microbes live in the lower parts of our intestine (colon). The upper parts of the intestine (small intestine) have far fewer microbes.

But if an excessive number of microbes colonise the small intestine (a condition known as small intestine bacterial overgrowth), more gas is produced in the small intestine.

This can lead to bloating, abdominal discomfort, diarrhoea and nausea.

Could it be IBS, lactose issues or FODMAPs?

Some disorders of the intestine and colon can affect the amount of gas and severity of bloating symptoms.

For example, in constipation, movement of stools is reduced, allowing more time for the bacteria to ferment the stool content, increasing gas production.

Bloating is also very common in people with irritable bowel syndrom (IBS).

Changes in gut muscle tone and greater sensitivity to gas contribute to bloating in IBS sufferers.

Bloating may also occur because of poor digestion and malabsorption of some carbohydrates.

Lactose malabsorption (in those with lactose intolerance) is a common issue.

Symptoms may also occur with other digestive resistant short-chain carbohydrates known as FODMAPs (fermentable oligo-, di-, monosaccharides and polyols).

FODMAPs are found in a wide variety of foods, including certain fruit and vegetables, grains and cereals, nuts, legumes, lentils and dairy foods.

While these are good foods for our gut bacteria, they can add to gas production and trigger bloating symptoms, especially in people with digestive disorders (like IBS). They can also cause water to be drawn into the intestines, causing distension. This can contribute to bloating.

Other factors: salt, hormones or swallowing air

There are of course other factors that could be behind bloating.

For example, consuming too much sodium or salt in your diet causes water retention, resulting in abdominal distention. But this may also alter the gut microbiome and influence gas production.

For many women, bloating can be linked to the menstrual cycle phase. This is most common at the onset of bleeding, when peak fluid retention occurs, but is also related to underlying hormonal changes.

Swallowing too much air, especially when eating, can also increase the amount of gas entering the gastrointestinal tract and lead to bloating.

Talking while eating, eating in a rush, and carbonated beverages can also increase the amount of air swallowed.

How can I reduce bloating?

Dietary strategies can be effective ways of managing bloating. While foods that trigger symptoms can be different for everyone, you could try to:

• eat fewer gas-producing FODMAP foods such as onion, cabbage, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, dried beans and lentils

• eat fewer foods containing lactose, like milk, ice-cream and some yoghurts (there are lactose-free alternatives for people with intolerance)

• replace carbonated drinks such as soft-drinks with water, and drink less alcohol

• consume more probiotics (such as yoghurt or certain fermented foods)

• do more exercise, as mild physical activity enhances intestinal gas clearance and can reduce symptoms of abdominal bloating

• eat and drink more slowly; taking your time means you can enjoy your food, but will also help you swallow less air.

See an accredited practising dietitian for personalised advice on managing symptoms using dietary strategies.

When to see a GP

Most of the time, bloating goes away soon enough and is no cause for concern. But consider seeing a doctor if:

• your gas is persistent and severe and it’s impacting your quality of life

• your gas is associated with other symptoms such as vomiting, diarrhoea, constipation, unintentional weight loss or blood in the stool.

Read more:
Health Check: should healthy people take probiotic supplements?

Dr Khalesi was supported by a Postdoctoral Fellowship (Award No. 102584) from the National Heart Foundation of Australia.

Chris Irwin 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 am I bloated? Here are some possibilities to consider – https://theconversation.com/why-am-i-bloated-here-are-some-possibilities-to-consider-190977

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tom Chodor, Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, Monash University

Last Friday, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese jetted off for a marathon of international summits, the most significant of which will be the G20, held in Bali.

Forged during the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC) – allegedly on Kevin Rudd’s own initiative – the G20 brings together 20 of the world’s largest economies, styling itself as the premier forum for international economic cooperation.

While attention focuses on the annual leaders’ summit, much of the G20’s work happens quietly behind the scenes, with economic ministers and officials meeting throughout the year under a rotating presidency to address global economic challenges.

Yet, this is probably not why you’ve heard of the G20 recently. Rather, the focus has been on Vladimir Putin. Since Russia invaded Ukraine, Western leaders have made it clear they would not accept sitting in the same room as Putin. Yet, the host, Indonesian President Joko Widodo, has rejected calls to disinvite Russia, offering a compromise by also inviting Volodymyr Zelensky, even though Ukraine is not part of the G20.

Jokowi’s stance stems partially from the nature of the G20 – it’s not a “by invitation” organisation – and partially to do with Indonesia. The country has a proud history of geopolitical non-alignment, and its position is actually closer to the rest of the Global South. While critical of the war, developing countries don’t see it in such existential terms as the West, and have called for a negotiated solution that would involve compromises on both sides.

Nevertheless, the fiasco over Putin has frustrated the Indonesians, who saw it as ruining their big moment on the international stage. In the end, Putin solved the problem by deciding to stay home, sending his Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov instead. Nevertheless, Lavrov is likely to get an icy reception. Last time he met with his G20 counterparts, he walked out after facing criticism over the war.

Can the G20 can actually make progress on its policy agenda?

There’s plenty to deal with. The pandemic has wrecked the global economy – crippling supply chains, slowing global trade and leaving numerous developing countries on the verge of bankruptcy.

More recently, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has created a global energy crisis and runaway inflation, prompting central banks to drastically raise interest rates. This, however, has only increased global financial volatility, as investors flood to the US bond market, triggering an arms race over rates.

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All this is adding up to what the International Monetary Fund is predicting will be a bad 2023 for the global economy, with around one third of countries likely to enter recession, including, potentially, Australia.

Yet, the G20 is unlikely to make much progress on these issues. The summit comes at a time of deep divisions between the world’s powers, not only over Russia-Ukraine, but also between the US and China, the US and its Middle Eastern allies, and within the EU following the surge of populist parties in places such as Italy.

In this context, there’s little consensus on how to address these problems. It seems the best the G20 can hope for is to try to stabilise these tensions by offering world leaders a chance to meet and talk face to face.

The main event will be the meeting between US President Joe Biden and China’s Xi Jinping, their first as leaders. Again, there’s plenty to discuss: China’s sabre rattling over Taiwan, the human rights abuses in Xinjiang, the continuing tariffs on China’s exports imposed by Donald Trump, and Biden’s more recent efforts to effectively kill off China’s computer chip industry.

Read more:
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Don’t expect much progress on these thorny issues, which are at the core of a fledgling Cold War between the two superpowers. But at the very least, the aim will be to take the tensions down a notch or two, and see if cooperation is still possible in areas of mutual interest, like climate change.

Thawing the relationship with China

Australia is also aiming for its own rapprochement with China. Albanese confirmed he’ll be meeting with Xi on Tuesday afternoon, the first such meeting since 2017. The new Labor government has worked behind the scenes to thaw the relationship put in the diplomatic freezer under the Coalition, following spats over foreign interference and the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Albanese will be asking for a removal of $20 billion worth of tariffs on Australia’s exports, as well as pushing for the release of two Australians currently imprisoned on spurious spying charges.

China has its own sources of discontent, not least the AUKUS pact, and the recently announced expansion of the military facilities in Darwin to make them capable of hosting US B52 bombers. The two sides are also locked in an escalating competition over influence in the Pacific, with Solomon Islands as the biggest flashpoint.

Again, it’s unlikely these issues will be resolved in Bali, given the two countries are at opposite sides of the Cold War standoff. Still, it’s good to talk; the last six years have shown how the lack of regular dialogue leads to escalating tensions.

It seems that in a world of fragmenting power blocs, rising tensions and deepening economic crisis, creating a platform for the biggest players to talk is the best the G20 can do.

Tom Chodor 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 G20 may be a talk fest, but it’s a talk fest we need at a time of growing division – https://theconversation.com/the-g20-may-be-a-talk-fest-but-its-a-talk-fest-we-need-at-a-time-of-growing-division-194156

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gemma Sharp, NHMRC Early Career Senior Research Fellow, Monash University

Although we cannot be sure of the exact numbers of Australians undergoing cosmetic procedures, as there is no requirement for health professionals to report their statistics, there is a consensus demand is on the rise.

In 2015, the Cosmetic Physicians College of Australasia found Australians were spending more than $1 billion a year on non-invasive cosmetic procedures like Botox and fillers. This is more than 40% higher, per capita, than in the United States.

In the US, where procedure statistics are reported, there was a 42% increase in the number of filler procedures and a 40% increase in Botox procedures performed in the last year alone.

Rates of mental health issues in this group may be higher than the general population, but seemingly not enough is being done to ensure the psychological safety of people requesting cosmetic procedures.

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Body dysmorphic disorder

Body image concerns are generally the main motivator for seeking cosmetic procedures of all kinds. These concerns are usually focused on the body part where the cosmetic intervention is sought, such as the nose for a rhinoplasty.

Severe body image concerns are a key feature of several mental health conditions. The most prevalent in people seeking cosmetic procedures is body dysmorphic disorder. In the general community, around 1-3% of people will experience body dysmorphic disorder, but in populations seeking cosmetic surgery, this rises to 16-23%.

Body dysmorphic disorder involves a preoccupation or obsession with one or more perceived flaws in physical appearance which are not visible or seem minor to other people. In response to the distress regarding the flaw, the person with body dysmorphic disorder will perform repetitive behaviours (such as excessively checking body parts in the mirror) and mental acts (such as comparing their appearance with other people).

These concerns can have a significant negative impact on the person’s daily life, with some people too distressed to leave their home or even eat dinner with family members out of fear of being seen by others.

With the distress associated with body dysmorphic disorder seemingly stemming from physical appearance issues, it makes sense someone with body dysmorphic disorder is far more likely to turn up at a cosmetic clinic for treatment than a mental health clinic.

The problem is, cosmetic intervention usually makes the person with body dysmorphic disorder feel the same or worse after the procedure. They may become even more preoccupied with the perceived flaw and seek further cosmetic procedures.

Patients with body dysmorphic disorder are also more likely to take legal action against their treating cosmetic practitioner after believing they have not received the result they wanted.

For these reasons, body dysmorphic disorder is generally considered by health professionals to be a “red flag” or contraindication (a reason not to undergo a medical procedure) for cosmetic procedures.

However, this is not entirely clear-cut. Some studies have shown people with body dysmorphic disorder can improve their symptoms after cosmetic intervention, but the obsession may just move to another body part and the body dysmorphic disorder diagnosis remain.

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What about other mental health conditions?

Body dysmorphic disorder is by far the most well-studied disorder in this area, but is not the only mental health condition that may be associated with poorer outcomes from cosmetic procedures.

According to a recent systematic review, the rates of depression (5-26%), anxiety (11-22%) and personality disorders (0-53%) in people seeking cosmetic surgery may be higher than the general population (which are estimated to be 10%, 16% and 12% respectively).

However, these rates should be interpreted with some caution as they depend greatly on how the mental health diagnosis was made – clinician-led interview (higher rates) versus mental health questionnaire (lower rates). Some interview approaches can suggest higher rates of mental health issues as they may be quite unstructured and thus have questionable validity compared with highly structured questionnaires.

Besides body dysmorphic disorder, the research investigating other mental health conditions is limited. This may just be due to the fact body image focus is at the core of body dysmorphic disorder, which makes it a logical focus for cosmetic surgery research compared with other types of psychiatric disorders.

Read more:
Body dysmorphia sufferers have abnormal visual processes

So what should happen?

Ideally, all cosmetic surgeons and practitioners should receive sufficient training to enable them to conduct a brief routine assessment of all prospective patients. Those with signs indicating they are unlikely to derive psychological benefit from the procedure should undergo a further assessment by a mental health professional before undergoing the procedure.

This could include an in-depth clinical interview about motivations for the procedure, and completing a range of standard mental health questionnaires.

If a person was found to have a mental health issue in the assessment process, it does not necessarily mean the mental health professional would recommend against pursuing the procedure. They may suggest a course of psychological therapy to address the issue of concern and then undergo the cosmetic procedure.

At the moment, assessments are only recommended rather than mandated for cosmetic surgery (and not at all for injectables like Botox and fillers). The guidelines say evaluation should be undertaken if there are signs the patient has “significant underlying psychological problems”.

This means we are relying on the cosmetic medical practitioner being capable of detecting such issues when they may have received only basic psychological training at medical school, and when their business may possibly benefit from not attending to such diagnoses.

An August 2022 independent review by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency and the Medical Board of Australia recommended the guidelines around mental health assessment should be “strengthened” and emphasised the importance of medical practitioners receiving more training in the detection of psychiatric disorders.

Ultimately, as cosmetic practitioners are treating patients who are seeking treatment for psychological rather than medical reasons, they must have the wellbeing of the patient front-of-mind, both out of professional integrity and to protect themselves from legal action. Mandatory evaluation of all patients seeking any kind of cosmetic procedure would likely improve patient satisfaction overall.

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, visit the Butterfly Foundation or call the national helpline on 1800 33 4673.

Gemma Sharp receives funding from an NHMRC Early Career Research Fellowship (Health Professional Category).

Nichola Rumsey consults with The Australasian Foundation for Plastic Surgery.

