Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joo-Cheong Tham, Professor, Melbourne Law School, The University of Melbourne

Before the pandemic, working from home was a luxury. Then it became a necessity. Since lockdowns have eased it has become a contested space between what employers and workers want.

Now unions – including the Financial Services Union, National Tertiary Education Union (of which I am a national councillor) and the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance – are pushing to enshrine working from home as a right.

What does it mean to have a right to work from home, and why should there be one? And what conditions are needed to make such a right effective?

What is the current situation?

One way to make working from home a legal entitlement for all would be to change the National Employment Standards, which provide a safety net for all workers, whether they are on an award, enterprise agreement or individual contract.

The standards give workers the right to request flexible working arrangements but only in certain circumstances – if they have caring responsibilities, a disability, are older than 55, or are experiencing domestic violence.

Employers can only refuse these requests on “reasonable business grounds” such as costliness, impracticability and negative impact on productivity and customer service. This leaves a lot of room to reasonably reject a request.

A right through collective agreements

The unions are taking the easier step of securing these rights for their members through collective bargaining – inserting clauses into the enterprise agreements that set pay and conditions above the safety net.

What those clauses would say is indicated by the Australian Council of Trade Unions’ Working from Home Charter, which states:

Working from home should be offered to all suitable workers to accept on a voluntary basis.

The Financial Sector Union’s “best-practice” guide similarly advocates that:

Employees should be able to enter into and out of work from home arrangements based on their personal circumstances, responsibilities and preferences.

Employers will still be able to refuse requests, but only with good reason. The clauses being sought by the National Tertiary Education Union, for example, will limit refusals to situations when requests cannot be accommodated.

In short, a right to work from home will place the onus on employers to justify why they are seeking to deny working from home arrangements.

Why should there be such a right?

The case for a right to work from home has been made by the seismic shift resulting from the pandemic.

It has shown that, in many instances, work can be performed effectively while working from home. Contrary to managerial concerns that productivity would suffer, research suggests those working from home have higher productivity.

Most workers and many businesses have embraced the change. There is a clear benefit to workers in reduced commuting time and costs (especially for those with long commutes).

Read more:
Even Google agrees there’s no going back to the old office life

There are also social benefits

Working from home may be “the biggest productivity increase of the century”. It helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions – which is why it is part of “green bargaining” for European trade unions. It can also promote a more gender-balanced workforce, as the Productivity Commission’s research suggests:

More women than men are in jobs that can be done remotely. Additionally, since women in Australia still carry most of the responsibility for raising children, and are also more likely than men to care for others, the option to work from home may allow them to access employment.

More generally, the Productivity Commission expects that reducing “cost” of working will increase the labour supply.

Health is still an imperative

With the COVID-19 pandemic not yet over, there are also powerful safety rationales.

Paul Kelly, the federal chief medical officer, has called working from home “an important health and safety measure”.

As an essential control measure for workplace safety – required in certain situations under work, health and safety legislation – it can even be an act of social solidarity.

5 crucial safeguards to manage risks

Working from home is not without risks.

It may undermine workplace community, and the collaboration and innovation generated from “serendipitous interaction”. But this is less an argument against a right to work from home and more one to wisely manage.

Equally the risks to individual workers need to be managed.

To be effective, a right to work from home should be underpinned by provisions to safeguard five things:

• Genuine choice. This including the ability to exercise the right to work from home as a group and through trade unions.

• Working hours. There is a serious risk of “time theft” as the line between work and home life is blurred. (The “reasonable limitation of working hours” is a human right.)

• Workplace safety. Employers still have work, health and safety obligations to employees working from home.

• Digital safety. This includes data privacy protection and a right to disconnect outside set working hours.

• Equity. This includes ensuring working from home does not exacerbate the double burden of paid work and care and distributing costs fairly. The general rule should be that employers provide work equipment and cover necessary costs such as electricity.

Working from home is fundamentally changing where and how we work. A right to work from home with robust support will steer this transformation in a positive direction.

Read more:
Working from home: what are your employer’s responsibilities, and what are yours?

Joo-Cheong Tham has received funding from the Australian Research Council, the Australian Council of Trade Unions, European Trade Union Institute and International IDEA. He is a director of the Centre for Public Integrity; a national councillor and Victorian division assistant secretary (academic staff)-elect of the National Tertiary Education Union.

– ref. Few Australians have the right to work from home, even after COVID. Here’s how that could change – https://theconversation.com/few-australians-have-the-right-to-work-from-home-even-after-covid-heres-how-that-could-change-187696

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Newman, Professor of Sustainability, Curtin University

Our ageing cities are badly in need of regeneration. Many established residential areas, the “greyfields”, are becoming physically, technologically and environmentally obsolete. They are typically located in low-density, car-dependent middle suburbs developed in the mid to late 20th century.

Compared to the outer suburbs, these middle suburbs are rich in services, amenities and jobs. But the greyfields also represent economically outdated, failing or undercapitalised real-estate assets. Their location has made them the focus of suburban backyard infill development.

Unfortunately, the current approach typically cuts down all the trees and creates more car traffic as resident numbers grow. A new kind of urban regeneration is needed at the scale of precincts, rather than lot by lot, to transform the greyfields into more liveable and sustainable suburbs. It calls for a collaborative approach by federal, state and local governments.

How do we do this?

Our free new e-book, Greening the Greyfields, sets out how to do this. It draws on ten years of research that led to a new model of urban development.

This approach integrates two goals of urban research:

1. ending the dependence on cars caused by a disconnect between land use and transport

2. accelerating the supply of more sustainable, medium-density, infill housing to replace the current dysfunctional model of urban regeneration.

Greening greyfields will help our cities make the transition to net zero emissions.

Read more:
Australia’s cities policies are seriously inadequate for tackling the climate crisis

Why do we need to regenerate these areas?

We need to shrink the unsustainable urban and ecological footprints of “suburban” cities. Neighbourhoods need to become more resilient, sustainable, liveable and equitable for their residents.

Urban regeneration must also allow for the COVID-driven restructuring of the work–residence relationship for city residents. This involves relocalising urban places so they become more self-sufficient as “20-minute neighbourhoods”. Their residents will have access to most of the services they need via low-emission cycling and walking, as well as public transport.

Read more:
People love the idea of 20-minute neighbourhoods. So why isn’t it top of the agenda?

Current attempts to increase residential density and limit sprawl in most Australian cities tend to focus on blanket upzoning in selected growth zones. The resulting backyard infill involves a few small homes, which is all that is allowed on each block. Density increases only marginally, so there are still too few housing options for residents who want to be close to city services and opportunities.

Piecemeal infill redevelopment often degrades the quality of our suburbs. The loss of trees and increase in hard surfaces worsen urban heat island effects and flood risk. And a lack of convenient transport options for the extra residents reinforces car dependence.

We need more strategic models of suburban regeneration.

Greyfield regeneration compared to conventional approaches

Read more:
We’re at a fork in the road: do we choose neighbourhoods to live, work and play in?

Why do this at the precinct scale?

Urban regeneration is best tackled at the scale of precincts. They are the building blocks of cities: greenfield sites continue to be developed, and old brownfield industrial sites are redeveloped, at this scale.

Design-led precinct-scale regeneration can maximise co-ordination of aspects of urban living neglected by piecemeal lot-by-lot redevelopment. Think local health and education services, small shops, social housing, walkable open space, public transport and even regenerated biodiversity.

Model precincts like WGV, in a greyfields suburb of Fremantle, have very successfully demonstrated how regeneration can produce high-quality, medium-density housing and net-zero outcomes. However, this development was on an old school site, so there was no need to combine individual blocks into a precinct-scale site. There were also no residents that needed to be engaged – though WGV became very popular because of its attractive architecture and treed green spaces.

What are the key elements of this model?

Greyfield precinct regeneration has two sub-models: place-activated and transit-activated. A place-activated precinct may shorten travel distances for residents by providing services and amenities, but does not in itself increase public transport. For transit-activated precincts, good public transport increases land values, which makes these regenerated greyfields even more attractive.

Mid-tier transit like trackless trams is an ideal way to enable precinct developments along main road corridors. Local governments are recognising this around Australia.

Greyfield regeneration can begin with a strategy of district greenlining. Redlining was an American planning tool to exclude people of colour from a neighbourhood. Greenlining is the opposite: it includes the whole community in greening their neighbourhood.

This strategic process would identify neighbourhoods in need of next-generation infrastructure. Projects of this sort require a precinct-scale vision and plan.

State and municipal agencies can do this work. It would include:

• physical infrastructure – energy, water, waste and transport

• social infrastructure – health and education

• green infrastructure – the nature-based services we get from planting and retaining trees and enabling open space and landscaped streets.

The City of Maroondah in Victoria provided an early demonstration of how this can happen. It produced a set of playbooks to show how other municipalities, developers and land owners can replicate the process.

Greening the greyfields will deliver the many benefits associated with more sustainable and liveable communities. However, these outcomes depend on more comprehensive, design-led, integrated land use and transport planning.

Property owners, councils, developers and financiers will have to work together much more closely and effectively than happens with the business-as-usual approach of fragmented, small-lot infill, which is failing dismally. New laws and regulations will be needed to change this approach.

Read more:
Why city policy to ‘protect the Brisbane backyard’ is failing

Better Cities 2.0?

Precinct-based projects offer a model for net zero development of our cities.

Greyfield regeneration is an increasingly pervasive and pressing challenge for our cities. It calls for all levels of government to work on a strategic response.

We suggest a Better Cities 2.0 program, led by the federal government, to establish greyfield precinct regeneration authorities in major cities and build partnerships with all major urban stakeholders. It would set us on the path to greening the greyfields.

Peter Newman receives funding from the Sustainable Built Environment National Research Centre. Peter is a Co-ordinating Lead Author for Transport in the IPCC.

Giles Thomson receives funding from KK-stiftesen, Sweden; and has received funding from the CRC for Low Carbon Living, and the Sustainable Built Environment national research centre (SBEnrc).

Peter Newton has received funding from AHURI, CRC for Spatial Information, CRC for Low Carbon Living and the federal Smart Cities and Suburbs Program for Greening the Greyfields research project

Stephen Glackin received funding from Cooperative Research Centers for Spatial Information and Low Carbon Living (CRCSI, CRCLCL).

– ref. Greening the greyfields: how to renew our suburbs for more liveable, net-zero cities – https://theconversation.com/greening-the-greyfields-how-to-renew-our-suburbs-for-more-liveable-net-zero-cities-187261

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cherie Russell, PhD Candidate, Deakin University

Humans have an evolutionary preference for sweetness. Sweet foods, like fruit and honey, were an important energy source for our ancestors.

However, in the modern world, sweetened foods are readily available, very cheap and advertised extensively. Now, we are consuming too much sugar in foods and drinks – the kind that is added rather than sugar that is naturally occurring. Consuming too much added sugar is bad news for health. It is linked to obesity, type 2 diabetes and tooth decay.

Because of these health concerns, manufacturers started using non-nutritive sweeteners to sweeten food as well. These sweeteners contain little to no kilojoules and include both artificial sweeteners, such as aspartame, and those that come from natural sources, such as stevia.

Our research, published today, shows the amount of added sugars and non-nutritive sweeteners in packaged foods and drinks has grown a lot over the last decade. This is especially true in middle-income countries, such as China and India, as well as in the Asia Pacific, including Australia.