– ref. What’s the connection between cosmetic procedures and mental health? – https://theconversation.com/whats-the-connection-between-cosmetic-procedures-and-mental-health-190841

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Toni Hay, Expert in Indigenous climate adaptation, Indigenous Knowledge

Spring is here, and with it comes the threat of more floods. Australia is currently experiencing its third consecutive year of a La Niña weather cycle. This means we expect more rainfall than average over the spring and summer months. There is heightened risk of floods, tropical cyclones, prolonged heatwaves and grass fires in southern Australia. This has already led to flooding in parts of the country, and communities are now bracing for more bad weather.

According to the Human Rights Council Report 75-80% of the world’s population will be negatively impacted by climate change. It also states climate change will exacerbate existing poverty and inequality and have the most severe impact on our poor.

Indigenous people in Australia make up just 3.8% of the population. Still, they account for nearly 30% of those living in poverty and up to 50% in remote communities.

Some Indigenous people live in poor and/or overcrowded housing. These properties are often not prepared for natural disasters or the effects of climate change such as persistently hotter temperatures. In addition, there is limited nearby infrastructure or resources to prepare for and respond to emergencies.

All levels of government have been criticised for a lack of action in supporting Indigenous communities during times of crisis. This now needs to be addressed urgently, given the destructive weather is forecast to continue in the coming months.

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Past disasters have shown First Nations people are more vulnerable

Earlier this year, when floods hit the town of Lismore in New South Wales, the local Indigenous community was left to fend for themselves, with many people losing their homes and possessions. First Nations communities were among those worst affected, with many people stranded without access to food or clean water.

This disaster shone a light on the disparities between First Nations communities and the rest of Australia when it comes to preparedness for natural disasters. While federal, state and local government provide some support such as emergency services, there is often a lack of disaster prevention measures achieved through thorough planning that is available for these communities.

As of August, six months after the disaster, there were still 1,296 people homeless in the northern NSW region, 500 of whom were First Nations people. First Nations people have been disproportionately affected by this disaster, with many still struggling to find permanent housing.

The Parliamentary flood report has found SES and Resilience NSW failed Lismore communities after the floods. A major failing has been the lack of planning and preparation, as we are seeing again this spring.

The parliamentary flood report for NSW has 37 recommendations, it does not include culture or culturally safe resources as outlined below. The United Nations Disaster Risk Reduction recommends including the whole Indigenous community and two-way information sharing.

Two-way information sharing means that information flows not only from government and other outside agencies to Indigenous communities, but also from Indigenous communities to government and other agencies. This ensures everyone has a better understanding of disaster risks faced by the community and can work together to develop more effective and culturally appropriate mitigation and response strategies.

Read more:
Like many disasters in Australia, Aboriginal people are over-represented and under-resourced in the NSW floods

We need Indigenous-led disaster strategies

Disaster risk reduction plans must be designed in a way that takes into account peoples’ needs and cultural values. This includes ensuring that evacuation efforts do not result in displacement, and relief and recovery programmes are tailored to meet the specific needs of Indigenous communities. This would mean finding ways to evacuate communities that don’t take them too far from Country, if their preference is to remain nearby.

First Nations communities need adequate funding to implement local disaster reduction plans inclusive of culture. They also need access to professionals who specialise in culturally inclusive climate adaptation and disaster risk reduction program development. Indigenous-led initiatives are often more effective than externally imposed programs at reducing disaster risk. This is because they are better able to consider Indigenous communities’ specific needs and vulnerabilities. Supporting Indigenous peoples with access to resources to achieve this is also essential for them to effectively lead and participate in disaster risk management efforts.

Researchers Wanhui Huang and Sadahisa Kato found success with communities in the Philippines and Bangladesh developing disaster risk reduction plans. These countries’ local governments opted to move communities to higher ground nearby instead of evacuating them to a distant place.

These plans were developed after it was realised that communities forced from their homes more than once a year were not only losing their homes and belongings, but also access to health centres, children’s education, and areas with cultural significance to reduce the complex impacts on physical and mental health as well as well-being which is far more than has been observed after single disasters.

By moving these communities to higher ground before a disaster strikes, local governments hope to help ease the transition of evacuation by minimising the disruption to people’s lives.

Here in Australia, Indigenous peoples must be included in local, state and national disaster risk reduction policies and plans. This is essential to ensure their rights and needs are respected and considered in prevention and response to natural disasters.

Indigenous peoples have a wealth of traditional knowledge and experience that can be invaluable in disaster risk reduction efforts. These knowledges are often based on a deep understanding of the local environment and can provide practical insights into reducing disaster risk.

Indigenous peoples have 65,000 years of resilience in the face of natural disasters, which can inform disaster risk-reduction strategies. It is vital these communities have a voice in decision-making about disaster response and recovery efforts. Through this we can effectively reduce the risks associated with extreme weather through an inclusive and comprehensive approach.

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. Effects of climate change such as flooding makes existing disadvantages for Indigenous communities so much worse – https://theconversation.com/effects-of-climate-change-such-as-flooding-makes-existing-disadvantages-for-indigenous-communities-so-much-worse-192090

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Shulmeister, Professor and Head of School of Earth and Environment, University of Canterbury, and Adjunct Professor, The University of Queensland

Scientists had always been puzzled why the Great Barrier Reef formed long after Australia had conditions suitable for reef growth. It turns out the answer might be K’gari (Fraser Island).

K’gari, the world’s largest sand island and a UNESCO World Heritage Area, juts out from the Australian coastline where the continent extends furthest east. It lies at the northern end of one of the world’s largest and longest longshore drift systems. If not for the presence of K’gari, the sand carried by this system would continue to migrate northward directly into the area of the Great Barrier Reef, which starts a little north of the island.

The volumes of sand carried along the coast are immense. It is estimated 500,000 cubic metres of sand moves north past each metre of shoreline every year.

K’gari plays a key role in delivering this sand to the deep ocean. Sand moving along its eastern beaches is directed across the continental shelf and into the deep immediately north of the island. The dominant south-easterly trades would drive sand all the way into the full tropics if K’gari did not direct it off the shelf.

Our research, published today, has established the age of K’gari as being older than the Greater Barrier Reef. This suggests the reef became established only after the island protected it from the northward drift of sand.

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Why does the reef depend on the island?

The southern limit of the Great Barrier Reef is not a result of the climate being too cool further south. Corals can and do grow many hundreds of kilometres further south in places like Moreton Bay (Brisbane) and Lord Howe Island.

The main limiting factor for the southern extent of the reef is the drowning of corals by the rivers of sand going north. The corals in places like Moreton Bay occur where they have a hard substrate to grow on and are sheltered from sediment inundation.

The sand comes from sediment delivered to the Tasman Sea via the Hawkesbury and Hunter rivers in mid-New South Wales. Prevailing south-easterly breezes and their associated coastal wave systems sweep these sediments north for more than 1,000 kilometres.

The geological setting of eastern Australia is rather stable, so this longshore drift system should have been in operation for many millions of years. The Great Barrier Reef corals could not have survived without some protection from this northward flow of sand.

The techniques we used to establish the age of the coastal dune fields of K’gari and the adjacent Cooloola Sand Mass on the mainland south of K’gari show the first coastal dunes date to about 1 million years ago. The modern dune fields were established by 700,000-800,000 years ago. Prior to 1 million years and definitely prior to 700,000-800,000 years ago, sand would have drifted north into the region of the modern barrier reef.

Read more:
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Why did K’gari form at that time?

This timing coincides with a major geo-astronomical event, the Mid-Pleistocene Transition. At this time Earth’s glacial cycles changed from a period of about 40,000 years to about 100,000 years. This change had a major impact on global sea levels because the longer cycles supported the growth of larger ice caps during cold periods.

Prior to this transition, global sea levels went up and down about 70 metres between warm (interglacial) and cold (glacial) periods. Afterwards, the range increased to 120-130m.

Under a longshore drift system some sediment “leaks” out into deeper water where currents and waves are not strong enough to move it. A drop of 70m would still leave the South-East Queensland coastline on the continental shelf. So, before the Mid-Pleistocene Transition, sand moving north would be gradually stored on the outer parts of the continental shelf, potentially accumulating over millions of years.

Once the first 100,000-year cycle occurred, sea levels would have dropped to the outer edge of the continental shelf. During the start of the next warm period, rising sea levels would erode the accumulated sands and transport it shoreward. This would drive a major period of dune building along the coast.

This was a major event because sediment accumulated over millions of years was added back into the sedimentary system. The very different dune types associated with plentiful sand are recorded in the oldest parts of the cliff sections at Cooloola and K’gari.

Again, remnants of dunes formed when sea levels were low are preserved directly off this coastline. We have shown a major pulse of sand was released into the dune systems formed during the earliest high sea-level periods of the 100,000-year climate cycles.

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How does that line up with the age of the reef?

K’gari was constructed in its “modern” form between about 1 million and 700,000 years ago. Once it was in place, any further sand driven up the coast during interglacial high sea levels was lost to deep water off the north of K’gari.

The last piece of the puzzle is the age of the Great Barrier Reef. For a heavily investigated natural wonder, this is remarkably poorly defined, but the oldest evidence dates the reef to about 650,000 years ago.

In short, coral reef development appears to not have started until sediment drift from the south was blocked off. In this way the whole of the east coast of Australia is linked together as a single story and K’gari has played a key role in the formation and protection of the Great Barrier Reef.

James Shulmeister received funding for this work from the Australian Research Council. James Shulmeister has been funded from the Marsden Fund (NZ), he has also participated in US NSF and Chinese NSF grants as well as received grants from other sources.

Daniel Ellerton completed his PhD which was funded by the Australian Research Council.

– ref. At least 700,000 years ago, the world’s largest sand island emerged as the barrier that helped the Great Barrier Reef form – https://theconversation.com/at-least-700-000-years-ago-the-worlds-largest-sand-island-emerged-as-the-barrier-that-helped-the-great-barrier-reef-form-192014

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Philippa Chandler, Research Fellow, The University of Melbourne

The TV series The White Lotus has returned for a second season. Both series of The White Lotus explore the underbelly of resort tourism.

The first series is set in a resort in Hawaii and contains sex, drugs and outrageously selfish behaviour. Through its focus on the interactions between wealthy American guests and local resort staff, it explores complex themes including racial inequality, the ongoing impacts of colonialism, debates about land ownership and identity politics.

The second series is set in Sicily, but the first season gives us an interesting opportunity to reflect on the way tourism destinations are marketed to appeal to wealthy tourists.

International tourism campaigns try to market the perceived “essence” of what makes a country special. In the process, they often perpetuate stereotypes. Critical tourism scholars have long argued such branding tends to overemphasise and essentialise cultural difference.

Many of the problems satirised by The White Lotus are perpetuated by a recent advertising campaign by Tourism Fiji.

The Bulanaires campaign launched in 2019 encourages international tourists to visit Fiji. The phrase Bulanaires blends the term “billionaires” with the Fijian greeting “bula”, which implies wishes of good health.

A key message in the campaign is that Fijians may not be wealthy yet are “rich in happiness”.

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The Bulanaires campaign is sophisticated, well-produced and full of charm and humour. However, our research into tourism tropes shows the advertising campaign also recycles some troubling stereotypes about Fijian people.

Firstly, like much advertising for the Pacific region and alongside a suite of related colonial stereotypes, the campaign romanticises poverty as a form of wellbeing. Secondly, it uncritically reinforces the colonially entrenched notion of the “happy native”.

The ‘happy native’ and the ‘smiling servant’

As they greet the incoming guests at the beginning of season one, the staff at The White Lotus are encouraged to “wave like they mean it” by their manager and to project “vagueness” to the visitors. This sense of blending into the background and performing the role of the subservient and smiling host is apparent in tourism advertising too.

In one Tourism Fiji advertisement, a smiling resort worker says to the camera “what makes me happy is seeing you happy”. Fijians are cast as the epitome of authentic happiness: pre-existing, pervasive and spontaneously felt and expressed.

The notion that all Fijians are authentically happy despite wealth disparities stems from, and reinforces, longstanding colonial tropes of the “happy native” being somehow free from the stressors of the rat race. Such fantasies are widely applied beyond the Pacific region. As tourism academic Camille O’Reilly writes, these include “a nostalgic and naïve view of the “traditional” life found outside the West, untouched by modernity but now rapidly disappearing.“

The question is not whether Fijians feel happy, but rather what the implications are of broadcasting these stereotypes of Fijian wellbeing to tourists.

The irony is that low paid work in the tourism industry often entangles them at the bottom of the capitalist hierarchy they are marketed as being untouched by.

Poverty and wellbeing

The awkward juxtapositions of wellbeing and poverty are explored in series one The White Lotus via Jennifer Coolidge’s character Tanya, a wealthy and lonely tourist who tries to forge a relationship with her Hawaiian massage therapist.

The relationship veers further towards exploitation when Tanya hints she could invest in the massage therapist’s business, on the unspoken understanding the therapist pay her additional attention. The pairing – and the ultimately unrealised investment – highlights the uneven economic circumstances between the women. What constitutes “wellbeing” for the tourist can erode the host’s wellbeing.

The relationship between wellbeing and poverty is awkwardly apparent in the Tourism Fiji campaign, which suggests Fijians are happy, despite being far poorer than tourists. It goes even further to suggest poverty even enables happiness.

“We don’t get many billionaires around here” smiles a local in the advertisement, “but we have plenty of BULANAIRES!”

The advertisement exploits the lexicon of wellbeing and mindfulness to reassure tourists the Fijians who bring them their cocktails and look after their children are content with low wages.

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Selling the connection to nature

National branding campaigns for Fiji, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands all depict Indigenous peoples as living somehow closer to nature than those who might wish to travel to visit them.

The advertising campaign Answer The Call To Vanuatu is a good example.

“The call” connects tourists to Vanuatu by evoking a sense of existential loss and longing. It features a conch shell trumpet sounding from an “untouched paradise” across the ocean and the internal voice of a prospective tourist crying out for adventure. It is selling escape from the rigours of everyday life, healing through connection to nature and a sense of human authenticity.

For locals, however, “answering the call” has nationalist connotations reminiscent of wartime recruitment campaigns. This message was perpetuated during COVID-19 travel bans where tourism campaigns hailed tourists through wistful narratives about future holidays, in which “the time will come to connect again” and, meanwhile, Indigenous people will “keep it beautiful for you”.

The White Lotus is a cleverly-written reminder about the colonial underpinnings of international tourism. It shows the ways in which the tourism industry is often bolstered by problematic cultural stereotypes; often complicit in widening the gap between rich and poor, visitors and hosts.

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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. Just like the satire in The White Lotus, tourism campaigns often perpetuate colonial stereotypes about the countries they are selling – https://theconversation.com/just-like-the-satire-in-the-white-lotus-tourism-campaigns-often-perpetuate-colonial-stereotypes-about-the-countries-they-are-selling-193540

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Giblin, ARC Future Fellow; Associate Professor; Director, Intellectual Property Research Institute of Australia, The University of Melbourne

In 2020, the independent authors and small publishers whose audiobooks reach their readers via Audible’s ACX platform smelled a rat.

Audiobooks were booming, but sales of their own books – produced at great expense and well-reviewed – were plummeting.

Some of their royalty statements reported negative sales, as readers returned more books than they bought. This was hard to make sense of, because Audible only reported net sales, refusing to reveal the sales and refunds that made them up.

Perth-based writer Susan May wondered whether those returns might be the reason for her dwindling net sales. She pressed Audible to tell her how many of her sales were being negated by returns, but the company stonewalled.

Then, in October 2020, a glitch caused three weeks of returns data to be reported in a single day, and authors discovered that hundreds (and even thousands) of their sales had been wiped out by returns.

Suddenly, the scam came into focus: the Amazon-owned Audible had been offering an extraordinarily generous returns policy, encouraging subscribers to return books they’d had on their devices for months, even if they had listened to them the whole way through, even if they had loved them – no questions asked.

Encouraged by the policy, some subscribers had been treating the service like a library – returning books for fresh credits they could swap for new ones. Few would have realised that Audible clawed back the royalties from the book’s authors every time a book was returned.

Good for Amazon, bad for authors

It was good for Amazon – it helped Audible gain and hold onto subscribers – but bad for the authors and the performers who created the audiobooks, who barely got paid.

Understanding Amazon’s motivation helps us understand a phenomenon we call chokepoint capitalism, a modern plague on creative industries and many other industries too.

Orthodox economics tells us not to worry about corporations dominating markets because that will attract competitors, who will put things back in balance.

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But many of today’s big corporations and billionaire investors have perfected ways to make those supposedly-temporary advantages permanent.

Warren Buffett salivates over businesses with “wide, sustainable moats”. Peter Thiel scoffs that “competition is for losers”. Business schools teach students ways to lock in customers and suppliers and eliminate competition, so they can shake down the people who make what they supply and buy what they sell.

Locking in customers and creators

Amazon is the poster child for chokepoint capitalism. It boasts of its “flywheel” – a self-described “virtuous cycle” where its lower cost leads to lower prices and a better customer experience, which leads to more traffic, which leads to more sellers, and a better selection – which further propels the flywheel.

But the way the cycle works isn’t virtuous – it’s vicious and anti-competitive.

Amazon openly admits to doing everything it can to lock in its customers. That’s why Audible encourages book returns: its generous offer only applies to ongoing subscribers. Audible wants the money from monthly subscribers and wants the fact that they are subscribed to prevent them from shopping elsewhere.

Paying the people who actually made the product it sells a fair share of earnings isn’t Amazon’s priority. Because Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ famous maxim is “your margin is my opportunity”, the executive who figured out how to make authors foot the bill for retaining subscribers probably got a bonus.

Another way Audible locks customers in is by ensuring the books it sells are protected by digital rights management (DRM) which means they are encrypted, and can only be read by software with the decryption key.

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Amazon claims DRM stops listeners from stealing from creators by pirating their books. But tools to strip away those locks are freely available online, and it’s easy for readers who can’t or won’t pay for books to find illegal versions.

While DRM doesn’t prevent infringement, it does prevent competition.

Startups that want to challenge Audible’s dominance – including those that would pay fairly – have to persuade potential customers to give up their Audible titles or to inconveniently maintain separate libraries.

In this way, laws that were intended to protect against infringement of copyright have become tools to protect against infringement of corporate dominance.

Once customers are locked in, suppliers (authors and publishers) are locked in too. It’s incredibly difficult to reach audiobook buyers unless you’re on Audible. When the suppliers are locked in, they can be shaken down for an ever-greater share of what the buyers hand over.

How a few big buyers can control whole markets

The problem isn’t with middlemen as such: book shops, record labels, book and music publishers, agents and myriad others provide valuable services that help keep creative wheels turning.

The problem arises when these middlemen grow powerful enough to bend markets into hourglass shapes, with audiences at one end, masses of creators at the other, and themselves operating as a chokepoint in the middle.

Since everyone has to go through them, they’re able to control the terms on which creative goods and services are exchanged – and extract more than their fair share of value.

The corporations who create these chokepoints are trying to “monopsonise” their markets. “Monopsony” isn’t a pretty word, but it’s one we are going to have to get familiar with to understand why so many of us are feeling squeezed.

Monopoly (or near-monopoly) is where there is only one big seller, leaving buyers with few other places to turn. Monopsony is where there is only one big buyer, leaving sellers with few other places to turn.

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There’s an obvious reason wages aren’t growing, but you won’t hear it from Treasury or the Reserve Bank

In our book, we quote William Deresiewicz, a former professor of English at Yale University, who points out in his book The Death of the Artist that “if you can only sell your product to a single entity, it’s not your customer; it’s your boss”.

Increasingly, it is how the creative industries are structured. There’s Audible for audiobooks, Amazon for physical and digital versions, YouTube for video, Google and Facebook for online news advertising, the Big Three record labels (who own the big three music publishers) for recorded music, Spotify for streaming, Live Nation for live music and ticketing – and that’s just the start.

But as corporate concentration increases across the board, monopsony is becoming a problem for the rest of us. For a glimpse into what happens to labour markets when buyers become too powerful, just think about how monopsonistic supermarkets bully food manufacturers and farmers.

A fairer deal for consumers and creators

The good news is that we don’t have to put up with it.

Chokepoint Capitalism isn’t one of those “Chapter 11 books” – ten chapters about how terrible everything is, plus a conclusion with some vague suggestions about what can be done.

The whole second half is devoted to detailed proposals for widening these chokepoints out – such as transparency rights, among others.

Audible’s sly trick only finally came to light because of the glitch that let authors see the scope of returns.

That glitch enabled writers, led by Susan May, to organise a campaign that eventually forced Audible to reform some of its more egregious practices. But we need more light in dark corners.

And we need reforms to contract law to level the playing field in negotiations, interoperability rights to prevent lock-in to platforms, copyrights being better secured to creators rather than publishers, and minimum wages for creative work.

These and the other things we suggest would do much to empower artists and get them paid. And they would provide inspiration for the increasing rest of us who are supplying our goods or our labour to increasingly powerful corporations that can’t seem to keep their hands out of our pockets.

Chokepoint Capitalism: how big tech and big content captured creative labour markets, and how we’ll win them back is published on Tuesday November 15 by Scribe.

Rebecca Giblin receives funding from the Australian Research Council and state and territory libraries for the Author’s Interest Project (authorsinterest.org), the eLending Project (elendingproject.org) and Untapped: the Australian Literary Heritage Project (untapped.org.au). She is a Fellow of the CREATe research centre at the University of Glasgow, and a member of the Author’s Alliance and the Australian Digital Alliance. She has occasionally and intermittently used Audible’s service since its inception (though has not been a subscriber for a very long time),buys goods and services from Amazon when she really has to, subscribes to Spotify (where she sometimes listens to music controlled by the Big Three record labels, and published by their Big Three music publisher subsidiaries), and sometimes watches videos on YouTube.

Cory Doctorow is a consultant to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He co-founded the UK Open Rights Group. He is a visiting professor of practice at the University of North Carolina’s School of Library and Information Science. He is a dues-paying member of the Free Software Foundation and FSF Europe. His books and audiobooks are published by Random House, Macmillan, Beacon Press, McSweeney’s, HarperCollins, Hachette, and many other publishers. These are for sale on Amazon, Excerpts of his work are for sale on Audible. He runs a personal ebook store (craphound.com/shop) that compete with Amazon and Audible for ebook and audiobook sales. One of his books was favorably reviewed and endorsed by Jeff Bezos.

– ref. Chokepoint Capitalism: why we’ll all lose unless we stop Amazon, Spotify and other platforms squeezing cash from creators – https://theconversation.com/chokepoint-capitalism-why-well-all-lose-unless-we-stop-amazon-spotify-and-other-platforms-squeezing-cash-from-creators-194069

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jeffrey Foster, Associate Professor in Cyber Security Studies, Macquarie University

First Optus, now Medibank; in less than two months we’ve experienced two of the largest personal data breaches in Australia’s history. In both cases the hackers attempted, and failed, to extort a ransom in exchange for not releasing personal data.

So far the Optus hackers have released only a small sample of data, and claim to have deleted the rest. On the other hand, the Medibank hackers have released the records of more than one million people – and have threatened to release more data on Friday.

Read more:
Medibank hackers are now releasing stolen data on the dark web. If you’re affected, here’s what you need to know

With this looming threat, the Australian government is looking to bolster its cybersecurity defences — including through a taskforce set up to retaliate against the Medibank hackers.

Minister for Cyber Security Clare O’Neil has said the government is also considering making ransom payments to cybercriminals illegal. The idea has picked up steam – but would this cure be worse than the disease?

The response to the Medibank hack

The group behind the latest Medibank hack, currently being called “BlogXX”, has been linked to Russian cybercriminal organisations by the Australian Federal Police. It has known links to the notorious REvil cyber gang (which was dismantled by Russia’s Federal Security Service in January).

Large-scale cybercriminal gangs are able to extort high ransom payments from their victims. During REvil’s arrest, authorities seized the equivalent of A$12.8 million in cash, $7 million in crytpocurrency and 20 luxury cars.

There are multiple ways to decrease the profitability of data breaches for criminal organisations. The first is to make hacks more difficult, making it more time-consuming for the hackers to break into computers.

This could be achieved by increasing fines for organisations that fail to follow best practices in cybersecurity – a privacy reform that was recently introduced in Australia and has passed through the lower house.

A second potential solution is to make ransomware payments illegal in Australia. Under some circumstances, it may already be illegal for Australian organisations to pay a ransom, such as if the payment funds further criminal or terrorist activity of groups under sanction by the United Nations.

However, the attribution of cyberattacks is difficult, and it’s not always possible to know whether paying a particular group would be a crime. An organisation may pay a ransom, only to find out much later it has broken the law.

When banning ransom payments works

The idea of banning ransom payments isn’t new. In April, Nigeria criminalised ransom payments to kidnappers. However, not paying kidnap ransoms in Nigeria has also resulted in deaths, which suggests this approach may end up punishing victims.

Still, survey results show citizens and cybersecurity experts are generally in favour of banning ransomware payments. In a recent survey of UK residents by security firm Talion, 78% of respondents from the general public supported a ban, as did 79% of cybersecurity professionals.

A ban on ransom payments could quickly reduce the profits racked up by criminal gangs targeting Australia.

In cases like the recent Optus and Medibank hacks, where the ransom was demanded to “not leak” sensitive information, banning ransom payments may be a good idea. It could take the burden of making a decision away from the organisation targeted, and mitigate the public’s judgment of that decision.

It would also reduce (but not entirely remove) the possibility of criminals receiving ransom payments – and therefore make their operations less profitable.

The problems with a ban

However, unlike the Optus and Medibank breaches, many ransoms are paid to unlock encrypted computers. Some ransomware attacks involve the hackers encrypting all of the computers, data and backups a company has. Failing to restore those data can, in many cases, cause the business to collapse.

In such instances, banning ransom payments may discourage organisations from declaring breaches. They may pay the ransom to be able to move on with business – even if it is a crime. Should this happen, it would reduce the overall transparency of reporting on breaches, and could lead to hackers blackmailing victims to not divulge the hack.

This particular concern has led the US Federal Bureau of Investigation to recommend to the US Senate Judiciary Committee to not ban all ransom payments.

For a ban on ransom payments to be effective, the penalties for paying the ransom would need to be more severe than the impact of the ransom itself. If the penalties are inadequate, organisations may simply pay the ransom and deal with the legal consequences so they can move on with normal operations.

An alternative solution

Cyberinsurance policies often provide reimbursement for ransomware payments. In fact, it’s a common tactic for cybercriminals to demand a ransom equivalent to the insurance reimbursement. While this means the organisation suffers fewer losses, the cybercriminals still profit.