From lollies to biscuits to drinks

Using market sales data from around the globe, we looked at the quantity of added sugar and non-nutritive sweeteners sold in packaged foods and drinks from 2007 to 2019.

We found per person volumes of non-nutritive sweeteners in drinks is now 36% higher globally. Added sugars in packaged food is 9% higher.

Non-nutritive sweeteners are most commonly added to confectionery. Ice creams and sweet biscuits are the fastest-growing food categories in terms of these sweeteners. The expanding use of added sugars and other sweeteners over the last decade means, overall, our packaged food supply is getting sweeter.

Our analysis shows the amount of added sugar used to sweeten drinks has increased globally. However, this is largely explained by a 50% increase in middle-income countries, such as China and India. Use has decreased in high-income countries, such as Australia and the United States.

It is recommended men consume less than nine teaspoons of sugar a day, while women should have less than six. However, because sugar is added to so many foods and drinks, over half of Australians exceed recommendations, eating an average of 14 teaspoons a day.

The shift from using added sugar to sweeteners to sweeten drinks is most common in carbonated soft drinks and bottled water. The World Health Organization is developing guidelines on the use of non-sugar sweeteners.

Read more:
Sugar detox? Cutting carbs? A doctor explains why you should keep fruit on the menu

Rich and poor countries

There is a difference in added sugar and sweetener use between richer and poorer countries. The market for packaged food and beverages in high-income countries has become saturated. To continue to grow, large food and beverage corporations are expanding into middle-income countries.

Our findings demonstrate a double standard in the sweetening of the food supply, with manufacturers providing less sweet, “healthier” products in richer countries.

Read more:
How much longer do we need to wait for Australia to implement a sugary drinks tax?

Unexpected consequences of control

To reduce the health harms of high added sugar intakes, many governments have acted to curb their use and consumption. Sugar levies, education campaigns, advertising restrictions and labelling are among these measures.

But such actions can encourage manufacturers to partially or completely substitute sugar with non-nutritive sweeteners to avoid penalties or cater to evolving population preferences.

In our study, we found regions with a higher number of policy actions to reduce sugar intakes had a significant increase in non-nutritive sweeteners sold in drinks.

Why is this a problem

While the harms of consuming too much added sugar are well known, relying on non-nutritive sweeteners as a solution also carries risk. Despite their lack of dietary energy, recent reviews, suggest consuming non-nutritive sweeteners may be linked with type 2 diabetes and heart disease and can disrupt the gut microbiome.

And because they are sweet, ingesting non-nutritive sweeteners influences our palates and encourages us to want more sweet food. This is of particular concern for children, who are still developing their lifelong taste preferences. Additionally, certain non-nutritive sweeteners are considered environmental contaminants and are not effectively removed from wastewater.

Non-nutritive sweeteners are only found in ultra-processed foods. These foods are industrially made, contain ingredients you would not find in a home kitchen, and are designed to be “hyper-palatable”. Eating more ultra-processed foods is linked with more heart disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer and death.

Ultra-processed foods are also environmentally harmful because they use significant resources such as energy, water, packaging materials and plastic waste.

Foods that contain sweeteners can receive a “health halo” if they don’t contain sugar, misleading the public and potentially displacing nutritious, whole foods in the diet.

Read more:
Poorest Americans drink a lot more sugary drinks than the richest – which is why soda taxes could help reduce gaping health inequalities

Focus on nutrition

When making policy to improve public health nutrition, it is important to consider unintended consequences. Rather than focusing on specific nutrients, there is merit in advocating for policy that considers the broader aspects of food, including cultural importance, level of processing and environmental impacts. Such policy should promote nutritious, minimally processed foods.

We need to closely monitor the increasing sweetness of food and drinks and the growing use of added sugars and non-nutritive sweeteners. It is likely to shape our future taste preferences, food choices and human and planetary health.

Cherie Russell has received funding from an Australian Government Research Training Scholarship. The funder of the research was not involved in any aspect of the study. She is affiliated with the not-for-profit organisations Public Health Association of Australia and Healthy Food Systems Australia.

Carley Grimes receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council and is affiliated with Dietitans Australia.

Mark Lawrence receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is a Board member of Food Standards Australia New Zealand. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the positions of any organisation with which he is associated.

Phillip Baker receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Rebecca Lindberg is affiliated with The Community Grocer.

– ref. Food and drinks are getting sweeter. Even if it’s not all sugar, it’s bad for our health – https://theconversation.com/food-and-drinks-are-getting-sweeter-even-if-its-not-all-sugar-its-bad-for-our-health-187605

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Welch, Senior Lecturer, University of Auckland

New Zealand has likely passed the peak of the most recent COVID-19 wave, thanks to strong hybrid immunity in the community and with the number of hospitalisations at the lower end of what was originally expected.

The seven-day rolling average of new daily cases has fallen steadily from a peak of around 10,000 on July 15 to just under 7,800 yesterday.

The number of reported cases depends on how many people actually test when they feel unwell. The true number of infections is likely to be significantly higher. But there is no reason to think testing has dropped off significantly in the past two weeks, or even in the past few months.

The levelling off and subsequent decline of cases fits with the wave naturally reaching a peak. The amount of virus being detected in wastewater has also decreased in the past week. Altogether this means the fall in cases is likely to be real.

Importantly, cases have been falling in all age groups, including over-70s. This is particularly good news because the increase in case rates in older age groups had been a key driver of the steep rise in hospitalisations and deaths in this wave.

We may yet see an increase in cases in families with school-age children as they returned to school this week after the winter holiday break. But this is unlikely to be enough to reverse the falling trend, and hopefully won’t affect older age groups to the same extent.

Hospitalisations typically lag behind cases by a week or two. Consistent with this pattern, the number of people in hospital with COVID has recently shown signs of levelling off. It will probably start to fall in the coming week.

Immunity from the first Omicron wave

The BA.5 variant is driving the current wave. BA.5 has taken over from BA.2 as the dominant variant in New Zealand, as it has in other countries.

The leading hypothesis for why BA.5 has been able to outcompete BA.2 is its increased ability to evade immunity – whether that was acquired through vaccination or previous infection with a different variant.

However, new evidence from Qatar and Denmark (both yet to be peer-reviewed) suggests people who’ve had a previous Omicron infection have relatively strong immunity against BA.5. Qatar and Denmark both have highly vaccinated populations and this is evidence of the strength of hybrid immunity.

Read more:
Hybrid immunity: a combination of vaccination and prior infection probably offers the best protection against COVID

In England, it is estimated people who haven’t had COVID previously still account for the majority of new cases, despite being less than 15% of the population.

The strength of hybrid immunity induced by high vaccination rates and the large and relatively recent BA.2 wave in Aotearoa likely means this BA.5 wave is smaller than it would have been otherwise.

How long could it go on?

Following the first Omicron wave in March, cases dropped relatively slowly and plateaued at case numbers between 5,000 and 8,000 for several months. It’s possible we will again see a relatively slow decline in cases.

But there are also grounds for optimism that hospitalisations and deaths could drop lower than they did between the BA.2 and BA.5 waves. Although immunity isn’t perfect and wanes over time, those who haven’t yet been infected with Omicron are the easiest targets for the virus. But they’re getting harder to find as the number of people in New Zealand who haven’t yet been infected dwindles.

The rollout of fourth doses for eligible people more than six months after their last dose, coupled with building evidence for the strength of hybrid immunity, suggest New Zealand’s population is increasingly well protected against currently circulating variants.

Tracking reinfections and future waves

Currently, New Zealand is reporting around 500 potential reinfections per day, making up about 6% of all cases. Reinfections will certainly grow over time as immunity wanes.

The true number of reinfections is almost certainly a lot higher because cases can’t be classified as reinfections if the first infection wasn’t reported. And it’s possible people who know they’ve had COVID before are less likely to test, especially since their symptoms are likely to be milder the second time around.

Read more:
Reinfection will be part of the pandemic for months to come. Each repeat illness raises the risk of long COVID

But the fact reinfections are still a small proportion of cases is consistent with evidence that prior Omicron infection provides strong, albeit imperfect, protection against getting reinfected with BA.5.

Continuing to rely solely on people getting tested to keep track of where the virus is spreading will lead to greater and greater uncertainty, particularly if access to free testing becomes restricted in the future.

A regular prevalence survey of a representative sample of the population would be a much more reliable indicator of the true prevalence of the virus in the community.

Another new variant is likely to trigger the next wave. It’s impossible to predict its timing or exact characteristics with any certainty. The Ministry of Health plans to launch a random testing survey to determine the true community prevalence of the virus.

Having a prevalence survey in place before the next variant takes over would enable us to estimate the size and severity of the next wave more accurately. Combined with wastewater testing and genome sequencing, this would give us a world-class COVID surveillance system that could provide a blueprint for managing other existing or newly emergent pathogens.

David Welch has received funding from HRC, MBIE, and ESR for Covid-19 modeling and genomic analysis.

Jemma Geoghegan receives funding from the New Zealand Royal Society, Marsden Fund and Health Research Fund.

Michael Plank works for the University of Canterbury and receives funding from the New Zealand Government for mathematical modelling of Covid-19.

– ref. New Zealand’s latest COVID wave is levelling off, with fewer people in hospital than feared – https://theconversation.com/new-zealands-latest-covid-wave-is-levelling-off-with-fewer-people-in-hospital-than-feared-187773

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Meredith Nash, Professor and Associate Dean – Community, Australian National University

Women have been doing fieldwork in Antarctica for more than 40 years. Yet they comprise just 25% of expeditioners in the Australian Antarctic Program. Despite decades of progress, historical issues with sexism and gender bias continue in extreme field environments set up for men.

Managing menstruation, in particular, is an overlooked challenge for women working in Antarctica and other extreme, male-dominated environments.

If we want to build a diverse and inclusive polar workforce, we need to openly and willingly address the challenges that women, trans and non-binary menstruators face in the field.

Who gets to work in Antarctica?

Over the decades, toileting has been a primary way for men to control who has access to extreme environments. For instance, until the late 1970s women were being told they couldn’t work in Antarctica because there were no facilities for them on station.

Women have been similarly excluded from space travel because their hormonal bodies were deemed to be too unpredictable by NASA’s male leaders.

Sally Ride’s 1983 mission on the Space Shuttle Challenger heralded a new era of progress for women’s access to Antarctic fieldwork. If women could go to space, they could certainly go to Antarctica! It was around this time the British, United States and Australian National Antarctic Programs began to allow women to do fieldwork in Antarctica.

Ride’s mission also uncovered NASA’s inexperience with menstruation. In re-designing the space flight kit for her, NASA engineers famously asked Ride if 100 tampons would be enough for a one-week mission.

In my latest research, I spoke to dozens of women expeditioners about how they negotiated the hurdles associated with menstruating in Antarctica. They revealed that managing menstruation remains taboo, and has been made even more difficult by a culture of silence.

As one expeditioner told me:

I haven’t had great conversations with other women because there haven’t been any that I’ve worked with. I’ve been very much by myself with these things.

Life as a woman expeditioner

So why is menstruating in Antarctica difficult?

Well, for one, you can only toilet in certain places due to environmental protection laws. You must collect all your bodily waste in sealed containers, which are carried back to a station for incineration.

Because expeditioners may have to keep used menstrual products with them for several weeks in the field, they need to consider not only what products they will use, but how they will dispose of them.

Re-usable menstrual cups are often preferred because they produce no waste and can be left in the body longer (4-8 hours) than disposable products. However, cups must be emptied and cleaned at least three times within 24 hours to minimise the risk of toxic shock syndrome.

As one expeditioner explained:

Cups are amazing but [they are] also a huge learning curve. I started
learning to use them for [an expedition] because I’m like I can’t carry used tampons around in my bag anymore […] The hard thing is cleaning them discreetly.

Menstruators must also be prepared to manage their menstruation in small, shared spaces. The women I interviewed described the complexity of doing this in male-dominated teams:

The first time I went to Antarctica I was out on a boat […] It was me and [a group of] men. It’s my period and I’m like, oh, my god, what do I do here?

All Antarctic expeditioners wear many thick layers to protect themselves from the extreme conditions. However, women need to be able to change menstrual products without exposing their skin to the cold for prolonged periods. The participants in my study came up with creative ways to cope:

I sewed myself underpants that I could Velcro on the side so that I didn’t have to take all the layers off my legs and my feet to change my undies…

To avoid these challenges during long-duration expeditions, menstruators often rely on menstrual suppression technologies. These include the combined oral contraceptive pill, or long-acting reversible contraception (LARC) such as an intrauterine device or injection.

These methods prevent a period and pregnancy. And this is critical in extreme environments, where pregnancy is extremely high-risk.

LARC is convenient because it requires no extra supplies and little maintenance following insertion. That said, breakthrough bleeding or spotting can be a side effect:

Having my period [in Antarctica] was a nightmare. Somebody told me that they had an [Depo Provera] injection before they went […] and I thought, “Well, that wouldn’t be a bad idea, to not have a period for that particular time” […] but I had my period the whole time I was in the field.

How to support menstruators

Apart from their other already-demanding work, my research shows women must also undertake additional psychological and physical labour to manage menstruation in extreme environments. Whether in Antarctica or on military deployment, women will often:

• change their menstrual products without privacy or adequate sanitation

• carry bloody menstrual products around with them in the field for a long time

• improvise menstrual products when none are available

• keep menstrual products in their bodies for longer than recommended because they aren’t provided with adequate toilet stops

• alter their hormonal balance with medication to make menstruation less inconvenient.

The bottom line is this: menstruation in these settings has largely been treated as an individual problem, and not a site for organisational attention. This needs to change.

Some simple changes can be applied in any field environment where menstruation is difficult for women. Organisations should make it a priority to:

1. destigmatise menstruation and acknowledge the unique needs of diverse menstruators, including trans people and non-binary folk

2. update field manuals to include relevant information about toileting and menstruation

3. provide menstrual health education to all expeditioners – especially cisgender men leading field teams

4. make toilet stops standard operating practice

5. provide menstruators with free menstrual products, and make period underwear available as part of field gear.

I recently supported the Australian Antarctic Program to revise its field manual and help reconsider how field environments can be sensitised to the needs of menstruators. This is an important first step. But success will only come when inclusive operational measures happen by default.

Read more:
Supporting menstrual health in Australia means more than just throwing pads at the problem

Meredith Nash was Senior Advisor – Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity at the Australian Antarctic Division from 2020-22.

– ref. People stationed in Antarctica menstruate too – and it’s a struggle. Here’s how we can support them – https://theconversation.com/people-stationed-in-antarctica-menstruate-too-and-its-a-struggle-heres-how-we-can-support-them-187617

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

Russian President Vladimir Putin habitually rattles his nuclear sabres when things start looking grim for Moscow, and has done so long before his ill-advised invasion of Ukraine.

In February 2008, he promised to target Ukraine with nuclear weapons if the United States stationed missile defences there. In August the same year, he threatened a nuclear war if Poland hosted the same system. In 2014, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned that Russia would consider nuclear strikes if Ukraine tried to retake Crimea.

A year later, the Kremlin said it would target Danish warships with nuclear missiles if they participated in NATO defence systems. And within the space of a few months – in December 2018 and February 2019 – Putin warned the US that nuclear war was possible, and then promised to target the American mainland if it deployed nuclear weapons in Europe.

Since the invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin has waggled its nuclear arsenal so many times it’s starting to become tedious. Even the most peripheral slight is apparently fair game, like former President Dmitry Medvedev’s invocation of nuclear retaliation if the International Criminal Court (ICC) pursued war crimes investigations against Russian soldiers.

Deterrence

One explanation for Russia’s behaviour is that it’s attempting to deter NATO from attacking it. For nuclear deterrence to be effective, states possessing such weapons require three things, commonly referred to as the “Three Cs”: capability, communication and credibility.

Russia certainly has the first of these. With nearly 6,000 nuclear warheads it’s the world’s most heavily armed nuclear state. It also communicates – loudly and with regularity – those capabilities.

But the question of credibility remains an open one, reliant on the perceptions of others. Put simply, the US and other nuclear states must believe Russia will use nuclear weapons under a certain set of conditions, usually in retaliation for a similar attack or when it faces a threat to its survival.

But will it really use them?

Russia’s declared nuclear doctrine identifies the circumstances under which it would employ nuclear weapons in a fairly rational and sensible manner.

Its 2020 Basic Principles on Nuclear Deterrence stresses that Russia will reserve the right to use nuclear weapons “in response to the use of nuclear and other types of weapons of mass destruction against it and/or its allies”. Or, if Russia comes under such severe conventional attack that “the very existence of the state is in jeopardy”.

Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov addressed this directly on March 28, stating “any outcome of the operation [in Ukraine] of course isn’t a reason for usage of a nuclear weapon”.

Yet this has not prevented widespread acceptance of the view that Russia would use nuclear weapons in order to seize the advantage in escalation control. This idea, commonly referred to as “escalate to de-escalate” is even embedded in the US 2018 Nuclear Posture Review’s assessment of Russian intentions.

Read more:
Weapons of mass destruction: what are the chances Russia will use a nuclear or chemical attack on Ukraine?

But the Kremlin’s perpetual nuclear signalling has much more to do with its attempts to intimidate and attain reflexive control over the West. In other words, it’s seeking to get the US and other NATO members to so fear the prospect of nuclear war that they will accede to Russian demands. That makes it a coercive strategy, but crucially one that relies on never actually being tested.

There are plenty of signs this is working. In April 2022, Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz based his decision not to supply heavy weapons to Ukraine with the justification that “there must not be a nuclear war”.

A number of Western commentators have also begun reconsidering the “nuclear taboo”, worrying Putin might resort to nuclear weapons in Ukraine if he feels backed into a corner, or to turn the tide of the war. One particularly agitated opinion piece in the New York Times called for immediate talks before major power war became inevitable.

It makes little sense for Russia to go nuclear in Ukraine

But what if the Kremlin’s recent nuclear threats are aimed less at NATO and more at Kyiv? Under those conditions, the logic of nuclear deterrence (threatening a non-nuclear country) do not apply.

There are several reasons Putin might seek to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine: a decapitating strike, to destroy a large portion of Ukraine’s armed forces, to cripple Ukrainian infrastructure and communications, or as a warning.

This also generally means using different types of nuclear weapons. Rather than large city-busting bombs, Russia would employ smaller non-strategic nuclear warheads. It certainly has plenty of them: about 2,000 warheads in Russia’s stockpile are tactical nuclear weapons.

But none of these scenarios make sense for Russia. While Moscow has returned to regime change in Ukraine as a war aim, using a nuclear weapon to take out Volodymyr Zelenskyy would be difficult and risky. It presupposes ironclad intelligence about his location, entails significant loss of civilian life, and requires Moscow to accept significant destruction wherever Zelenskyy might be. It would hardly look good for victorious Russian forces to be unable to enter an irradiated Kyiv, for instance.

Punching nuclear holes in Ukrainian lines is equally risky. Ukraine’s army has deliberately decentralised so it can operate with maximum mobility (often referred to as “shoot and scoot”). Putin would have to order numerous nuclear attacks for such a tactic to be effective. And he would be unable to prevent radioactive fallout from potentially blowing over “liberated” portions of Donbas under Russian control, not to mention Western Russia itself.

Another possibility is a high-altitude detonation over a city, doing no damage but causing a massive electromagnetic pulse (EMP). An EMP attack would fry electrical systems and electronics, bringing critical infrastructure to a standstill. But again, it would be difficult to limit EMP burst effects to Ukraine alone, and it would leave Moscow with very little remaining usable industry.

Finally, the Kremlin might seek a demonstration effect by detonating a nuclear device away from populated areas, or even over the Black Sea. This would certainly attract attention, but would ultimately be of psychological value, without any practical battlefield utility. And Russia would join the US as the only countries to have used such weapons in anger.

Is Russia rational?

In all this, there’s naturally a big caveat: the assumption Russia’s regime is rational.

Having accrued vast personal fortunes and a taste for luxury, Russia’s rulers are likely in no hurry to commit suicide in a major nuclear cascade.

However, since there’s no way of being certain, the West must continue to take Russian nuclear posturing seriously – but also with healthy scepticism. Indeed, if the West capitulates to Russian demands due to fears of nuclear war, it will further embolden Putin and show other nations nuclear brinkmanship is appealing.

But Russia arguably faces the bigger risk here. If Putin uses nuclear weapons against Ukraine or a NATO member it would also make it very difficult for states that have quietly supported it (such as China) or sought to benefit from its pariah status through trade (like India) to continue to do so. It would also likely engender a broader war that he has tried hard to avoid.

Let’s continue to hope Moscow, although often misguided, remains rational.

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

– ref. Are Vladimir Putin’s nuclear threats a bluff? In a word – probably – https://theconversation.com/are-vladimir-putins-nuclear-threats-a-bluff-in-a-word-probably-187689

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hal Swerissen, Emeritus Professor, La Trobe University

Around 3% (6,100) of the 200,000 residents in Australia’s aged care facilities had COVID, as of July 22, in addition to 3,400 staff.

About 1,000 facilities – nearly 40% of the total – had an outbreak.

Aged care residents are also disproportionately dying of COVID. Those in nursing homes account for nearly 30% of the 11,000 deaths from COVID in Australia throughout the pandemic.

Why is this happening?

Age is a major risk factor for COVID. People aged 70 and over make up 85% of all reported COVID deaths.

People in residential care are the most frail and at risk. Aged care residents make up around 40% of the deaths of older Australians, but only about 5% of the population aged 65 and over live in residential care.

Read more:
Australia’s response to COVID in the first 2 years was one of the best in the world. Why do we rank so poorly now?

We’ve long known how to reduce the spread of COVID and unnecessary deaths. Effective responses throughout the aged care sector include:

• all residents and staff being fully vaccinated
• appropriate availability of personal protective equipment and rapid antigen tests (RATs)
• mask mandates for staff and visitors
• widespread use of antiviral treatments for those who catch COVID
• rapid responses to outbreaks, including a surge workforce and coordination with home care, GPs and hospital services.

But while mask mandates remain a requirement in residential aged care for staff and visitors, and RATS and PPE are now generally available, the other responses are still patchy, piecemeal and poorly coordinated.

Vaccination

Vaccination is the most important protection against COVID. People who are unvaccinated are about 50 times more likely to die from COVID compared with those who are fully vaccinated.