A more nuanced approach may be to ban cyberinsurance reimbursements for ransom payments, which would reduce the overall percentage of breaches that result in a payment. This could reduce profits for criminal gangs, while still allowing a company to salvage its operations under the worst-case scenarios.

The decision to ban or not to ban ransomware payments is complicated, and a blanket ban is likely to cause more problems than it fixes. We need change, but the best solution would be a case-by-case approach.

In the end, these kinds of cybercrimes are unlikely to be eradicated by any single policy change. They will require a wide range of policies, laws and regulations that each chip away at specific problems. If we do this, eventually the cost to criminals could outweigh the profits.

Read more:
Budget 2022: $9.9 billion towards cyber security aims to make Australia a key ‘offensive’ cyber player

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

– ref. Australia is considering a ban on cyber ransom payments, but it could backfire. Here’s another idea – https://theconversation.com/australia-is-considering-a-ban-on-cyber-ransom-payments-but-it-could-backfire-heres-another-idea-194516

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lotti Tajouri, Associate Professor, Genomics and Molecular Biology; Biomedical Sciences, Bond University

The COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally changed many of our behaviours and attitudes towards infection control.

Hand hygiene was one of the earliest and most adopted measures to counteract the spread of disease, but there have been more technology-based approaches, too.

Read more:
Vodka won’t protect you from coronavirus, and 4 other things to know about hand sanitizer

One example is the booming industry of devices that use ultraviolet radiation (UV) to kill germs. While UV can successfully sanitise the air, or objects such as your smartphone, it can also come with cancer risk if the radiation is not behind a proper barrier.

Here’s what you need to know about UV sanitation devices.

How does UV sanitation work?

Ultraviolet light is light with wavelengths just short enough that most humans can’t see it under normal conditions. The most ubiquitous source of UV is the Sun, which radiates everything from vacuum UV to far UVC, UVC, UVB and UVA rays (see below).

The last two can pass the ozone layer in our atmosphere, while the first three are blocked – good news for life on Earth, since UVC in particular can be harmful to living things.

At a wavelength of 250–260 nanometres, energy generated by UVC rays can penetrate through microbes to break their DNA and RNA, disrupting their cell functions and killing them.

This is useful for germicidal (germ-killing) UVC radiation technology, although its efficacy depends on radiation intensity, the distance from light source to target, the type of surface being sanitised, and the wavelength at which the UVC is operating.

The blue light you often see on such devices is either decorative, or the visible light emitted by the chemicals used to produce UVC – remember, the UV light itself is invisible.

According to research, sanitation devices that emit high doses of germicidal UVC are an efficient means of killing fungi, viruses, bacteria and protozoa – single-celled organisms. They have been successfully used in treating water, air, sewage, for food safety, medical settings, public transport and more.

The key is to have the UVC source fully enclosed and automatically stop if the device is open, so there’s no risk of exposing people to the radiation, which can cause severe burns and even increase the risk of cancer.

UV sanitation gadgets that operate without enclosure present serious health risks. Unfortunately, current lack of regulation means such devices are readily available for consumers to buy – and potentially be harmed by.

A serious lack of regulation

Numerous companies have researched and developed safe, efficient and fully enclosed UVC devices.

However, the market is unregulated, with serious concerns about the quality and safety of some dubious devices available for consumers. In 2020, the lighting industry body Global Lighting Association raised its concerns:

“[I]n the midst of a global COVID-19 epidemic, GLA is concerned at the proliferation of UVC disinfecting devices – particularly being sold on the internet – with dubious safety features and inadequate safety instructions”.

Read more:
Ultraviolet light can make indoor spaces safer during the pandemic – if it’s used the right way

UVC products without enclosure, such as the “disinfection wands” you might see on the internet, can be very unsafe. They can affect exposed skin, eyes and mucous membranes.

Due to health risks, any non-enclosed UVC device should only be remote-controlled or automatic. It should also be equipped with safeguards, such as a sensor that turns it off if it detects anyone in the room.

To ensure the safety and efficacy of UVC devices available on the consumer market, we need watchdog bodies to urgently introduce rigorous global regulations.

Is far UVC safer?

Recently, far UVC has been proposed as a possible solution to this challenge. Radiating at a wavelength of 207–222 nanometres, far UVC has a “shallow” skin entrance. However, the research with far UVC is very recent and so far mostly focused on animals.

Very few human studies have been performed, and some have been funded by companies prototyping far UVC devices, which can introduce a bias. Literature search reviews report different analytic parameters, which makes comparisons difficult to interpret.

Some trials have started, but there are few to date, and with small sample sizes.

We will need trials with rigorous ethical approvals to investigate the full far UVC impact on humans. There is a lack of understanding how far UVC might affect people with thinner outer skin layers, affected by cuts, light sensitivity, or various medical conditions.

Read more:
Ultraviolet radiation is a strong disinfectant. It may be what our schools, hospitals and airports need

What to look out for if you still want a UV sanitation device

When it comes to buying a UVC gadget, buyer beware. Never buy anything that claims you can disinfect hands, the body, or a whole room while people are around. Skin cancers like basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma are attributed to UV exposure.

Check the documentation. Is there evidence the device is effective against microorganisms? What’s the length of exposure, and how far from the source is the target being sanitised?

You also need to be aware that the cost of efficient and safe new technology and efficient UVC-producing LEDs is very high. Therefore, you may need to question the effectiveness of a relatively “cheap” device.

In the absence of a global regulatory body within the UVC market, the rule of thumb is to purchase only a fully sealed, enclosed UVC device operating with strict safety and efficiency to harm microbes, not you.

Lotti Tajouri is affiliated with Dubai Police Scientist Council.

Simon McKirdy has provided scientific advice to Glissner.

Matthew Olsen and Rashed Alghafri 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. Tempted to buy a UV light disinfection gadget? Some can be dangerous – here’s what you need to know – https://theconversation.com/tempted-to-buy-a-uv-light-disinfection-gadget-some-can-be-dangerous-heres-what-you-need-to-know-194065

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joseph A Carpini, Lecturer, Organizational Behaviour and Human Resource Management, The University of Western Australia

Chances are you live within 2.5 kilometres of a community pharmacy and visit one about every three weeks.

You don’t need an appointment. The wait time is usually short. These factors make pharmacists highly accessible healthcare professionals.

Pharmacists are regularly sought after for advice, including about mental health. In fact, pharmacists may be among the first health professional contacted about a health concern. They are also in regular contact with patients experiencing mental health issues or crises.

Despite the fact most pharmacists believe it is part of their role to provide mental health-related help, they may lack the confidence to respond to, raise or manage mental health issues with patients. In our recent study, pharmacists report not intervening about 25% of the time when they believe a patient is experiencing a problem or crisis.

Providing pharmacists with early intervention skills could help them address these challenges.

Read more:
Pixels are not people: mental health apps are increasingly popular but human connection is still key

The pandemic has seen mental health decline

The COVID pandemic has seen anxiety and depression increase by 25% globally, signalling a broader mental health decline.

Poor mental health affects around 20% of the Australian population each year, and 44% of Australians over their lifetime. In a recent survey of 11,000 people, 24% of them said their mental health had declined over the previous six months.

Most concerning is that about 60% of people experiencing a mental health issue won’t seek help. This means people are more likely to remain undiagnosed and disconnected from support.

Pharmacists’ many hats

While dispensing and consulting are critical activities for pharmacists, they also help patients with questions and advice about their health, including their mental health.

Generally, pharmacists in Australia have high levels of mental health-related literacy and evidence-based treatments.

Despite this, pharmacists report a lack of confidence which prevents them from raising mental health issues with patients. This is possibly because only 29% of pharmacists in Australia have mental health crisis training.

A lack of confidence in raising and addressing mental health-related issues means patients are likely to remain undiagnosed, untreated, and unsupported.

Read more:
Scared of needles? Claustrophobic? One longer session of exposure therapy could help as much as several short ones

4 key elements of mental health first aid

Many of us are familiar with first aid as immediate help offered to an injured or sick person. But what if the issue is not physical, but mental? Many people don’t know what immediate help they can offer.

As with physical injury or illness, timely and high-quality immediate help is critical.

There are a variety of not-for-profit and commercial mental health first aid training programs. A recent literature review of programs for mental health professionals suggests they can minimise stigma and increase knowledge. They can also bolster confidence and intentions to help.

Across the programs, there are four common elements to providing high-quality mental health first aid.

1. Recognise someone may be experiencing a mental health issue or crisis

Recognising a mental health issue or crisis involves taking notice of verbal, physical, emotional and behavioural indicators. Given pharmacists interact with patients about every three weeks, they may be in a good position to notice changes.

They may express sadness, anger, frustration, hopelessness, shame or guilt. Patients might say: “There’s no hope” or “I can’t go on like this”.

Physical indicators include fatigue, sleeping difficulties, restlessness, muscle tension, upset stomach, sweating, difficulty breathing, changes in appetite or weight.

Emotional indicators reflect how a person is feeling and include significant mood changes, teariness, agitation, anger, desperation or anxiety.

Symptom guides for anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, and suicidal ideation are available.

2. Approach and assesses the person

Opening the dialogue can be as simple as, “How are you? I have noticed [symptoms] and am concerned.”

Your role is not to clinically diagnose a patient; however, it is valuable to assess the patient’s risk and level of urgency. Risk and urgency will help inform whether the person is in immediate danger or can use other non-urgent support services.

The TED acronym can guide first discussions in the following way:

Tell me …

Explain how that has been impacting you …

Describe what is happening …

3. Listen in an active way and communicate without judgement

Active listening involves confirming you are hearing and understanding the other person. Ways of doing this include: nodding, appropriate eye contact, and summarising what has been shared.

Communicating without judgement involves demonstrating genuine concern for the other person and talking about their experience.

Open-ended questions usually use “how” and “what” queries. You could say something like: “I’ve noticed some changes recently, what’s happening for you?” or “I see you are filling a prescription for sleep tablets. How are you sleeping?”

4. Refer the person to supports

People who are struggling with their mental health can benefit from sharing details with professionals, like general practitioners, or family and friends – but they might need encouragement to seek this support out.

The support system recommended should match the level of urgency. Urgent services include Lifeline for free 24-hour phone, chat, and text message support. The Suicide Call Back Service is also a free 24/7 counselling service.

If in doubt or in an emergency, dial 000.

Non-urgent and free online support is available from Head to Health, the Black Dog Institute and Beyond Blue.

Read more:
How to look after your mental health if you’re at home with COVID

Could training community pharmacists help?

Studies in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and abroad all point to pharmacists’ believing they need more training in mental health first aid.

Research suggests almost 70% of patients believe all pharmacists should have mental health first aid training. Patients report feeling significantly more comfortable speaking about mental illness with a pharmacist with this training.

And emerging evidence shows mental health first aid training can increase the quality of help provided by pharmacists.

In our study, we found Australian pharmacists with mental health first aid training were more likely to intervene than untrained pharmacists.

While the overall quality of the first aid provided by both mental health first aid trained and untrained pharmacists was high, some key differences existed. Trained pharmacists assessed patients and encouraged other supports (such as from friends and family) more. They also felt more confident discussing suicide risk.

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

Joseph Carpini collaborates with Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) Australia on research projects. Specifically, MHFA Australia has assisted in the dissemination of surveys and recruitment of participants for other research studies that do not overlap with findings related to pharmacists. MHFA Australia was not involved in the research examining pharmacists in any way. Joseph does not receive compensation, directly or indirectly, from MHFA Australia. He has completed Mental Health First Aid training.

Deena Ashoorian collaborates with Mental Health First Aid Australia on research projects. In addition to being a pharmacist, Deena is an accredited Master Instructor of the Mental Health First Aid program.

Rhonda Clifford collaborates with students and colleagues to deliver MHFA research projects and other projects related to Mental Health.

– ref. Pharmacists could help curb the mental health crisis – but they need more training – https://theconversation.com/pharmacists-could-help-curb-the-mental-health-crisis-but-they-need-more-training-192162

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Holly Thorpe, Professor in Sociology of Sport and Gender, University of Waikato

Saturday night’s heart-stopping 34-31 Women’s Rugby World Cup victory by the New Zealand Black Ferns over England was more than a great game, it was a milestone in women’s sport in general.

Played in front of 42,500 spectators at Auckland’s Eden Park, traditional home of men’s rugby and renowned “fortress” of the All Blacks, the match showcased the unique atmosphere created by the women’s game.

And coming so soon after the team’s troubled 2021 northern hemisphere tour – when relationships between Black Ferns players, coaches and management publicly broke down – the World Cup triumph was also the culmination of a highly successful rebuilding program, based on a strong team culture grounded in te ao Māori.

So while the win offers an important opportunity to reflect on how far the women’s game has come, the challenge now is to apply those lessons and ensure the game and women’s sport overall continue to grow.

A man’s world no longer

Speaking after the final, Black Ferns coach Wayne Smith described the win as “the most phenomenal moment of my career”. Coming from a veteran of the men’s game, with a successful All Blacks and Super Rugby career behind him, it’s quite a claim.

But we have to ask why it has taken so long for the women’s game to see the kind of support it now receives. Part of the answer lies in rugby’s deeply entrenched history of being seen and valued as a male experience. It may be New Zealand’s national game, but that hasn’t meant rugby was seen as being for everyone.

Read more:
The Black Ferns review shows – again – why real change in women’s high performance sport is urgently overdue

In many ways, women’s rugby has been resisted, ignored and marginalised because it challenged dominant ideas about masculinity. While the women’s team has brought home more World Cup titles than the All Blacks have, they have been systemically underfunded and undervalued for decades.

As player and advocate for the women’s game Alice Soper put it recently:

It’s not just old-fashioned racism and sexism. Men have built rugby into their core identity. What does it mean if women are occupying that space?

In contrast to the fully professional English and French teams, the Black Ferns have only recently been offered some of the benefits of a professional performance program (which still pales in comparison to what the All Blacks receive).

Grassroots advocacy and cultural leadership

While women’s rugby may only recently have captured the attention of mainstream New Zealand, the women’s game (including the seven-a-side version) has long had a strong community of passionate advocates fighting for space, funding, visibility and infrastructural support.

Over many decades, these women – many of them Māori – have volunteered to sustain and develop the game, innovating with women-led approaches grounded in culture and community. As well as local and regional groups, Women in Rugby Aotearoa (WIRA) has fought to build and nurture the culture.

Read more:
Women’s sports are more popular than ever – so why are there only three statues of female athletes in the UK?

The women’s game also has a surprisingly long history in New Zealand, stretching back a century before the Black Ferns first won an international tournament. Farah Rangikoepa Palmer, a former Black Fern and now academic and deputy chair of the New Zealand Rugby Board, has written extensively about the important intersections of Māori culture, gender and ethnicity in the evolution of women’s rugby in Aotearoa.

Those intersections were more visible than ever at this year’s World Cup, with twirling poi, haka and waiata all contributing to an undeniable festival atmosphere at games. The cultural and gender diversity of the Black Ferns, and the displays of female strength, power, joy, charisma and leadership, seemed to connect with an increasingly multicultural New Zealand.

The Black Ferns were even credited with uniting the country after some difficult and divisive years. The team certainly offered a powerful vision of a more culturally inclusive society with mana wahine at the heart.

Show them the money

After years of women’s sports teams having to do a lot with a little, we are witnessing a significant turning of the tide. Audiences in New Zealand and around the world are coming to recognise the phenomenal capacity of women’s sport to entertain and inspire.

As the crowds turn up, television and sponsors are also increasingly waking up to the potential of women’s sport to reach new audiences – and to reinvigorate existing ones.

At the same time, the long association between rugby and masculinity in Aotearoa may finally be changing. More women and girls play the sport than ever before, and their contribution can only continue to grow.

Read more:
Euro 2022 can be a catalyst for women’s football in England – here’s how

But sports organisations now need to respond to this quickly changing landscape. The cultural and gender diversity on the field needs to be reflected in boards and leadership structures, with more equitable and longer-term investment plans. While this work is under way at New Zealand Rugby, organisational change is hard and takes sustained effort.

Players and supporters are now calling for Rugby New Zealand to properly invest in the women’s game. As Black Fern Sarah Hirini said after the Eden Park final:

I want someone to stand up and say they are going to back us, they are going to support us and they want to put big money into it. We’ve shown that we are a showcase, that we are exciting to watch […] The moment needs to carry on now, that’s just the start.

The old notion that people wouldn’t watch women’s sport is clearly a fallacy. But the new momentum has to be maintained. With funding, media coverage and investment, the future of women’s sport can be very bright indeed.

Holly Thorpe 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 moment needs to carry on’ – why the Black Ferns’ success must be a game-changer for women’s sport in NZ – https://theconversation.com/the-moment-needs-to-carry-on-why-the-black-ferns-success-must-be-a-game-changer-for-womens-sport-in-nz-194505

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elise Oakman, PhD Candidate, University of Sydney

Have you had a recent encounter with an animal you’d much rather avoid? As La Niña continues to give us rainy days, brush turkeys, bats, and cockroaches are emerging from their hide-outs.

We often think of them as pests, but these animals are just trying their best to cope in the heavy rain. They’re also crucial members of our urban ecosystems, and help keep the environment healthy.

Here’s what makes them so fascinating and important to your neighbourhood.

Bats: heavy rain hinders echolocation

Australia is home to multiple threatened species of fruit bats and microbats, such as grey-headed flying foxes, large bent-wing bats, and spectacled flying foxes.

They’re typically considered nuisances for their noise, mess and potential spread of diseases. But bats are often forgotten for their ability to control insect pests, disperse seeds, and pollinate plants.

Bats face some serious threats in La Niña conditions. They can respond to periods of heavy rain by using a special physiological adaptation called torpor. In torpor, bats will sleep more and lower their body temperature so they can use less energy.

Microbats are abundant throughout Australian cities. They use echolocation to see, but heavy rain likely reduces this ability.

In 2019, Smithsonian researchers played recordings of downpours near bat roosts, and found the bats delayed emerging from their roosts. Delayed emergence can lead to disorientated bats with a reduced capacity to find food.

In Australia, rain may affect microbats more than fruit bats because of where they live. Many species of microbats, such as the large bent-winged bat, live in culverts and under bridges, where higher water levels can rush through during heavy rain periods.

Fruit bats, such as flying foxes, don’t use echolocation, but rain can wet their fur and lower their body temperature. So they’ll often stay put in their roosts to keep warm during heavy rain.

Read more:
Fruit bats are the only bats that can’t (and never could) use echolocation. Now we’re closer to knowing why

It also costs a lot more energy for a bat to fly in the rain, making it harder to maintain a steady intake of food. If there is consecutive days of rain, bats may fall from their home due to starvation.

If you find a fallen bat, do not touch it. Instead, contact WIRES. Or, wait to see if they leave once the rain clears up.

Brush turkeys: reshape their mounds

Brush turkeys are a type of ground nesting bird found along Australia’s east coast, from Cape York in Queensland down to Wollongong in NSW. They’re particularly vulnerable to the effects of heavy rain, which can damage or wash out their nests.

To incubate their eggs, brush-turkeys build enormous mounds of leaf litter and mulch. These mounds can weigh several tonnes, and can be as wide as 4 metres across and up to 1 metre high. These mounds often cause consternation among avid gardeners and frustrated suburbanites.

But brush-turkeys can benefit the environment. As they scratch for food and build mounds, the birds help break down leaf litter and aerate the soil. This helps water and nutrients move throughout your soil, which ultimately helps your garden.

Winter rainfall is the trigger for males to start building their mounds, as the increased soil moisture provides the heat that incubates their eggs. However, research shows males avoid constructing their nests during long periods of heavy rain.

Flood waters can sweep away existing mounds and, after multiple weeks of rain, mounds can become waterlogged. Floods can drown eggs or reduce mound temperatures below the levels necessary for incubation, preventing the chicks from developing properly.

Brush-turkeys are known to protect their mounds from heavy rain. Much anecdotal evidence suggests brush-turkeys can predict the weather in advance, and reshape their mound accordingly.

During light rain, male brush-turkeys open up their mound, letting much-needed moisture soak in to speed up decomposition of the leaf litter. But as strong rainfall approaches, they instead pile extra material on top of their mound, providing an extra layer of protection and creating a more conical shape so water can run off the sides.

Next time, consider tuning into your local brush turkeys for a weather forecast. If you see them doing a bit of extra raking in your garden on dismal grey days, it might be a scramble to protect their nests from approaching heavy rain.

When you spot one, use the opportunity to snap a photo and upload it to the Big City Birds app. This app tracks where birds such as brush-turkeys occur, and how they’re adapting to city life.

Read more:
‘Sad and distressing’: massive numbers of bird deaths in Australian heatwaves reveal a profound loss is looming

Native cockroaches: evacuate to drier areas

As we settle into another wet spring, our homes are becoming perfect breeding grounds for cockroaches. The humidity of a moist house combined with warmer weather, allows for cockroaches to grow quicker and thrive.

Only a small handful of cockroach species will survive in the average house, and they are all introduced species. After rain, it’s vital to make your house a little less cockroach friendly. Reduce humidity by keeping the house well ventilated, and make sure to remove any food scraps.

On the other hand, the waterlogged soil in your local green spaces are likely home to some of Australia’s 450 native species of cockroaches, so you might see some around your backyard after rain. Cockroaches play important roles in the ecosystem, breaking down nutrients in the soil.

Burrowing cockroaches can be spotted because they don’t have wings. Many of our other native cockroaches are obvious due to their beautiful colours and patterns.

One amazing example is the Lord Howe Island wood-feeding cockroach. Thought to be extinct for some 80 years due to rats, they have only recently been rediscovered. This species is important, because it recycles nutrients and is food for other animals.

While native cockroaches may enter your home in an attempt to find warm dry ground, they won’t thrive indoors. If you find a native cockroach inside your house, instead of reaching for the bug spray, it’s best to catch them and put them back outside.

Read more:
A large cockroach thought extinct since the 1930s was just rediscovered on a small island in Australia

So during wet weather, take the time to remember that these animals are trying their best. All have amazing ways of adapting to heavy rain, and we should cut them some slack – the environment, including our backyards, need them.

Elise Oakman receives funding from the Ecological Society of Australia, the Department of Planning and Environment, and the Australian Wildlife Society.

Caitlyn Forster receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She is affiliated with the Australasian Society for the Study of Animal Behaviour and Invertebrates Australia.

Matthew Hall has previously received research funding from The Australian Citizen Science Association and Birding NSW.

Mei-Ting Kao 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. They’re doing their best: how these 3 neighbourhood ‘pests’ deal with rainy days – https://theconversation.com/theyre-doing-their-best-how-these-3-neighbourhood-pests-deal-with-rainy-days-193026

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ilaria Vanni, Associate Professor, International Studies and Global Societies, University of Technology Sydney

Did you know the Sydney suburb Rosebery was home to the now-endangered green and golden bell frogs? That enormous cauliflowers were nourished by fresh water springs? And that dugong bones were found during excavation for the Alexandra Canal?

Research has revealed these and other water stories in a project that maps and brings to life the histories and practices of water in Green Square. For Traditional Owners, the Country now known as Green Square is nadunga gurad, sand dune Country, known for millennia for its nattai bamalmarray, freshwater wetlands and ephemeral ponds.

Read more:
‘May you always taste the sweetest fruit’: uncovering the history and hidden delights of your neighbourhood

Green Square is Australia’s largest urban renewal project, spanning the inner eastern Sydney suburbs of Beaconsfield, Rosebery, Zetland, Alexandria and Waterloo. During the La Niña event in 2021-22, the wetlands and ephemeral ponds became visible to Green Square residents and visitors over the first year of the research project. Yet the histories of water that shaped and continue to shape Green Square remained largely invisible.

Researchers from the University of Technology Sydney brought some of these stories to the surface in a storymap. We used a software package (ESRI’s ArcGIS) to integrate maps, archival text, expert voices, photos, videos and illustrations for the Water Stories project. Telling these water stories allows us to explore the ever-changing relations between Country, development and urban imagination.

Where do these stories come from?

We went to a range of archives. Some were official, such as the State Library of NSW, the National Library Trove, the City of Sydney Archives and strategy documents, the Dharawal Dictionary, state government policy documents and federal and state parliamentary Hansards. And some were grassroots records, such as the online archive of FrogCall, the newsletter of the Frog and Tadpole Society. We also spoke to experts such as zoologists, engineers and landscape architects.

However, the largest archive we explored is Green Square itself. To understand Green Square as a living archive we identified “portals” in the landscape: visible objects that provide entry points into water stories. A pub, a plaque, a frog pond, a maintenance hole, a hoarding, a canal, a creek, a blue tongue lizard and a native flower are translated into the storymap as geolocated icons on a base map. Clicking on each of these icons transports you to a new story.

We pieced together fragments found in the archives into narratives that recover both well-known and little-known histories. These stories reveal the multiple and changing relations with water in this area.

What, for example, is the story of the pub? Perhaps you have been to the Cauliflower Hotel, one of the oldest pubs in Sydney. It was founded by George Rolfe, a well-known market gardener. Rolfe had prospered from growing a bumper crop of cauliflowers watered from springs during a drought.

Read more:
Move over suburbia, Green Square offers new norm for urban living

Stories of Country and colonialism

For millennia this area was a refuge on the route between Sydney’s two harbours, Gamay (Botany Bay) and War’ran (Sydney Cove). The presence of water led settler-colonial land owners to choose this place. Thus began the colonial history of Green Square as a site of agriculture, manufacturing, industry and now residential development.

This narrative is dominant in contemporary descriptions of Green Square, but it is not the only direction these stories flow.

The endangered green and golden bell frog, we discovered, prefers to make its habitat in disturbed landscapes, such as the water pooling from sand mining, rather than in custom-made nature reserves. This may dampen enthusiasm for the small frog pond established at Kimberley Grove Reserve. But it is important to understand the complexity of how such histories intersect if we are to make better decisions about cities in the face of climate change.

Some of the other stories surfaced by the project include:

• Gunyama, the name of the new aquatic centre means “stinky wind”, which could describe the smell of both ancient mangrove swamps and the noxious trades of the 1800s

• a huge stormwater processing plant lies underneath Green Square. Built as part of the development, it delivers up to 320 million litres of recycled stormwater each year to new buildings and open spaces.