Yet, vaccinations in residential aged care has been a shambles. Early on in the rollout for aged care, staff weren’t fully vaccinated, there were squabbles over staff vaccination mandates, vaccination data was unavailable, and it was unclear who was responsible for making sure vaccination occurred.

Read more:
Is the COVID vaccine rollout the greatest public policy failure in recent Australian history?

While mandates have lifted worker vaccination rates, in June this year, only 50% of aged care residents were fully boosted with fourth doses.

That has improved following pressure from the new government. But even now, a quarter of residents are still not fully vaccinated with recommended boosters.

More needs to be done to systematically follow up facilities with low vaccination rates.

Antivirals

Early use of antivirals significantly reduces the risk of hospitalisation and death from COVID, possibly as much as 80%.

It has been clear for about six months that antivirals are a safe and effective COVID treatment. However, it wasn’t until July 11 that the Commonwealth Chief Medical Officer advised that all Australians 70 or older should be offered antiviral treatment within 24 hours when they test positive for COVID (where clinically appropriate).

The reality is that many older people who could benefit from antivirals aren’t getting them and they are going to waste, with thousands of doses nearing their use-by dates.

Read more:
COVID drugs in Australia: what’s available and how to get them

Rapid responses to out outbreaks

The new federal government appears to be tackling the issue with new urgency. The new aged care minister, Anika Wells, has released a “winter plan” to try to address the aged care crisis.

The plan includes prevention, outbreak management and recovery. But the plan continues to put most of the responsibility of prevention and management on individual providers – a strategy that has been ineffective in the past.

The federal government has almost no capacity to effectively coordinate a winter response across residential care, home care and health and support services within local service networks where it is needed.

Ideally, this would see close working relationships between aged care facilities, GPs and local hospitals, including the redeployment of clinical and support staff across facilities as required. This happened in Victoria during the 2020 outbreak.

But despite the recent Royal Commission’s recommendation to do so, the federal government has not put in place local or regional bodies or authorities to plan, coordinate and manage aged care.

Staff shortages

These pressures are hugely exacerbated by staff shortages. The over-reliance on a privatised market model for aged care and the decades-long under-investment in training, supervision, pay and conditions for aged care workers has come home to roost at the worst possible time.

Estimates suggest there is a shortfall of 35,000 workers in aged care, double the problem last year.

The industry is hoping the work value case before the Fair Work Commission will make a difference on these issues. Personal care workers in aged care are paid about the same as workers at McDonald’s – in some cases, less. Unions are arguing for a 25% increase in pay, which should make aged care a more desirable job, but this case won’t be determined for months.

Read more:
Labor’s plans for aged care are targeted but fall short of what’s needed

In the meantime, the industry still does not have a realistic workforce strategy. The federal government is scrambling to implement short-term measures through a “surge workforce”, including the recent deployment of 200 military personnel.

But this is unlikely to be enough to address the staff shortages associated with the winter wave. Some providers are now reporting they are down 20-40% of staff.

The result is excess hospitalisation and death, misery for residents and their families, and stress for staff and providers. If the situation continues to deteriorate, this will have to become a major priority for National Cabinet.

And the already stretched state health systems will have to play a greater role to fix the immediate problems.

Non Executive Director of Murray PHN
Non Executive Director of Bendigo Kangan Institute

– ref. 4 in 10 nursing homes have a COVID outbreak and the death rate is high. What’s going wrong? – https://theconversation.com/4-in-10-nursing-homes-have-a-covid-outbreak-and-the-death-rate-is-high-whats-going-wrong-187775

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Benjamin Cooke, Senior lecturer, RMIT University

You would have heard Australia’s environment isn’t doing well. A grim story of “crisis and decline” was how Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek described the situation when she launched the State of the Environment Report last week. Climate change, habitat destruction, ocean acidification, extinction, and soil, river and coastal health have all worsened.

In response, Plibersek promised to protect 30% of Australia’s land and waters by 2030. Australia committed to this under the previous government last year, joining 100 other countries that have signed onto this “30 by 30” target.

While this may be a worthy commitment, it’s not a big leap. Indeed, we’ve already gone well past the ocean goal, with 45% protected. And, at present, around 22% of Australia’s land mass is protected in our national reserve system.

To get protected lands up to 30% through the current approach will mean relying on reserves created by non-government organisations and Indigenous people, rather than more public reserves like national parks. This approach will not be sufficient by itself.

The problem is, biodiversity loss and environmental decline in Australia have continued – and accelerated – even as our protected areas have grown significantly in recent decades. After years of underfunding, our protected areas urgently need proper resourcing. Without that, protected area targets don’t mean much on the ground.

What counts as a protected area?

In 1996, the federal government set up the National Reserve System to coordinate our network of protected areas. The goal was to protect a comprehensive, adequate and representative sample of Australia’s rich biodiversity.

Since then, marine reserves have expanded the most, with the government protecting Commonwealth waters such as around Cocos Islands and Christmas Island.

On land, the government has been very hands-off. Progress has been driven by non-government organisations, Indigenous communities and individuals. New types of protected area, offering different levels of protection, have emerged. The Australian Wildlife Conservancy now protects or manages almost 13 million hectares – about twice the size of Tasmania. Bush Heritage Australia protects more than 11 million hectares. While these organisations do not always own the land, they have become influential players in conservation.

Partnerships between Traditional Owners and the federal government have produced 81 Indigenous Protected Areas, mainly on native title land. These cover 85 million hectares – fully 50% of our entire protected land estate. Independent ranger groups are also managing Country outside the Indigenous Protected Area system.

Read more:
December global biodiversity summit at risk of failure

Protected areas have also grown through covenants on private land titles, aided by groups such as Trust for Nature (Victoria) and the Tasmanian Land Conservancy.

In total, public protected areas like national parks have only contributed to around 5% of the expansion of terrestrial protected area since 1996. Non-governmental organisation land purchases, Indigenous Protected Areas and individual private landholders have facilitated 95% of this growth.

The real challenge for protected areas? Management

So how did non-government organisations become such large players? After the national reserve system was set up, the federal government provided money for NGOs to buy land for conservation, if they could secure some private funding. Protected lands expanded rapidly before the scheme ended in 2012.

Unfortunately, federal funding did not cover the cost of managing these new protected areas. Support for Traditional Owners to manage Indigenous Protected Areas has continued, albeit on erratic short-term cycles and very minimally, to the tune of a few cents per hectare per year.

As a result, NGOs and Traditional Owners have increasingly had to rely on market approaches and philanthropy. Between 2015 and 2020, for example, the Traditional Owner non-profit carbon business Arnhem Land Fire Abatement Limited earned $31 million in the carbon credit market through emissions reductions. This money supports a significant portion of the conservation efforts of member groups.

What does this mean? In short, corporate partnerships and market-based approaches once seen as incompatible with conservation are now a necessity to address the long-term shortfall of government support.

Read more:
How marine protected areas help safeguard the ocean

You might think wider investment in conservation is great. But there are risks in relying on NGOs funded by corporations and philanthropists to conserve Australia’s wildlife.

For instance, NGOs may no longer feel able to push for transformative political change in conservation if this doesn’t align with donor interests. There’s also lack of transparent process in how conservation funding is allocated, and for what purpose.

Protection on paper isn’t protection on the ground

On paper, conservation in Australia looks in good shape. But even as protected areas of land and sea have grown, the health of our environment has plunged. The 2021 State of the Environment Report is a sobering reminder that it’s not enough simply to expand protected areas. It’s what happens next that matters.

If we value these protected lands, we have to fund their management. Without management – which costs money – protected areas can rapidly decline, especially under the impacts of climate change.

We also have to tackle what happens outside protected areas. We can’t simply keep sectioning off more and more poorly funded areas for nature while ignoring the drivers of biodiversity loss, such as land clearing, resource extraction, mismanagement and the dispossession of Indigenous lands.

It’s excellent our new environment minister wants to begin the environmental repair job. But creating protected areas is just the start. Now we have to answer the bigger questions: how we care for ecologies, whose knowledge is valued, who does this work and how will it be funded over the long term.

We also have to go beyond lip service to Indigenous knowledge and Caring for Country to genuinely acknowledge First Nations sovereignty and support self-determination.

On this front, moves by conservation organisations to return land to First Nations suggests a willingness in the conservation community to begin this work.

While our protected area estate is large and set to grow further towards the 30 by 30 goal, lines on a map do not equate to protection. We have long known the funding and capability for actual protection is woefully inadequate. For us to reverse our ongoing environmental collapse, that has to change.

Read more:
How to meet the ambitious target of conserving 30 per cent of Earth by 2030

Benjamin Cooke receives funding from The Australian Research Council and has conducted contract research for the Australian Land Conservation Alliance (ALCA), Trust for Nature, Victoria (TfN) and the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP). He is affiliated with Trust for Nature, Victoria through a Committee of Management (CoM) on a Trust for Nature property.

Aidan Davison receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Jamie Kirkpatrick received funding from the Australian Research Council for this project, is Chair of the Tasmanian Independent Science Council and a member of the University of Tasmania Council.

Lilian Pearce receives funding from the Australian Research Council and has conducted contract research for the Australian Land Conservation Alliance (ALCA).

– ref. Protecting 30% of Australia’s land and sea by 2030 sounds great – but it’s not what it seems – https://theconversation.com/protecting-30-of-australias-land-and-sea-by-2030-sounds-great-but-its-not-what-it-seems-187435

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Neil Saintilan, Professor, School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University

It may not always be clear why global temperature rise must be kept below 1.5℃, compared to 2℃ or 3℃. Research published today in the journal Science shows this apparently small distinction will make all the difference for the world’s tidal marshes.

Tidal marshes fringe most of the world’s coastlines. These coastal wetlands are flooded and drained by salt water brought by tides. They provide valuable habitat for animals, support fisheries that feed millions of people and take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, storing it in their roots.

New roots build up the marsh soil, while stems trap sediment. Both processes help tidal marshes keep pace with sea-level rise. Indeed, tidal marshes increase the amount of carbon they store as the rate of sea-level rise increases.

This feedback has led scientists to question whether tidal marshes might survive future sea-level rise. Unfortunately, our research shows that’s unlikely if warming exceeds 1.5℃.

Read more:
Rising seas allow coastal wetlands to store more carbon

A 20-year experiment provides the answer

I am part of an international team of scientists who embarked on an experiment nearly 20 years ago to test whether tidal marshes were keeping pace with sea-level rise. Nearly 500 devices called “surface elevation tables” were installed in tidal marshes in countries including Australia, the United States, Canada, Belgium, Italy, the United Kingdom and South Africa.

These devices measured the amount of sediment and root material accumulating in the marshes. They also measured changes in the marsh’s surface elevation. Nearby tide gauges measured the rate of sea-level rise. This rate varied across the network.

Some coastlines such as Australia’s have a stable land mass – so the rate of sea-level rise reflects the rise in ocean volume driven by global warming.

On other coastlines, including much of North America, the land may still be sinking or rising after the removal of massive ice sheets at the end of the last ice age. What’s more, extracting oil and water resources from underground can cause local subsidence, increasing “relative” sea-level rise.

The data we gathered provide insights into what might happen to tidal marshes as sea-level rise accelerates.