Read more:
Not ‘if’, but ‘when’: city planners need to design for flooding. These examples show the way

On the storymap, watery words from the Dharawal Dictionary guide your interactive experience, because the premise for telling these water stories is that we understand the city as Country. Country is often misunderstood as being synonymous with land, but it comprises every aspect of the “natural” environment and ecology, including water and relationships between water and land.

We understand water is always present, even if not visible. And that care for cities means care for Country, which also means care for water.

As we collect and rearrange stories, we also create new ones. We are interested in hearing how as a resident, worker or visitor to Green Square you perceive the presence and histories of water in the neighbourhood.

By sharing your own water story you can contribute to the living archive on the Water Stories website. Simply click on the eel at the end of each story and add some text to share your story about how you experience water at Green Square.

The Water Stories exhibition, featuring illustrations by Ella Cutler printed on site at the Rizzeria, opens November 16 at 6pm.

Ilaria Vanni receives funding from The City of Sydney. She is a member of the Climate, Society and Environment Research Centre (C_SERC) and of the Creative Practice Research Group at the University of Technology Sydney.

Alexandra Crosby receives funding from The City of Sydney. She is member of The Frog and Tadpole Study Group of New South Wales (FATS)

Shannon Foster 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. Bell frogs, dugong bones and giant cauliflowers: water stories come to life at Green Square – https://theconversation.com/bell-frogs-dugong-bones-and-giant-cauliflowers-water-stories-come-to-life-at-green-square-192504

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

The Victorian state election will be held in 12 days, on November 26. A Freshwater poll for The Financial Review, conducted November 3-6 from a sample of 1,012 by online methods, gave Labor a 56-44 lead, from primary votes of 37% Labor, 34% Coalition, 14% Greens and 15% for all Others.

This is the first Freshwater poll of Victoria; a Freshwater poll of New South Wales in October gave Labor a 54-46 lead. Cost of living was regarded as one of the top three issues in Victoria by 74%, well ahead of 48% for health and social care.

Voters were asked whether they had a favourable or unfavourable view of various figures. Victorian Labor was at +10 net favourable, the Liberals at -6, Labor Premier Daniel Andrews at -9 and Liberal leader Matthew Guy at -16. Andrews led as preferred premier over Guy by 40-28.

A Victorian Morgan
SMS poll, conducted November 9-10 from a sample of 1,030, gave Labor a 57-43, a 3.5-point gain for the Coalition since the last SMS poll in August. Primary votes were 40% Labor (down 0.5), 29% Coalition (up 1.5), 11.5% Greens (down 2.5), 4.5% teal independents (down 0.5) and 14.5% for all Others (up two).

The Victorian Morgan poll conducted over the month of October by phone and online methods was also released, and this gave Labor a 60.5-39.5 lead, a 0.5-point gain for Labor since September. So any swing against Labor appears to have started in early November.

Applying the SMS poll’s primary votes to the 2018 election preference flows would give Labor a bigger lead, with analyst Kevin Bonham estimating 59.5-40.5 to Labor. This poll implies Other preferences are skewing against Labor.

Andrews had a 58.5-41.5 approval rating in this SMS poll, down from 62.5-37.5 in August. But he still had a 65.5-34.5 lead over Guy as better premier, down marginally from 66-34 in August.

A Newspoll last week gave Labor a 54-46 lead. These two polls have Labor further ahead, but there was a swing to the Coalition in Morgan. Labor remains likely to win the election in 12 days.

Read more:
Victorian Newspoll has Labor’s lead down, but would still win with three weeks until election

Record 740 candidates to contest lower house and 454 for upper house

Candidate nominations for the state election closed on Friday, and early voting begins today. ABC election analyst Antony Green said there will be 740 total candidates for the 88 lower house seats, an average of 8.4 candidates per seat.

This is the highest average candidates per seat recorded for any Australian state or federal election, beating the average 8.0 per seat at the May federal election. The previous Victorian record was 543 lower house candidates in 2014, an average of 6.2 per seat.

As well as Labor, Coalition and Greens candidates, all seats will be contested by Animal Justice and Family First. The Freedom Party will contest 58 of the 88 seats, Labour DLP 32 and Victorian Socialists 22. There will also be 120 independent candidates.

The Victorian upper house has eight regions that each elect five members for a total of 40. There will be a record of 454 candidates at this election, up from 380 in 2018, and a record 178 groups standing candidates, up from 146 in 2018. The number of groups means all upper house ballot papers will need to be “double decked”, with two rows of party names followed by a line, then candidate lists.

The proliferation of upper house groups is explained by Victoria’s retention of the anti-democratic group voting ticket (GVT) system, under which parties with a very small vote share can win seats if they have the right preference deals. Many parties want a chance to win the upper house lottery.

Read more:
How Victorian Labor’s failure on upper house electoral reform undermines democracy

In the two polls cited above, Labor’s primary vote was down three to six points on the 2018 election result. If this swing were also applied to the upper house, Labor would likely lose more seats under GVT than they would had GVT been replaced by the system used in the federal Senate.

US Democrats hold Senate at midterm elections

In my article on the November 8 United States midterm elections on Wednesday night, Democrats had 48 Senate seats called for them, Republicans 48 and four contests had not been called then.

Read more:
Democrats perform better than expected in US midterms, but both Senate and House remain in doubt

Democrats overturned a Republican lead on late mail counting in Nevada, and now lead by 48.8-48.1, while they lead in Arizona by 51.8-46.1; both states have been called for Democrats. Republicans won Wisconsin by 50.4-49.4, and Georgia will go to a December 6 runoff after no candidate won at least 50%.

Democrats will now hold 50 Senate seats, including two independents who caucus with them, to 49 Republicans. Democrats will control the Senate regardless of the Georgia runoff result because they will have Vice President Kamala Harris’ casting vote. Pennsylvania, a Democratic gain, is the only state where party control has flipped, pending Georgia.

CNN’s projections currently give Republicans 211 House of Representatives seats to 204 Democrats, with 218 needed for a majority. Republicans currently lead in 221 seats with Democrats ahead in 214, according to a spreadsheet by Daniel Nichanian.

To win the House, Democrats need to overturn four Republican leads. Despite the tenuous seat lead, Republicans are currently leading the overall House popular vote by 4.9% according to the Cook Political Report.

California is the most populous state with 52 House seats, and has ten of the 20 uncalled races. It will take until December for California to finalise its vote count.

See also my US midterms late counting thread for The Poll Bludger, and my live blog of the results as they came out from Wednesday AEDT.

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

– ref. Two Victorian polls have large Labor leads 12 days before election; US Democrats hold Senate at midterms – https://theconversation.com/two-victorian-polls-have-large-labor-leads-12-days-before-election-us-democrats-hold-senate-at-midterms-194051

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ashish Nanda, CyberCRC Research Fellow, Centre for Cyber Security Research and Innovation (CSRI), Deakin University

Each year, as the festive season arrives, we must also keep an eye out for potential scammers trying to ruin the fun. This is because scammers become more active during the holidays, targeting us while we have our guard down.

So far in 2022, Australians have lost around half a billion dollars to scams, which is already significantly more than had been lost by this time last year. The majority of these losses – around $300 million – have involved investment or cryptocurrency scams.

Researchers from Deakin University’s Centre for Cyber Security Research and Innovation had a opportunity to interview recent victims of these scams. Here is what we found.

Anyone can fall for a scam

I was shocked and could not accept that this happened to me although I was very careful […] I was numb for a couple of minutes as it was a large amount of money. – (26-year-old female office manager from South Australia)

These scams have become highly sophisticated and criminals have become less discriminating about whom they target. This is reflected in recent victim demographics, showing a wide variety of backgrounds, a more even distribution across several age groups, and an almost even split on gender.

So, how can you spot these scams and where can you get help if you have fallen victim?

If it sounds too good to be true, it might just be a scam

I was dumbfounded, to say that ground shattered under my feet would be an understatement, it will take me a very long time to recover from it, financially and mentally. – (36-year-old female, legal practitioner from Victoria)

Most crypto scams involve getting the victim to buy and send cryptocurrency to the perpetrator’s account for what appears to be a legitimate investment opportunity.

Cryptocurrency is the currency of choice for this type of crime, because it’s unregulated, untraceable and transactions cannot be reversed.

Victims of such scams are targeted using a number of different methods, which include:

Investment scams: scammers pretend to be investment managers claiming high returns on crypto investments. They get the victim to transfer over funds and escape with them.

“Pump and dump”: scammers usually hype up a new cryptocurrency or an NFT project and artificially increase its value. Once enough victims invest, the scammers sell their stake, leaving the victims with worthless cryptocurrency or NFT.

Read more:
NFTs, an overblown speculative bubble inflated by pop culture and crypto mania

Romance scams: involves scammers using dating platforms, social media or direct messaging to engage with you, gain your trust and pitch an amazing investment opportunity promising high returns, or ask for cryptocurrency to cover medical or travel expenses.

Phishing scams: an old but still effective scam involving malicious emails or messages with links to fake websites promising huge returns on investment or just outright stealing credentials to access users’ digital currency wallets.

Ponzi schemes: a type of investment scam where the scammers use cryptocurrency gathered from multiple victims to repay high interest to some of them; when victims invest more funds, the scammers escape with all the investments.

Mining scams: scammers try and convince victims to buy cryptocurrency to use in mining more of it, while in reality there is no mining happening – the scammers just make transfers that look like returns on the investment. Over time, the victim invests more, and the scammers keep taking it all.

Although methods evolve and change, the telltale signs of a potential scam remain relatively similar:

• very high returns with promises of little or no risk
• proprietary or secretive strategies to gain an advantage
• lack of liquidity, requiring a minimum accumulation amount before funds are released.

Read more:
Crypto theft is on the rise. Here’s how the crimes are committed, and how you can protect yourself

Where to seek help if you’ve been scammed

I felt helpless, I didn’t know what to do, who to reach out to, I was too embarrassed and just kept blaming myself. – (72-year-old male, accountant from Victoria)

If you think you have fallen victim to one of these scams, here is what you need to do next:

• inform the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) here or reach out to relevant authorities as per advice on the ScamWatch website

• reach out to your friends and family members and inform them of the scam; they can also be a source of help and support during such times

• as these events can have a psychological impact, it’s recommended you talk to your GP, a health professional, or someone you trust

• you can also reach out to counselling services such as LifeLine, beyond blue, Sucide Call Back Service, Mens Line, and more for help and support.

If you ever find yourself in a difficult situation, please remember help and support is available.

Finally, to prevent yourself becoming the next statistic over the holiday period, keep in mind the following advice:

• don’t share your personal details with people online or over a call
• don’t invest in something you don’t understand
• if in doubt, talk to an expert or search online for resources yourself (don’t believe any links the scammers send you).

Read more:
Why are there so many data breaches? A growing industry of criminals is brokering in stolen data

The work has been supported by the Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre Limited whose activities are partially funded by the Australian government’s Cooperative Research Centres Programme.

The work has been supported by the Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre Limited whose activities are partially funded by the Australian government’s Cooperative Research Centres Programme.

Jeb Webb 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. Crypto scams will increase over the holidays – here’s what you need to know to not fall victim – https://theconversation.com/crypto-scams-will-increase-over-the-holidays-heres-what-you-need-to-know-to-not-fall-victim-194064

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Strangio, Professor of Politics, Monash University

Dan, they call him. The headlines in Victoria’s tabloid Herald Sun have ceased referring to the state’s premier by his second name: Dan is sufficient. It’s symbolic of how much Daniel Andrews bestrides the state political scene.

Nobody requires a reminder of who he is and few don’t have a strong opinion about him. He is a local colossus, a leader who dominates the state unlike any other since the time of Jeffrey Kennett in the 1990s – another premier who came to be known by his first name only: Jeff.

Like Kennett did, Andrews also enjoys high recognition beyond Victoria’s borders. In part this prominence is due to the fact that, first elected in 2014, he is the senior head of government in the land (Queensland’s Annastacia Palaszczuk is the next closest). But it is also because during Victoria’s second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, Andrews’ marathon 120 consecutive days of media briefings gripped audiences across Australia.

‘If you do everything, you will win’

We now have a biography of Andrews (suggestively subtitled “Australia’s most powerful premier”) by Age journalist Sumeyya Ilanbey, which fleshes out his backstory. He is the eldest child of Catholic working-class parents, who owned a milk bar in Glenroy in Melbourne’s northern suburbs. When Andrews was at primary school, disaster struck the business, which became a lesson for the young boy in the insecurity of working-class life.

The family relocated to the regional north-eastern Victorian town of Wangaratta. There his father became a delivery driver for a smallgoods firm and his mother worked as a bank teller. According to Ilanbey, Andrews’ father instilled in him his “work ethic, and his single-minded determination”, while his mother implanted in him “a social conscience – and a love of politics”.

Like many successful leaders, Andrews showed a precocious interest in politics. A teacher at his Catholic secondary college predicted a future for him in Canberra. While studying at Monash University in the early 1990s, Andrews became involved in the ALP against the backdrop of Kennett’s neoliberal crusade in Victoria.

After graduating, he began work in the electorate office of federal Labor MP Alan Griffin, and from that base emerged as factional secretary of the Socialist Left. At least two characteristics defined the young apparatchik: a meticulous attention to detail and an utter determination to win.

Despite his relative youth, Andrews launched a successful bid to become assistant secretary of the Victorian ALP. In that position he went on to play an important role in managing grassroots campaigns that felled Kennett and delivered government to Steve Bracks in late 1999. On his office wall hung a quote from the archetype of hardball politics, former US President Lyndon Johnson: “If you do everything, you will win”.

Andrews’ meteoric rise continued. At 30, he entered the Legislative Assembly and Bracks immediately appointed him as a parliamentary secretary. He impressed as “a policy wonk who pored over detailed briefing notes”.

When Bracks won a third term in 2006, Andrews was elevated to cabinet. And when John Brumby replaced Bracks in mid-2007, Andrews was assigned the key portfolio of health.

Three years later, after the Brumby government was unexpectedly defeated, Andrews became opposition leader unopposed. Victoria had not experienced a single-term government since the Labor Party split of the 1950s, so his prospects appeared inauspicious.

But plagued by internal divisions, the Coalition government presided over policy stasis and became mired in prolonged industrial disputes with nurses, teachers and paramedics. Running a canny grassroots campaign focused on the bread and butter issues of employment, health, education and transport, Labor narrowly won back power in November 2014. Still an unknown commodity to many Victorians, Andrews was premier at 42.

From the moment he entered office, Andrews was in a hurry to bend Victoria to his will. The inertia of the Coalition’s four years in power, which had exacerbated the strains on the state’s infrastructure and services, and squandered the goodwill of a rapidly expanding population, was a call to arms for action.

But Andrews’ assertiveness was also a function of his strongman leadership type. Fortified by unshakeable inner conviction, he evinced supreme confidence about the direction in which he wanted to take the state. He is a premier who not only innately understands how power works but relishes its exercise, attributes that are surprisingly rare among politicians.

A reformist government

There have been two major strands to the reform agenda his government has pursued during its eight years in office. The first is a gargantuan program of public infrastructure construction, especially in transport, given the public relations moniker “Victoria’s Big Build”.

The signature infrastructure activity of Andrews’ first term of government was the removal of railway level crossings, a politically savvy undertaking that delivered early tangible benefits to commuters. Alongside that was a suite of massive transport projects. These include the Melbourne metro rail project, an airport rail link, a suburban rail loop and an array of road extensions and upgrades headed by the West Gate Tunnel and North East Link projects.

It is not only the scale of the infrastructure building that is striking, but the way in which the government is financing it. In its second term the Andrews administration has accumulated a mountain of public debt as well as racking up a substantial budget deficit. On the surface an interring of the nostrums of neoliberalism and an unashamed assertion of big government, that picture is qualified by how much of the investment is being funnelled to a small number of multinational construction corporations and Labor’s ardour for public private partnerships.

The second key element of Andrews’ reform program has been an adventurous social policy agenda. Capitalising on the fact that the leeway for social activism is greater in Victoria, his government has transformed the state into something of a laboratory for progressive experimentation in Australia.

Its social reform credentials have been burnished through a raft of measures. Examples include establishing the state’s first drug injecting room, strongly supporting the Safe Schools program, appointing a Royal Commission into Family Violence, legislating protection zones around abortion clinics, decriminalising sex work, and banning LGBTIQ+ conversion practices.

In at least two social policy areas, Victoria has been a trailblazer under Andrews. After John Howard’s Coalition government overturned the Northern Territory’s short-lived euthanasia laws in 1997, the issue languished throughout Australia. In 2017, however, the Andrews government became a pioneer of voluntary assisted dying laws among the states. It is a measure now emulated in every state.

Victoria has also been in the vanguard of the nation by embarking on a process for concluding a treaty with the state’s Indigenous communities. The process was launched against the background of the federal Coalition government’s spurning of proposals contained in the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart by Indigenous Australians for a treaty and truth-telling commission.

Since 2019, an elected First Peoples’ Assembly has been in place in Victoria. It has had responsibility for creating the framework for treaty negotiations.

In 2021, a “truth telling” commission (the Yoorrook Justice Commission) was set up as part of the treaty process. This body is inquiring into injustices committed against First Nations peoples dating back to the earliest days of colonisation. It may also investigate the potential for reparations being paid to Indigenous Victorians to make amends for historical wrongs.

Most recently, in another national first, legislation was passed to establish an Indigenous Treaty Authority. To be composed entirely of First Nations representatives, the authority is to act as an independent umpire facilitating treaty negotiations and resolving disputes between traditional owner groups and the state government. The body is autonomous from government – it is not required to report to a minister and its funding is insulated from the usual political cycles. Its creation paves the way for formal treaty negotiations to begin in 2023.

No shortage of scandals

The combination of progressive boldness, political effectiveness and the premier’s forceful leadership style has made Andrews an arch enemy of conservatives. The chasing after him by News Corp’s Herald Sun and commentators on Sky News borders on the obsessional. The impotence of their attacks on him to date has only fuelled their rage.

Read more:
Attacks on Dan Andrews are part of News Corporation’s long abuse of power

The loathing is mutual. To opponents, Andrews plays the political hard man. Typical of the strong leader, he gives little truck to alternative viewpoints and does not disguise his contempt for his accusers. One of his methods is to freeze out critics; for example, boycotting Melbourne’s top-rating morning talkback radio program and thumbing his nose at the Herald Sun.

This tactic sits within a larger innovative communications strategy of bypassing the mainstream media in favour of unfiltered engagement with the public through social media. Andrews is a prolific user of Twitter and especially Facebook, more active in the space than any other head of government in Australia. His one million followers on Facebook dwarfs that of his leadership counterparts, the prime minister included. Andrews is a formidable communicator, a master of conversing with the electorate through uncluttered and persuasive messaging.

Brazenly crashing through controversies is a disquieting trademark of Andrews’ leadership. His government has been embroiled in no shortage of scandals during its eight years in power.

In its first term it was dogged by the so-called “red shirts” affair, which involved the misuse of public funds by the Labor Party during the 2014 election campaign. When the episode first came to light, Andrews’ first line of defence was to dismiss the allegations and then “dig in his heels”.

The premier’s habit of doubling down when his government is under pressure is accompanied Illanbey complains by a pattern of calculated evasiveness towards scrutiny. In Labor’s second term, the media exposed more skulduggery in the ALP. A resulting joint inquiry by the Independent Broad-Based Anti-Corruption Commission (IBAC) and Ombudsman reported a sordid tale of industrial-scale branch stacking and further misuse of public resources.

This time there was no place to hide. In an uncharacteristic moment, the premier apologised for his party’s behaviour.

These events have tainted Andrews’ record as Labor leader. Though he moved speedily against ministers implicated in the second of these episodes and seized on the moment to successfully press Labor’s national executive to appoint administrators to run the Victorian branch as an instrument to overhaul its practices, the impression was that he had been too long complacent about the party’s excesses.

Centralisation of authority has been a troublesome recurring theme of government practices at both federal and state level over recent decades. Under Andrews that phenomenon is pronounced. Power is heavily concentrated in his hands, those of a small cabal of ministers and in his private office. The latter is some four times greater in size than it was before he became premier, its activities undermining accountability.

Illanbey paints a damning picture of governance in Victoria on Andrews’ watch:

The bureaucrats have been politicised and have become an extension of the premier’s political staffers; the 21 ministers who are collectively responsible for making decisions are sidelined in favour of the Gang of Five; the staffers in the premier’s private office and a select few departmental secretaries have greater power and access to Andrews than most ministers and backbenchers. Freedom-of-information requests are routinely blocked; hundreds of departmental documents are routinely dumped on one day in the Victorian parliament, making it all but impossible for the public, journalists and non-government MPs to trawl through them effectively. Extensive cabinet meeting minutes are not taken, in order to limit the political damage in the event of a decision being leaked. Political staffers and the Department of Premier and Cabinet routinely draft policy that is within the remit of other ministers, and they micro-manage the work of specialised departments such as health, transport and education. Often, the first that backbenchers and even junior ministers hear of a policy is when it’s announced at a press conference.

Alongside the tight control exercised by the premier, is a ruthlessness towards those in his own ranks who cross him or who he regards as becoming a liability to his leadership. Ministers have been unceremoniously cut adrift while others who fall out of favour are notoriously put in the “freezer” by Andrews. Those who have suffered his wrath say his loyalty is to him alone.

The polarising premier and the pandemic

The greatest crisis of Andrews’ tenure has, of course, been the COVID-19 pandemic, which has dominated Labor’s second term in office. Victoria not only experienced the worst death toll of any Australian state, but Melbourne earned the unenviable record of being one of the world’s most locked-down cities.

His handling of the pandemic had a polarising effect. The government’s bungled hotel quarantine system, a product of a disastrous breakdown in bureaucratic and political lines of authority, unleashed the second wave of the pandemic.

Andrews reacted in the only way he knows how: by further asserting his control. Against the background of his extraordinary endurance feat of four months of daily media briefings, a fierce online battle raged. On the one hand, was an “I Stand by Dan” solidarity campaign with overtones of the leader as saviour. On the other hand, a melange of self-styled libertarian activists and conservative media rallied around the trope “Dictator Dan”.

They not only held him personally culpable for the second wave, but condemned his response as overbearing and dangerously untrammelled. By the latter months of 2021, as the state endured a sixth lockdown, normally temperate Victoria had developed a febrile anti-lockdown movement dotted by conspiracy theorists.

Their hatred of Andrews was extreme. Yet, amid the polarisation, the majority of the public stood firmly by the premier, endorsing his management of the pandemic. They seemed to admire his resoluteness and accepted that the lockdowns, however oppressive, were a necessary evil to protect the community.

A third term?

Andrews stands on the verge this month of winning a third term in office. The result is unlikely to replicate the “Danslide” of 2018, with Labor’s primary vote set to be significantly down. In a repeat of what occurred at May’s federal election, support for minor parties and independents will spike announcing this as the new norm of Australian politics.

Nevertheless, the opinion polls show Labor is still strongly placed to retain a majority. The government’s enduring electoral appeal is arguably remarkable. After all, this is an eight-year-old administration prematurely aged by spending much of this term in crisis mode managing the pandemic.

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Labor retains large lead in Victorian Resolve poll four weeks from election; also leads in NSW

The government continues to be shadowed by unwelcome revelations. The latest is about an investigation by IBAC into multi-million-dollar grants to an ALP aligned health union prior to the 2018 election, with media reports that bureaucratic advice was ignored and that the premier and his private office trampled due process. And under Labor’s stewardship the health system is ailing and there is a burgeoning list of infrastructure project delays and budget overruns.

What then explains the government’s resilience? To seething right-wing warriors, the answer lies in Victorians succumbing to a form of Stockholm syndrome, or even more sinister plot lines in which Andrews is feverishly imagined as a kind of local version of Kim Jong-un, a supreme leader grown democratically untouchable. The truth is far less fanciful.

First, the ongoing strength of support for Labor is consistent with the patterns of the state’s electoral politics stretching back to the early 1980s. Over the past four decades, the ALP has dominated elections in Victoria at both state and federal level. It has ruled over Spring Street for three-quarters of that era.

Labor has, in short, become the natural party of government of the state. Faced with the reality of the left-of-centre political ascendancy in Victoria, conservatives no less than John Howard have taken to ruefully describing the state as the “Massachusetts of Australia”.

As I have argued previously, Labor is now the closest thing there is to a custodian of the progressive liberal reformist tradition in Victorian politics, an impulse that originated in colonial times and whose bearers included such luminaries as Alfred Deakin. In that way, Labor better fits the philosophical grain of Victoria than does its chief political opponent.

Second, and by extension, the Andrews government has benefitted from the haplessness of the Liberal Party opposition. Epitomised by the tin-ear law-and-order campaign they ran at the 2018 election that helped deliver Labor its landslide victory, the Liberals have been too often out of tune with the sensibility of Victorians. Short of talent, infiltrated by conservative religious elements and prone to infighting, the party has struggled to establish itself as a credible alternative government. Its lack of appeal to younger voters is nothing short of a crisis.

Admittedly, the Liberal Party has done a better job in this campaign by hewing towards the centre and focusing on mainstream concerns, but most polling suggests its primary vote is anchored at a level at which it is not a serious competitor for office.

Third, while the electorate might not agree with all aspects of Labor’s activism, it has won continuing credit for being a government that does things. And it counts that physical reminders of that busyness are ubiquitous throughout the state.

Fourth is approval of Andrews himself. Misgivings about the premier have undoubtedly increased as his style of governing has grown more conspicuously heavy-handed. The dictator epithet, however hyperbolic, has obtained currency in the community; it is a refrain that frequently surfaces in polling survey responses.

Even so, those same opinion polls shows support for Andrews’ leadership has stayed robust. He is perceived as energetic, decisive, smart and capable.

The public also seems to appreciate his ambition for the state to be a national leader. An illustration of that continuing ambition is Labor’s announcement in this election campaign of increased carbon emission reduction and renewable energy targets that puts Victoria out in front of other jurisdictions.

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Andrews has vowed that if he wins the November 26 election, he will stay on for another full term. This would mean he would not only be premier for 12 years but leader of the Labor Party for 16 years. This stretches credulity, and neither the public nor his colleagues would wish for that longevity.

Victoria would indeed benefit before long from a disturbance of the power relations centred on Andrews. The strong likelihood is that he will relinquish the premiership no later than the middle of the next term. He will hand over to his chosen successor, Jacinta Allan, in a final act of control.