Read more:
Sea levels are rising fastest in big cities – here’s why

What do the findings tell us?

One set of findings was encouraging. These data showed the rate at which material accumulates in tidal marshes around the world corresponds closely to the varying rates of sea-level rise.

Even the marshes experiencing sea-level rise of 7-10mm per year – the rate anticipated globally under high-emissions scenarios – were accumulating sediment and organic matter at a comparable rate.

However, measuring changes in elevation produced a very different picture. Even though marshes under higher rates of sea-level rise were accumulating more sediment, this did not translate into more elevation gain.

The new research suggests a simple explanation for this.

The additional sediment and water accumulating on the surface weigh the marsh down, compressing the sediment below. This is particularly apparent in marshes with high organic content: precisely the type that develops under high rates of sea-level rise.

This insight accords with observations emerging from the paleo record, which also suggest tidal marshes are highly vulnerable to rapidly rising sea levels.

Read more:
Just 16% of the world’s coastlines are in good shape – and many are so bad they can never fully recover

A story of good news and bad

To protect our tidal marshes, we must try to reduce global carbon emissions that cause global warming and sea-level rise.

Sea level rise has averaged about 3.7mm per year since 2006. Our research shows tidal marshes are capable of keeping up with this on most of the world’s coastlines.

But global sea-level rise is set to increase. Modelling by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects it will reach 7mm per year if warming reaches between 2℃ and 3℃.

Current global commitments put Earth on a trajectory for this level of warming. And once we reach tipping points for sea-level rise, they are locked in for centuries, regardless of subsequent cuts in emissions.

Read more:
Global emissions almost back to pre-pandemic levels after unprecedented drop in 2020, new analysis shows

The best hope for preserving the world’s existing tidal marshes is to meet the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming below 2℃ – and if possible 1.5℃.

But we should even now be considering how we might allow for these important ecosystems to shift landwards. This has been their natural adaptation to episodes of high sea-level rise in the past. Countries with large expanses of undeveloped coastal floodplain, such as Australia, are well placed to provide areas to preserve shifting tidal marshes in a warmer future.

Neil Saintilan receives funding from the Australian Commonwealth Government’s National Environmental Science Program.

– ref. Not waving, drowning: why keeping warming under 1.5℃ is a life-or-death matter for tidal marshes – https://theconversation.com/not-waving-drowning-why-keeping-warming-under-1-5-is-a-life-or-death-matter-for-tidal-marshes-187540

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lucas Walsh, Professor and Director of the Centre for Youth Policy and Education Practice, Monash University

You might think that in 2022 it would be utterly uncontroversial for a footy club to have rainbow colours on a jersey to celebrate diversity.

Unfortunately, the Manly Sea Eagles’ episode this week shows that simply expressing support for LGBTQ+ Australians can engender painful opposition. As gay rugby 7s player Sharni Williams told The Sydney Morning Herald: “It’s a bit of a punch in the face”.

This is just the latest example of how queer people’s identities and rights in Australian society continue to be topics of incredibly hurtful and harmful public debates.

We know that queer young people experience disproportionate levels of prejudice and discrimination. This can impact their feelings of belonging and hinder their access to the support they need.

So, what do young LGBTQ+ people want from their community, politicians and schools? Our new research explores these questions in their own words.

Our research

Last year, we surveyed more than 500 Australians aged 18-24 and interviewed 30 more about pressures in life – from education and employment to health and wellbeing.

Just over one in five young people we surveyed were queer and our new report focuses on their experiences.

We use the term queer to refer to young people who identify as one or more of the identity categories within and beyond the LGBTQ+ umbrella, while acknowledging the individuality of queer young people’s lives.

A sense of belonging

Our research highlights how queer young people in Australia face more pronounced challenges than cisgender and heterosexual young people. These challenges influence their sense of belonging at school, the barriers they face in accessing healthcare, and in the community more broadly.

Read more:
Explainer: what does it mean to be ‘cisgender’?

Our interviewees were critical of how governments and politicians engaged in public discussions surrounding the queer community. They emphasised that the poor handling of these debates causes real harm, particularly around issues such as the marriage equality postal vote and bill in 2017, trans women in sport and trans students in schools.

Some of our interviewees also felt the previous federal government had engaged with these issues for political gain. As one 24-year-old interviewee told us:

The only reason they looked like they cared about [same-sex marriage] is because it affected whether or not they got votes.

Feeling safe at school

The queer young people we surveyed were 21% less likely to feel like they belonged at their educational institution than cisgender and heterosexual young Australians.

Queer young people were 33% more likely to experience significant stress at least sometimes when interacting with other students. They were also 11% more likely to experience significant stress in relation to interacting with teachers and other educators.

This is perhaps unsurprising. Queer young people have people have previously reported harassment is common at school.

Our interviewees talked about the importance of queer spaces:

[it] gives the opportunity to just be yourself without any fear of judgement or repercussions. I think that’s really important to have.

But even then, feelings of belonging and safety were often fleeting. As a 20-year-old non-binary person told us:

There are a few times when I really had really strong feelings [of belonging], but they very quickly disappeared again […] the only time I really feel like that will be at events run by the trans community. Even then, as soon as you leave that event, it’s almost like you have to hold your breath again. It’s kind of suffocating.

The queer young people we surveyed were also 27% less likely to be satisfied or very satisfied with the health and mental health support in their educational institution.

Accessing healthcare when needed

Research has previously shown how queer young people’s experiences of social stigma, discrimination and prejudice impact their mental health and wellbeing. We also know existing health services are not meeting their needs.

One 20-year-old trans interviewee painted a bleak picture:

I have a few health problems myself [and] being trans, there are a lot of issues getting into the healthcare system to try and figure things out […] there is a 15-month to two year waiting list, to even be able to see a gender specialist in hospitals and healthcare systems […].

In our survey, queer young Australians were 84% more likely than cisgender and heterosexual young people to have sought and received mental health support in the last two years, and were 71% more likely to have sought but not received this support in the same time period.

In terms of who they would seek help from, queer young people in our study were more likely to seek assistance from health or mental health professionals. They were less likely than the broader population to seek support from religious mentors or those at home.

What should governments do?

Our data indicates queer young people are aware of the challenges faced by their community, but feel their concerns are not being heard. One interviewee told us:

as a trans person, it’s often really disheartening […] A lot of the time, it’s […] as though we’re not here.

Australian governments need to consult with queer young people and provide support to address their concerns. As a start, governments need to ask more inclusive questions about gender and sexuality when it comes to data collection, such as the census. This will mean support can be better targeted.

Read more:
Labor promised a new committee of 15 young people to guide policy. So who gets picked, and how?

What should schools do?

A typical young person in Australia spends 11,000 hours in education; it’s a hugely significant part of their lives.

Read more:
Supporting trans people: 3 simple things teachers and researchers can do

It’s key that school systems ensure all teachers have training and are supported to use queer-inclusive teaching resources. There are also easily accessible resources around gender and sexuality more broadly.

What can you do?

The responsibility for addressing the challenges outlined in our research does not rest with queer young people.

As a start, we recommend allies, friends, family members and colleagues use inclusive language, as well as learn how to recognise and intervene when marginalising language is used by others. A good guide can be found here.

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

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

Beatriz Gallo Cordoba, Blake Cutler, and Cathy Waite 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. ‘It’s kind of suffocating’: queer young Australians speak about how they feel at school and what they think of politicians – https://theconversation.com/its-kind-of-suffocating-queer-young-australians-speak-about-how-they-feel-at-school-and-what-they-think-of-politicians-187010

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

Jim Chalmers delivers bad economic news well, which is a good thing because there’s a great deal of it about, with a lot more to come.

The treasurer – at this early stage shaping up as one of the government’s strongest performers – comes across as combining frankness with empathy.

That doesn’t, of course, mean he or the government can do a lot to ease the financial pain many people will experience over the next year.

Chalmers’ Thursday economic statement to parliament put an overview on what most ordinary Australians know. From buying groceries, filling their petrol tanks, to paying their mortgages, households are feeling a big squeeze, and they’re aware it’s getting worse.

On Tuesday, the constraints on many people’s budgets will tighten further, when the Reserve Bank unveils another hike in interest rates.

The bank talks in aggregates when it announces increases, emphasising the buffer that exists to absorb rate rises.

Chalmers personalises the position families hit by inflation and rate rises find themselves in.

After Wednesday’s release of the 6.1% inflation figure (to the year ending June), he told a news conference: “A lot of people are living pay cheque to pay cheque for whom this inflation will be devastating because it’s getting harder and harder for them to substitute things out of their household budgets.”

And on Thursday he said: “There’s no point pretending these rate rises don’t hurt – they do and they will.”

Outlining the latest economic projections (revised from Treasury’s pre-election numbers), Chalmers said Australia’s growth forecast for this financial year has been reduced from 3.5% to 3%. For 2023-24, the forecast is down from 2.5% to 2%.

Inflation is now expected to peak at 7.75% in the year to December. It will still be at 5.5% by mid next year, on the new estimates.

Real wages are forecast “to start growing again in 2023-24”.

If the Morrison government had been re-elected, it would be facing the same difficult outlook. The major drivers of the economic bad news are coming from abroad, especially the war in Ukraine and China’s COVID lockdowns. But there are some domestic factors too, such as pent-up demand for spending post-lockdown.

In face of a bleak picture, the government’s messaging strategy is threefold.

First, Chalmers makes much of saying he wants to level with the public about how tough things are. He talks about taking the Australian people into his confidence, and uses the word “confronting” a lot when describing the economic situation.

Second, to the extent local factors are contributing to the bad news, Labor is loading maximum blame onto the former government. It condemns its lack of action on everything from climate change to properly skilling the workforce.

Third, the treasurer is holding out the prospect that things will all get better in the end, helped by Labor’s election policies.

In political terms the Albanese government, at least in the short term, is rather better placed to deal with situation than Scott Morrison would have been.

The new government is still in its honeymoon and so can call on considerable goodwill from the community.

But this can only be temporary. Exploiting the rising cost of living helped Labor to win power, but already voters are starting to be somewhat sceptical. This week’s Essential poll reported that four in ten people thought the government was doing a poor job in managing cost-of-living pressures.

Chalmers’ statement was a warm-up for the October budget. On this, one of his messages was that people shouldn’t get carried away when, in coming weeks, the budget outcome for 2021-22 reveals a “dramatically better” (smaller) deficit than originally expected.

The various factors producing this bit of brightness wouldn’t last long, he warned. There were other drags on the budget in the pipeline, including the rising cost (from higher interest rates) of servicing the debt left by the Coalition.

We’ll hear a lot more about all this as the government attacks the former government’s “waste and rorts” in the budget. The big question will be: how deep will the cuts go?

Chalmers has more than one reason for talking up budget pressures. Like treasurers before him, he will be anxious to head off demands.

Thus he keeps saying the cut in petrol excise won’t be extended. Calls for the relief to be maintained for a few more months will be loud ahead of the September expiry date.

Chalmers’ budget talk is directed to his own colleagues as well as to the public. As the budget approaches, the temptation to throw some money around will be great. He’s already had to wear hundreds of millions going to extending the pandemic leave payment.

The stark economic picture Chalmers paints just underlines the need for urgent action on immigration and training.

The economy desperately needs migrants and that requires improving visa processing and probably active recruitment. Targeted skills training is crucial.

These issues will be canvassed at the September jobs summit. But much of what has to be done is already clear – it’s a matter of acting as quickly as practicable.

For Chalmers, there must feel an element of deja vu. He was a senior staffer to then treasurer Wayne Swan during the global financial crisis.

Despite the problems with some programs, the Rudd government did well in handling the GFC, during which Australia avoided the recession that hit many countries.

The economic challenges of the long tail of this pandemic are very different from those of the GFC, and therefore so are the policy prescriptions. Then, large-scale spending was vital. Now, it’s a question of winding back spending.

Being involved in the GFC has provided Chalmers with experience he can bring to the present situation. He’ll also remember a salutary political lesson. Even if Australia comes out of the next year to 18 months in good shape, the government can’t expect the community will necessarily be grateful to it. It wasn’t after the GFC.

Then again, Chalmers might hope he could sell the message of success better than Labor did all those years ago.

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

– ref. Grattan on Friday: Jim Chalmers is a good performer, but can he hold the public’s trust through hard times? – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-jim-chalmers-is-a-good-performer-but-can-he-hold-the-publics-trust-through-hard-times-187872

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Saul Eslake, Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow, University of Tasmania

As he had promised to do almost since the day he became treasurer, Jim Chalmers has presented a gloomy set of forecasts for the Australian economy in his first formal economic statement to the new parliament on Thursday.

Inflation is now forecast to peak at 7.75% in the December quarter of this year.

That’s higher than the Reserve Bank’s most recent (informal) forecast peak of 7%, and way above the 4.25% forecast in the March budget for the year to June, and the 3% forecast in that budget for the year to June 2023.

The annual rate is then expected to decline to 5.5% by June next year, and then to 3.5% by December next year, before dropping to 2.75%, back within the Reserve Bank’s target band, by June 2024.

The new forecast implicitly assumes consumer prices will rise by an average of 1.8% in each of the September and December quarters (as they did in the June quarter), then increase by 0.9% in the first two quarters of next year, and then 0.8% in the last two quarters of next year, and 0.5% in the first two quarters of 2024.

Provided Russian President Vladimir Putin doesn’t do anything that prompts a further jump in energy or food prices, those forecasts look plausible. Most other commodity prices have already begun to fall.

There are now tentative indications that some of the disruptions to global supply chains that played such an important role in the rise in inflation around the world over the past year or so are beginning to ease.

Especially in the United States, surveys that picked up some of the producer price pressures which subsequently showed up in rising consumer price inflation are now pointing in the opposite direction.

And, perhaps most importantly of all, from the standpoint of how much central banks will eventually need to lift interest rates to bring inflation back down to their targets, we are beginning to see some evidence, at least in the US, that longer-term inflation expectations are beginning to recede, rather than become entrenched at high levels.

Of course, forecasts that inflationary pressures will begin to abate from the beginning of next year incorporate an expectation that central banks will continue lifting interest rates, and that those higher interest rates will result in slower economic growth – as they are intended to do.

Slow ahead

So it’s hardly surprising that Chalmers also announced downward revisions to the forecasts for economic growth in the March budget.

Australia’s economy is now estimated to have grown by 3.25% in the 2021-22 financial year – half of one percentage point less than forecast in March.

And that budget’s forecasts for real GDP growth in 2022-23 and 2023-24 have each been revised down by a similar margin, to 3% and 2%, respectively.

These are actually slightly larger downward revisions than the ones made by the International Monetary Fund to its forecasts for Australia’s real GDP growth in calendar years 2022 and 2023 in its update released on Tuesday.

Slower economic growth almost inevitably means higher unemployment.

And so it was also no surprise to see the Treasurer revising up the previous Budget forecast for the unemployment rate in the June quarter of 2024 by one-quarter of a percentage point, to 4%.

Read more:
3.5% unemployment: Australia’s jobless rate at its lowest since 1974

But because the labour market is expected to be a bit tighter in the interim than had been assumed in the previous government’s last budget (as reflected in the June unemployment rate of 3.5%, the lowest since August 1974), the forecasts for growth in average wages in 2022-23 and 2023-24 have been revised upwards, by half of one percentage point, to 3.75%.

Although a bigger increase, it represents a quite large fall in real wages in the current financial year, followed by a small increase in 2023-24.

All these forecasts emanate from the same source as the ones that have now been revised (the Treasury) – and so are no less subject to uncertainties around the assumptions on which they rest, in particular about geopolitical events and the outlook for major overseas economies.

It’s not impossible that things could turn out “better” than these forecasts – in which case, no doubt Treasurer Chalmers will want to claim some credit.

They could, of course, also turn out worse.

Budget impacts bad, but undisclosed

Chalmers chose not to disclose much about the implications of these revisions to economic forecasts for the shape of the budget itself.

He did say the upward revisions to forecasts of prices and wages would add about $30 billion over the forward estimates period to budget payments.

But he didn’t give any hints as to the impact of higher bond rates on the budget interest payments. Nor did he give any indication of the likely impact of slower economic growth, or lower commodity prices, on budget revenue.

Those details – and what, if anything, the government proposes to do by way of response to them – will apparently have to wait until Chalmers presents his revised budget – the second this year – on October 25.

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

Saul Eslake 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 Chalmers graphs: 7.75% inflation, plunging real wages, weak growth – https://theconversation.com/the-chalmers-graphs-7-75-inflation-plunging-real-wages-weak-growth-187851

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amanda Coles, Senior Lecturer, Employment Relations, Department of Management, Deakin University, Deakin University

It has been a fantastic year for Australian cinematographers in Hollywood.

Australian directors of photography represented two of the five nominees for best cinematography at the 2022 Oscars. Greig Fraser won the Oscar for his work as cinematographer on Dune. Ari Wegner became the second woman ever to be nominated for best cinematography in the 94-year history of the Oscars, for her work on Power of the Dog.

Now, the work of Aussie director of photography Mandy Walker is being seen by audiences around the globe on Baz Luhrmann’s film Elvis, grossing more than US$210 million (A$304 million) at the worldwide box office.

The director of photography or cinematographer is responsible for the overall look of a film. This key creative leadership role demands advanced artistic and technical expertise. Our new report, A Wider Lens: Australian camera workforce development and diversity, looks behind the red carpet glitz to analyse the workforce, the work model and the work culture of Australian film and television camera departments.

We have found a workplace lacking in diversity and a toxic work culture rife with discrimination, stress and precarious employment.

Our findings suggest Australian cinematographers are succeeding on the international stage in spite of – rather than because of – labour markets and working conditions in the Australian film and television production industry.

A serious lack of diversity

Commissioned by the Australian Cinematographers Society, the report draws from Screen Australia production data and on 640 complete responses to a survey of Australian film and television camera professionals conducted in early 2021.

In line with a growing body of research in Australia and internationally on diversity in the film and television production industry, our study finds that gender inequality is a defining feature of work and labour markets in the camera department.

The Australian film and television camera workforce is 80% men, 18% women and 2% trans/gender diverse. It is an ageing workforce, with nearly 70% of camera professionals over the age of 35. It is also largely white, with 63% identifying as Anglo-Celtic. Only 2% of the survey respondents identified as Indigenous, and only 13% as non-European.

The workforce is 85% heterosexual, and 8% identify as a person with a disability.

This data snapshot must be understood in relation to the quantity and quality of work for film and television camera professionals – and indeed in the film and television production industry more generally.

A stressful environment

Work as a camera professional is high-performance, requiring a highly specialised, technical skill set and intense concentration for extended periods of time.

Job stress is compounded by the fact that film crews commonly work in unusual, and at times dangerous, locations.

The very real dangers that camera professionals face in doing their jobs is demonstrated by the tragic deaths of director of photography Halyna Hutchins on the set of Rust in 2021, and of camera assistant Sarah Jones on the set of Midnight Rider in 2014.

Read more:
We are filmmakers who work with firearms. This is what is important in on-set safety

Work stress is compounded by an employment model that is the definition of precarity.

Employment and income insecurity are driven by short-term freelance contracts that can be for as little as one day. Employment is accessed through highly exclusionary, informal hiring networks.

Half our survey respondents report directly experiencing discrimination in the hiring process, with gender, age and racial discrimination being the most frequently encountered.

When work is secured, working patterns are highly erratic, with irregular, frequently excessive and antisocial hours.

This work model produces severe consequences for workforce development and wellbeing. From our survey respondents, 60% of all camera professionals – and 70% of women – reported the work model actively prevents work-life balance.

Precarity and health stressors are even further exacerbated by what can only be described as a toxic industry work culture. Discrimination and harassment at work is commonly experienced.

Half of all non-European and Indigenous respondents report experiencing racism at work. Sexism at work has been experienced by 75% of trans and gender diverse respondents, and 89% of women. Sexual harassment is routine for women.

Those in positions of power and influence are often the perpetrators of discrimination, harassment and bullying. Unsurprisingly, reporting is a key challenge facing the industry.

Freelancers work in a reputation economy. There is widespread fear that reporting incidents of bullying, discrimination and harassment will jeopardise both future job prospects and career longevity in the camera department.

A workforce-wide problem

The timing is good for action. Many of the key policy and industrial issues fall across Tony Burke’s dual portfolios as Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, and Minister for the Arts.

These issues aren’t unique to film sets. Many of the issues raised by the report speak to key issues in Australian work places more generally.

The upcoming Jobs + Skills Summit offers an opportunity to advance the core issues raised here as emblematic of the types of workforce development and diversity issues cultivated by high-skill, low-quality and insecure work.

A lack of diversity in camera departments will not be solved by simply adding different people to the existing toxic system.

An industry-wide commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion must first focus not on the excluded, but those doing the excluding.

Read more:
Tony Burke’s double ministry of arts and industrial relations could be just what the arts sector needs

The research project was funded by the Australian Cinematographers Society.

Justine Ferrer and Vejune Zemaityte 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. Precarious employment, hiring discrimination and a toxic workplace: what work looks like for Australian cinematographers – https://theconversation.com/precarious-employment-hiring-discrimination-and-a-toxic-workplace-what-work-looks-like-for-australian-cinematographers-187080

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Therésa Jones, Associate Professor in Evolution and Behaviour, The University of Melbourne

As the Moon rises on a warm evening in early summer, thousands of baby turtles emerge and begin their precarious journey towards the ocean, while millions of moths and fireflies take to the air to begin the complex process of finding a mate.

These nocturnal behaviours, and many others like it, evolved to take advantage of the darkness of night. Yet today, they are under a increasing threat from the presence of artificial lighting.

At its core, artificial light at night (such as from street lights) masks natural light cycles. Its presence blurs the transition from day to night and can dampen the natural cycle of the Moon. Increasingly, we are realising this has dramatic physiological and behavioural consequences, including altering hormones associated with day-night cycles of some species and their seasonal reproduction, and changing the timing of daily activities such as sleeping, foraging or mating.

The increasing intensity and spread of artificial light at night (estimates suggest 2-6% per year) makes it one of the fastest-growing global pollutants. Its presence has been linked to changes in the structure of animal communities and declines in biodiversity.