In this scenario, Andrews will depart office as the longest-serving Labor premier in the history of Victoria, eclipsing the record of John Cain junior. Like Cain did, he will leave a mighty imprint on the state, having radically remade its physical infrastructure and modernised its social fabric. He has emphatically demonstrated the enduring capacity of a state government in Australia to powerfully shape the lives of its citizens.

The legacy of Andrews’ governance method, on the other hand, will be more troubling. Perhaps above all else he will be remembered for being a political force of nature.

Paul Strangio 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. ‘A political force of nature’: despite scandals and a polarising style, can ‘Dan’ do it again in Victoria? – https://theconversation.com/a-political-force-of-nature-despite-scandals-and-a-polarising-style-can-dan-do-it-again-in-victoria-187344

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Fiona Macdonald, Policy Director, Centre for Future Work at the Australia Institute and Adjunct Principal Research Fellow, RMIT University, RMIT University

“The fact is that the government that I lead was elected with a mandate to increase people’s wages,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told the House of Representatives last week, as parliament debated the government’s bill to increase access to multi-employer collective bargaining.

The bill passed the lower house last Thursday, after the government made changes that Employment Relations Minister Tony Burke said would ensure the “primacy” of enterprise bargaining. Further concessions may be needed to pass the Senate.

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Employer groups argue the multi-employer bargaining provisions could return Australia to a 1970s-style system with high levels of industrial conflict. They claim it will lead unions to use sector-wide industrial action to achieve their goals.

Importantly, the Council of Small Business Organisations of Australia, which supports multi-employer bargaining in principle, has ended up opposing Labor’s provisions, saying theymake the system more complex.

Nonetheless, Albanese has a point about Labor having a mandate.

He never made an explicit promise to expand multi-employer bargaining. He didn’t campaign on it. But he did promise to lift stagnating wages – particularly for those in low-paid, feminised sectors – and his government cannot deliver on that without fixing a broken industrial relations system.

Provisions already exist

Multi-employer agreements are, in fact, meant to occur now, under the Fair Work Act passed by the Rudd Labor government in 2009.

The act empowers the industrial relations umpire (known as Fair Work Australia until 2013, now the Fair Work Commission) to authorise multi-employer bargaining in sectors where employees are low-paid and “have not had access to collective bargaining or who face substantial difficulty bargaining at the enterprise level”.

The Rudd government included these provisions – known as the Low-Paid Bargaining Stream – because of the evidence that wages and conditions in areas such as child care, aged care, community services, security and cleaning had stagnated under single-enterprise bargaining.

Workers in these areas were disadvantaged by a range of factors. There were high rates of casual and part-time employment. Many employers were small or medium-sized, with limited resources and skills for bargaining.

In child care and aged care, wages were effectively set by a third party – the federal government, the main funder of services. Care workers were also more reticent to strike as part of the bargaining process, because of the effect on clients.

But they just don’t work

In 12 years of the Fair Work Act, however, its multi-employer provisions have not led to a single bargain.

This is because the legislation requires the Fair Work commissioners to take into account complex considerations to determine if multi-employer bargaining is in the public interest.

A 2011 application by the Australian Nursing Federation to bargain with general practice clinics and medical centres was rejected on the grounds nurses were not low-paid.

A 2014 application by the United Voice union to bargain with five security service employers in Canberra was rejected because three employers already had enterprise agreements.

Just one attempt has passed the first stage of obtaining authorisation. In 2010, United Voice and the Queensland branch of the Australian Workers’ Union sought authorisation to bargain on behalf of 60,000 workers with residential aged-care providers funded by the federal government. This was about 300 employers.

Fair Work Australia agreed, but also excluded workplaces that had previously made an enterprise agreement. This knocked out about half the employers, undermining the collective strength needed to get the federal government to agree to fund any wage increases.

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Whatever the merits of arguments over details in the government’s proposed bill, there should be no argument that the system needs reform.

Enterprise bargaining hasn’t delivered. Collective bargaining has become the exception rather than the norm. Over the past decade the share of the workforce covered by an enterprise agreement has halved, to 12% of all employees.

Greater access to multi-employer bargaining is needed for fair wages and conditions for many employees, especially those in low-paid feminised sectors where staff shortages and high turnover are widely recognised to be threatening care quality and jeopardising the sustainability of the industries.

Fiona Macdonald has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council, the Victorian Government and various employer and trade union organisations.

– ref. A mandate for multi-employer bargaining? Without it, wages for the low paid won’t rise – https://theconversation.com/a-mandate-for-multi-employer-bargaining-without-it-wages-for-the-low-paid-wont-rise-193829

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Annie Wu, Senior Research Officer, University of Technology Sydney

The venue is brimming with cheers of excitement from the chicken owners. Despite bets being placed before the game started, the value of a bet can build up as the stronger chicken continues to win.

The atmosphere gets intense.

The brown dirt floor is speckled with red; the smell of this blood mixes with the smoke of cigarettes and floats up to coat the twilight sky.

Blood splashed on the ground by the knife of the winning chicken signifies not only masculinity and competition, but also the efforts dedicated to raising household chickens and the ability to earn an income off bets.

The rule of brutality is the loser cock will also contribute: not through a betting income, but through feeding the family.

In Timor-Leste, cockfighting is a strictly gendered event limited to men. Women are forbidden to attend, embargoed by the culture, but foreign observers – including myself – seem exempt from the rule.

Men’s work

Men gather every afternoon at 6pm in large fields to gamble on cockfighting (futu manu). In one evening, a man can spend from US$10-$200 per game in a country where the median monthly income per household is US$235.

Cockfighting is a cultural practice that has been prevalent in Southeast Asia, South America and the South Pacific for a long time. It is believed to have originated in South Asia before it was introduced into Greece in the time of Themistocles, 524–459 BCE.

Each night there is a series of fights between an agreed number of chickens over several rounds of battles. Each winner chicken will continuously fight to the next round until the ultimate winner is announced.

This traditional cultural activity has been commercialised as a petty cash source and a channel for getting windfalls for Timorese men since the Portuguese colonial era. It is possible to win a few hundred dollars in one day if the fighter chicken is well-trained and strong enough to win several times.

Loser cocks are frequently disabled, and a small corner is dedicated for them after each round. Owners take them home to serve for dinner. Timorese households rarely consume protein every meal. Especially in rural households, meat is eaten only a few days a week and these chickens form an important part of the diet.

Cockfighting has multiple advantages for a household: nutritional value, potential extra income, the leisure of excitement and a space for men to engage with peers and demonstrate masculinity and power during the game.

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Before chickens became food for people, they were regarded as special exotica

Women’s work

Chicken selling and dealing is reserved for women to earn petty cash and accumulate private savings.

Forbidding women to participate in cockfighting restricts access to fun and highlights the privilege of its masculine nature. But men are not allowed to sell chickens that belong to their wives, mothers, sisters or daughters: that is the women’s traditional “piggy bank”.

One chicken may sell for US$15-40, and one woman can raise up to seven chickens a year, depending on the available space.

Permitting only women to be in charge of chicken sales is a security deposit and balancing structure. The family economics cannot be squandered by men’s addiction to cockfighting: the rights of sale are determined by the women.

Men are allowed to keep, train and raise chickens in their own way. They can often be seen exchanging information about their chickens before and after fights. But women are the treasurers in dealing with household chickens.

Community work

For the community, the petty cash spent on cockfighting allows the continuity of a Timorese tradition and supports the local economy. Social and communal relations are sustained and the informal economy is supported: cash stays local and is spent locally.

Cockfighting trading and training require multiple business skills that benefit the livelihoods of participants’ families: developing the system to collect betting cash and issue winners’ takings, running events, facilitating the game and selling cigarettes and drinks.

Yet it exists in a vague and informal economic sphere in Timor-Leste: somewhere between a leisure activity to unwind and a commercial trade to make money.

Winning incomes feed local households, guarantees cash flow and secures protein intake. It can improve food security and nutrition, and can relate incomes to small business. It is also a form of preserving cultural heritage.

After the last round of cockfighting ends, some men gently hold their winning chickens as if they were babies, carry them in light blue nylon string bags to catch a minivan, or pat them softly while walking them home.

In that moment, I see these cocks are more than a tool of income generation.

They are pets, warriors and royal portrait animals for Timorese households.

Read more:
Twenty years after independence, Timor-Leste continues its epic struggle

Annie Wu 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. Cash for the winner, the loser for dinner: cockfighting in Timor Leste is a complicated game – https://theconversation.com/cash-for-the-winner-the-loser-for-dinner-cockfighting-in-timor-leste-is-a-complicated-game-131027

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Strating, Director, La Trobe Asia and Associate Professor, La Trobe University, La Trobe University

On Friday, leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)’s member states provided a statement announcing “in-principle” support for Timor-Leste to be admitted as its 11th member. So does this mean Timor-Leste’s long wait to become a member of ASEAN is finally over? The short answer is not quite.

It is a positive development that all 10 ASEAN states – Cambodia (current ASEAN chair), Indonesia, Singapore, Brunei, Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar, Philippines, Laos and Vietnam – appear to have agreed to the move. However, the statement was unclear about when and how Timor-Leste would achieve full membership.

Timor-Leste will not immediately join the association. It will be granted observer status and allowed to participate in ASEAN meetings. The only other state with observer status is Papua New Guinea (PNG).

Since becoming independent in 2002, Timor-Leste has existed outside the region’s defining institution, despite being widely considered a Southeast Asian state. It was also seen to belong in ASEAN when it was incorporated in Indonesia.

Timor-Leste’s hard road to membership

Timor-Leste first applied for membership in 2011 when Indonesia was ASEAN chair. Successive Timorese governments have wanted the country to join ASEAN in order to advance national, security and economic interests, and alleviate some of the vulnerabilities that come with being a small state in an increasingly contested region.

The 2011 Timor-Leste Strategic Development Plan envisaged the nation becoming a full ASEAN member by 2015.

Part of the challenge for Dili was convincing Southeast Asian leaders of the value it would bring to the association. Technically, the ASEAN Charter stipulates four criteria for membership:

• geographical location
• recognition by other states
• agreement to be bound by the ASEAN charter
• ability and willingness to carry out obligations of membership.

It is the last criterion that has been the most troublesome.

As a consensus-based organisation, all 10 existing ASEAN states must agree to admit Timor-Leste. This is not an easy task, given these states have different national interests, political regimes, and levels of economic and social development. This has contributed to perceptions that ASEAN is slow-moving and divided on critical issues, such as the South China Sea and the Myanmar crisis.

There was speculation that Timor-Leste’s growing ties with China could mean it would become a “trojan horse” for Beijing within ASEAN. This overstated China’s influence in the country and understated Dili’s desire for foreign policy independence.

There were also concerns about further expansion of ASEAN given some of the dilemmas presented by Myanmar’s membership, and concerns around domestic instability and conflict.

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Singapore in particular was sceptical about Timor-Leste’s economic and political prospects. It was also concerned Timor-Leste’s membership would undermine its plan for greater economic integration across the bloc.

Given this history, some interesting questions emerge from this announcement. Has Singapore’s leadership altered its view on Timor-Leste’s membership? If so, why?

Does ASEAN think Timor-Leste is “ready” for membership?

Over the past decade, Timor-Leste has undergone a series of reviews regarding its fitness to be an ASEAN member. ASEAN has three community pillars: political-security, economic, and socio-cultural. In 2016, the community pillars engaged in independent studies that found Timor-Leste needed capacity-building to meet membership requirements. Since then, the pillars have completed fact-finding missions to assess Timor-Leste’s reforms and human resource capacities.

Several of ASEAN’s joint communiques also framed Timor-Leste’s future membership eligibility in terms of “capacity-building”, including in 2021.

Yet, ASEAN’s precise membership standards for Timor-Leste remain unclear.
In the statement, ASEAN’s leaders agreed they would formalise an “objective fact based criteria-based roadmap” for Timor-Leste’s full membership, including “milestones” that Timor-Leste would have to meet. The aim is for the roadmap to be adopted at ASEAN’s 42nd summit in 2023, when Indonesia will be chair.

The final point of agreement is perhaps the most revealing. The leaders have committed to helping Timor-Leste build its capacity to meet the milestones that will be set out in the roadmap. It seems there may be at least some ASEAN leaders who consider Timor-Leste not yet ready for membership and needing further assistance to meet the entry standards.

The continuing emphasis on capacity building and the absence of a clear timeline could mean the announcement is another stalling tactic.

More optimistically, though, ASEAN might be viewed as an institution where incremental progress should be taken as a positive step. Getting the 10 states to agree in principle is itself a considerable achievement given some of the concerns about Timor-Leste’s capacity.

This decision may also demonstrate that ASEAN is not as divided and dysfunctional as its critics make out. It is recognition that ASEAN leaders are prepared to work with Timor-Leste to ensure it achieves its long-held membership ambitions.

Rebecca Strating currently receives funding from Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, US Department of State, Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, and Australia-Japan Foundation.

– ref. ASEAN leaders give ‘in-principle’ support for Timor-Leste’s membership. What does this actually mean? – https://theconversation.com/asean-leaders-give-in-principle-support-for-timor-lestes-membership-what-does-this-actually-mean-194462