Read more:
We attached tracking devices to West Africa’s green turtles. This is what we learnt

How animals are affected by artificial lighting

Light at night can both attract and repel. Animals living alongside urban environments are often attracted to artificial lights. Turtles can turn away from the safety of the oceans and head inland, where they may be run over by a vehicle or drown in a swimming pool. Thousands of moths and other invertebrates become trapped and disoriented around urban lights until they drop to the ground or die without ever finding a mate. Female fireflies produce bioluminescent signals to attract a mate, but this light can’t compete with street lighting, so they too may fail to reproduce.

Each year it is estimated millions of birds are harmed or killed because they are trapped in the beams of bright urban lights. They are disoriented and slam into brightly lit structures, or are drawn away from their natural migration pathways into urban environments with limited resources and food, and more predators.

Other animals, such as bats and small mammals, shy away from lights or may avoid them altogether. This effectively reduces the habitats and resources available for them to live and reproduce. For these species, street lighting is a form of habitat destruction, where a light rather than a road (or perhaps both) cuts through the darkness required for their natural habitat. Unlike humans, who can return to their home and block out the lights, wildlife may have no option but to leave.

For some species, light at night does provide some benefits. Species that are typically only active during the day can extend their foraging time. Nocturnal spiders and geckos frequent areas around lights because they can feast on the multitude of insects they attract. However, while these species may gain on the surface, this doesn’t mean there are no hidden costs. Research with insects and spiders suggests exposure to light at night can affect immune function and health and alter their growth, development and number of offspring.

Read more:
Sex on the beach might be fun for people – but it’s bad for dunes and wildlife

How can we fix this?

There are some real-world examples of effective mitigation strategies. In Florida, many urban beaches use amber-coloured lights (which are less attractive to turtles) and turn off street lights during the turtle nesting season. On Philip Island, Victoria, home to more than a million short-tailed shearwaters, many new street lights are also amber and are turned off along known migration pathways during the fledging period to reduce deaths.

In New York, the Tribute in Light (which consists of 88 vertical searchlights that can be seen nearly 100km away) is turned off for 20-minute periods to allow disoriented birds (and bats) to escape and to reduce the attraction of the structure to migrating animals.

In all cases, these strategies have reduced the ecological impact of night lighting and saved the lives of countless animals.

However, while these targeted measures are effective, they do not solve what might be yet another global biodiversity crisis. Many countries have outdoor lighting standards, and several independent guidelines have been written but these are not always enforceable and often open to interpretation.

As an individual there are things you can do to help, such as:

1. default to darkness: only light areas for a specific purpose

2. embrace technology: use sensors and dimmers to manage lighting frequency and intensity

3. location, location, location: keep lights close to the ground, shield at the rear, and direct light below the horizontal

4. respect the spectrum: choose low-intensity lights that limit the blue, violet and ultraviolet wavelengths. Wildlife is less sensitive to red, orange and amber light

5. all that glitters: choose non-reflective finishes for your home. This reduces the scattered light that contributes to sky glow.

In one sense, light pollution is relatively easy to fix – we can simply not turn on the lights and allow the night to be illuminated naturally by moonlight.

Logistically, this is mostly not feasible as lights are deployed for the benefit of humans who are often reluctant to give them up. However, while artificial light allows humans to exploit the night for work, leisure and play, in doing so we catastrophically change the environment for many other species.

In the absence of turning off the lights, there are other management approaches we can take to mitigate their impact. We can limit their number; reduce their intensity and the time they are on; and, potentially change their colour. Animal species differ in their sensitivity to different colours of light and research suggests some colours (ambers and reds) may be less harmful than the blue-rich white lights becoming commonplace around the world.

Therésa Jones receives funding from the Australian Research Council (DP210101915). She is a co-director of the Australasian Dark Sky Alliance (ADSA).

Kathryn McNamara is employed as a research associate on an ARC grant awarded to Therésa Jones (DP210101915).

– ref. Artificial light at night can change the behaviour of all animals, not just humans – https://theconversation.com/artificial-light-at-night-can-change-the-behaviour-of-all-animals-not-just-humans-183028

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonti Horner, Professor (Astrophysics), University of Southern Queensland

Looking for something spectacular to brighten a cold, dark winter’s night?

Well, this weekend might just have something in store: not one, not two, but three meteor showers active at the same time – combining to provide a celestial firework display almost all through the night.

Although the best night to watch will be the evening and night of Saturday July 30 (through to dawn on Sunday morning), the three showers will be near their peak rates from tonight. So you’ll have plenty of chances to catch the show while avoiding bad weather or other commitments.

Best of all, there’s going to be a New Moon, which means there won’t be much glare spoiling the show.

Not one meteor shower, but three?

The Solar System is full of debris left behind from the formation of the planets more than 4.5 billion years ago. Some of this debris – comets and asteroids – moves on orbits that cross Earth’s path around the Sun.

Each time those comets and asteroids swing in towards the Sun, they shed debris. Over hundreds or thousands of years their orbits become shrouded in broad streams of dust.

Earth continually passes through these streams of detritus as it moves around the Sun, which gives birth to the annual meteor showers. Each year, we return to the same place in our orbit, encounter the same stream of debris, and get another nice show as that debris burns up harmlessly, 80 kilometres overhead.

In the depths of the Australian winter, Earth is moving through a bit of space where three streams of debris intersect with our planet’s orbit. Those three streams give birth to the stars of this weekend’s show: the Southern Delta Aquariids, the Alpha Capricornids, and the Piscis Austrinids.

The International Meteor Organisation has 3D animated visualisations of the Southern Delta Aquariid and the Alpha Capricornid meteor streams, which show how the debris is distributed across space.

A tale of three showers

So, let’s introduce the stars of the show.

The Southern Delta Aquariids is the most active of the three showers, with the fastest-moving meteors. Most of the meteors you’ll see this weekend will likely be members of this stream.

The origin of the Southern Delta Aquariids is the topic of some debate. They are one of several meteor showers seemingly linked to one parent object, as though a large comet fell apart long ago, leaving behind a vast amount of debris, potentially including fragments large enough to be comets in their own right.

Over millennia, the debris has spread out, so Earth runs into it multiple times each year. At the moment, the Southern Delta Aquariids are tentatively tied to a comet called 96P/Machholtz, which is the most active object in the debris stream.

The Southern Delta Aquariids have been known to throw up some surprises. In 2006, they produced an outburst, with some people observing more than 60 meteors per hour at their peak. No outburst is forecast for this year, but you never know what might happen!

The second of our triumvirate of showers is the Alpha Capricornids. These produce the slowest meteors of the three showers. They also have a reputation for being a “fireball” shower – often producing spectacular meteors that outshine the brightest stars.

These are the meteors you’re most likely to catch on film, and provide a great opportunity to practise astrophotography.

The final shower, the Piscis Austrinids, are perhaps the least studied of the three. Like the Alpha Capricornids, they are a minor shower that yields just a few meteors per hour, even at their peak. Their meteors are of medium speed.

Read more:
I’ve always wondered: why are the stars, planets and moons round, when comets and asteroids aren’t?

So where, and when, should I look?

The key for observers is to work out when the shower’s “radiant” will be above the horizon. The radiant is the point in the sky from which all the meteors in the shower appear to radiate.

Meteor showers are named after the location of their radiant. The Alpha Capricornids, for example, radiate from a point near the star Alpha Capricorni.

In the case of our midwinter trio, we’re quite lucky. All three radiants rise in the early-to-mid evening from Australia, and reach a reasonable altitude by about 10pm.

As a result, you’ll be able to see meteors any time from the mid-evening onward. The best rates will be visible from about 10pm, until dawn.

Once you’re settled into a comfortable spot from which to observe, try to avoid looking at your phone. You’ll want to let your eyes properly adjust to the darkness so you can see the faintest meteors. Glancing at a screen, even for a second, will send you back to square one.

We find the best place to look when watching a meteor shower is around 45 degrees above the horizon, and about 45 degrees to the left or the right of the radiant.

In the early evening, it would therefore be best to look to the east or northeast. By midnight, and immediately after, looking to the north would be best. And in the hours before dawn, you should look west or northwest.

And don’t fret once it’s over! While these three showers are shaping up to put on a decent show, they aren’t the best meteoric event of the year. That’s the Geminids, coming up in December. So there’s much to look forward to yet!

Read more:
Fragments of a dying comet might put on a spectacular show next week – or pass by without a trace

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. A triple meteoric spectacle is set to grace our skies this weekend – https://theconversation.com/a-triple-meteoric-spectacle-is-set-to-grace-our-skies-this-weekend-187767

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Asher Flynn, Associate Professor of Criminology, Monash University

Technology-facilitated abuse is a form of interpersonal violence using mobile, online and/or digital technologies. It includes four main types of behaviours:

1. monitoring and controlling, such as keeping track of where the victim/survivor is and who they are with

2. emotional abuse and threats, such as sending put-downs or threatening to harm the victim/survivor

3. harassment, such as sending offensive material or maintaining unwanted contact

4. sexual and image-based abuse, including sexual coercion as well as the taking or distribution of sexual imagery without consent.

In a study of 4,562 adult Australians, we explored the prevalence, nature and harms of technology-facilitated abuse. It is the first nationally representative survey of this kind. Our study included interviews with 20 adult victim-survivors and 10 perpetrators.

How common is it?

We found technology-facilitated abuse was very common. One in two (51%) Australian adults reported having experienced at least one abusive behaviour in their lifetime.

Most common was monitoring or controlling behaviours (34%). Emotional abuse and threats of harm were also common (31%), as was harassment (27%). A quarter of respondents had experienced sexual and image-based abuse.

A majority of victim/survivors (62%) said the perpetrator was a man. One in three (37%) said the perpetrator was a current or former intimate partner.

As for self-reported behaviour, one in four Australian adults (23%) reported having engaged in technology-facilitated abuse at least once in their lifetimes. Almost one in two perpetrators (48%) said the victim/survivor was a current or former intimate partner.

Read more:
Technology-facilitated abuse of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women is rife in regional and remote areas

What does the abuse look like?

Participants described various ways in which they experienced or perpetrated abuse. This included low-tech forms, such as threatening text messages, through to more high-tech behaviours, such as secretly installing malicious spyware on a digital device. Victim/survivors described having their online identities hacked through social media profiles, emails and location services, as well as being monitored through apps and tracking devices.

For many victim/survivors abused by a partner, the abusive behaviours started during the relationship and escalated after separating. This abuse included perpetrators using their children’s digital devices to control and monitor them after separation.

Monitoring through technology was reported to have facilitated in-person stalking. It was also used to gaslight and psychologically abuse victim/survivors. Several participants reported that perpetrators would hack into their technologies, rather than directly contact them, as police often could not detect or prove this behaviour.

One of the most common forms of harassment described was repetitive, unwanted contact:

There was constant harassment via text message […] The amount of calls, there could be 30, 40, 50 calls a day.

I called her about 150 times in, I don’t know, a two-hour period […] It was probably to stress her out or something.

The harassment was often undertaken through multiple channels and platforms, particularly when the perpetrator had been blocked on one platform. Many victim/survivors reported feeling it was impossible to stop the unwanted contact, because perpetrators kept finding new ways to harass them.

Who is being abused?

Of those most likely to have experienced victimisation, there were high rates among sexuality diverse populations. Almost three in four (73%) of those identifying as LGB+ disclosed at least one victimisation experience. Indigenous and First Nations people also reported high victimisation, with seven in ten (70%) respondents reporting at least one such experience. Rates were also high for respondents with a disability, with almost three in five (57%) reporting at least one such experience.

We did not have a large enough sample of trans and gender-diverse participants to draw reliable statistics. However, our interview data showed those who were not cis-gender experienced unique forms of technology-facilitated abuse. They were often targeted because of their gender identity.

The high victimisation rate for minority groups could be attributed to their high uptake of communications technologies. Online spaces are an avenue to connect with communities, express their identities, seek help and find a space of belonging that may not be as readily accessible offline.

However, increased use of online spaces can increase exposure to technology-facilitated abuse. As Bronwyn Carlson found in relation to Indigenous Australians, positive use of online spaces can be “circumscribed by broader structural processes of homophobia, racism, and misogyny”. Some rates of victimisation for minority groups may be interpreted within this wider social context of inequality and discrimination.

We also found some differences in abuse according to gender. Women (40%) were more likely than men (32%) to experience abuse from a current or former intimate partner. Women were also more likely than men (28%; 19%) to have experienced repeated abuse from the same perpetrator, feel fearful due to the abuse (26%; 13%), and report that the same abuser had tried to control them in other ways (33%; 25%).

Women victims/survivors also had higher psychological distress scores than men victims/survivors. This indicates higher levels of anxiety and depression.

Read more:
Reports of ‘revenge porn’ skyrocketed during lockdown, we must stop blaming victims for it

What does it mean?

Overall, these results show many Australians experience technology-facilitated abuse, causing them great anxiety and distress. We must ensure support and justice responses cater to a diversity of victim/survivors.

Technology-facilitated abuse certainly has gendered dimensions. However, focusing on gender only is not sufficient to fully understand its prevalence, forms and impacts.

This is not a unique form of abuse. Rather, it is a tactic abusers use to target victim/survivors persistently and, often, anonymously.

There have been some recent changes to improve responses and legal frameworks relating to technology-facilitated abuse in Australia. Our research suggests more needs to be done. This relates not only to the law, but also to policy responses within organisations that may encounter victimisation or perpetration disclosures.

Ultimately, efforts to address technology-facilitated abuse need to be integrated into our strategies for responding to and preventing all forms of violence, abuse and inequality.

Asher Flynn receives funding from Australia’s National Organisation for Women’s Safety, the Australian Government Department of Social Services, the Australian Criminology Research Council and the Australian Research Council.

Anastasia Powell receives funding from the Criminology Research Council and Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS). Anastasia is also a director of Our Watch (Australia’s national organisation for the prevention of violence against women), and a member of the National Women’s Safety Alliance (NWSA).

Sophie Hindes 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. Half of Australians will experience technology-facilitated abuse in their lifetimes: new research – https://theconversation.com/half-of-australians-will-experience-technology-facilitated-abuse-in-their-lifetimes-new-research-187764

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dennis Altman, VC Fellow LaTrobe University, La Trobe University

Review: An Ideal Husband, directed by Bridget Boyle

An Ideal Husband was first performed in January 1895. Less than two months later Lord Queenberry left his infamous card accusing Wilde of “posing as a sodomite”, which led to Wilde suing for criminal libel – and then being arrested and imprisoned.

The play was written while Wilde was besotted with Queensberry’s son, Bosie (Lord Alfred Douglas) and the very title is ironic: Wilde, it turned out, was far from “the ideal husband”.

It is a complex play, an odd mixture of sentimentality and satire, without the consistency of the far more polished The Importance of Being Earnest. The ending veers on the saccharine, when Lady Chiltern proclaims she feels “love, and only love” for her ideal husband. But as Wilde observed in The Importance of Being Earnest:

The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.

Now, La Boite Theatre is staging a remarkably free adaptation of An Ideal Husband.

Sparkling dialogue, overwritten

La Boite will celebrate its centenary in 2025, as Australia’s oldest continuous theatre company. Its 400-seat roundhouse theatre located in Brisbane is a far cry from the classic stage of the Haymarket where Wilde’s play was first staged.

Playwright Lewis Treston and director Bridget Boyle have taken advantage of this to re-imagine the play as a contemporary Australian political farce, reducing the connections to the original.

“Allow me to tell you the truth about Mr Wilde,” writes Treston in the program. “His characters are poorly developed, his plots are clumsy, and his sparkling dialogue is overwritten.”

Sadly one might say the same of this version. Unfortunately, Treston has expanded the farcical elements of Wilde’s melodrama without sufficient of Wilde’s irony.

That said, La Boite’s play is enormously entertaining, particularly when it takes off in the second half as what can best be described as a sexy, gay pantomime. Treston has retained the basic themes of Wilde’s play in making it about political corruption and the struggle to maintain relationships, although here the key relationships are homosexual.

“The ideal husband”, observes this Mabel (Billy Fogarty), “is a male homosexual”. The crucial relationship is between the Labor Minister, Robyn (Hsiao-Ling Tang), and her girlfriend Gertrude (Emily Burton). They play out the tension in Wilde’s drama between pragmatism and principles, centred on the threat from a mining developer that might disrupt the habitat of an endangered species of lizards.

One of the funniest moments in the play is the reference back to Robyn’s career as school captain: “you can be good or you can be effective”. Echoes here, perhaps, of the TV series The Politician (2019-20).

Read more:
Oscar Wilde would have been on Grindr – but he preferred a more clandestine connection

A contemporary farce

Treston’s play is set in 1996, a fact drummed into us by the Howard-like muppets who appear every now and then to move around the minimal setting. But the political references move between the 1960s and the present, thanks to pantomime dame Christen O’Leary, who has several big scenes as Dame Tara Markby, clearly modelled on Zara Holt.

I struggled to understand Markby’s relevance to this version of the story, but when O’Leary reappears as mining magnate Tina Topaz she has one of the most cutting lines in the play. O’Leary is not afraid to ham shamelessly, an appropriate style for what becomes increasingly a contemporary farce.

Wilde was restrained in his references to contemporary politics, but there is no such reticence here. The political father, Lord Caversham, and his feckless son, Viscount Goring, become a bogan Queensland MP, John Whig (Kevin Hides), and his gay son whom everyone lusts after (Will Carseldine, delightfully cast).

“Whig” seems an odd choice of name for someone who seems based on Bob Katter, and one of the weaknesses of the play is the crudeness of the political references. A more ironic take on Australian politics would be dramatically more persuasive; several times I cringed at lines that were obvious cliches.

A rollicking show

Wilde’s play has a number of ironic lines which are largely lost. Oddly, the most familiar Wildism in the show is one taken from The Importance of Being Earnest rather than An Ideal Husband. And the characters are too prone to grab at alcohol whenever a crisis arrives.

But the various strands of a very messy plot come together in a rollicking last hour, and I left La Boite energised and entertained. The actors are uniformly energetic and work well as an ensemble.

There is a particular pleasure in seeing this play in the aftermath of the recent federal elections, when central Brisbane swung to the Greens and broke the southern prejudices about Queensland politics.

Despite the farcical elements, An Ideal Husband reminds us of the struggles between expediency and necessity which confront the new Albanese government.

An Ideal Husband is at La Boite Theatre until August 6.

Read more:
We taught an AI to impersonate Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde – here’s what it revealed about sentience

Dennis Altman 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. La Boite Theatre gives us a rollicking, queer and very Australian adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband – https://theconversation.com/la-boite-theatre-gives-us-a-rollicking-queer-and-very-australian-adaptation-of-oscar-wildes-an-ideal-husband-186557

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

Newly-elected senator David Pocock has already made history by becoming the first independent to hold a senate seat for the ACT.

On the progressive side of politics, Pocock is in a potentially powerful position, with the government needing the support of the Greens and just one crossbencher to pass legislation that is opposed by the Coalition.

The issues that matter most to Pocock include “climate and integrity – people want Australia to move forward” – but also housing affordability and the rising cost of living.

“Cost of living is a crisis level across Australia and here in the ACT we’re at the forefront of that. [We’re the] most expensive place to rent, second most expensive to buy. People want genuine engagement from politicians and genuine solutions. And it’s a big task.”

The other issue for him, which he says “is really urgent”, is “territory rights – correcting a long-standing injustice where the territories can’t debate and legislate on voluntary assisted dying, which all the states have now legislated on”.

On whether he has been consulting with the other members of the crossbench Pocock says, “I’ve been talking to everyone on the crossbench. I think the benefit of being an independent is you can speak to people and ultimately I’m in here to get good outcomes for the people of the ACT. And that takes actually consulting, listening, being open to backing good ideas, good solutions, regardless of where they come from.”

Pocock is a former captain of the Wallabies. Asked about the row over the Manley Sea Eagles’ decision to include the rainbow flag on their jersey – which has prompted a revolt by seven players – he says: “Sport is at its best when it’s challenging society to be more inclusive […] we can actually create a space that is more inclusive, that people can come and be who they are regardless of the colour of their skin or their sexuality.

“This is […] really disappointing and it’s going to be devastating for a number of probably mostly young people and older people who are gay, and love the rugby league, to see players take this sort of stand. We’re dealing with real people here.

“We are seeing progress. We’ve still got a long way to go.”

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

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Independent senator and former Wallabies captain David Pocock on Pride jersey boycott – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-independent-senator-and-former-wallabies-captain-david-pocock-on-pride-jersey-boycott-187797

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Freya Saich, Lead Policy Officer, Burnet Institute

While most medical attention has been on COVID, work has been underway to eliminate another viral disease, hepatitis C.

In Australia, approximately 120,000 people have hepatitis C. It’s mostly spread through injecting drugs using unsterile equipment. Left untreated, hepatitis C can cause liver damage, leading to cancer, liver failure and even death.

In 2016, Australians with hepatitis C gained access to a highly effective treatment option: direct-acting antivirals. These can cure hepatitis C in eight to 12 weeks. Australia took on the World Health Organization’s goal of eliminating hepatitis C by 2030.

Thousands of Australians commenced treatment. But numbers have slowed recently, prompting concern the goal of eliminating hepatitis C by 2030 may be unreachable. However, one sector has been making great progress in eliminating hepatitis C: prisons.

Read more:
Explainer: the A, B, C, D and E of hepatitis

High rates of drug use among those entering prison

In Australia and many other countries, the criminalisation of drug use results in the frequent incarceration of people who inject drugs. About half of people entering prison report a history of injecting drugs.

While drug courts and diversion programs help keep some people out of prison, more needs to be done to treat drug use as a health issue rather than a criminal one.

The over-incarceration of people who inject drugs results in high rates of hepatitis C among the prison population. In 2016, of people entering prison who reported injecting drugs, approximately 50% had been exposed to hepatitis C but not all may have had an active infection. This compares with less than 1% of those entering prison who did not report injecting.

Injecting drug use in prisons

Imprisonment enables some people to stop using drugs, but others continue to inject, and some start injecting.

No Australian jurisdiction provides sterile injecting equipment to people in prison, despite this being available in the community. The likelihood of syringe sharing in prisons is therefore high, and increases the risk of hepatitis C transmission.

Read more:
Prisons need better drug treatment programs to control infectious diseases

One NSW study estimated 10% of people who injected drugs in prison were newly infected each year.

Another study found recent incarceration increases the risk of contracting hepatitis C by 62%.

Access to hepatitis C care in prisons

Direct-acting antivirals were listed on Australia’s Pharmaceutical Benefits Schedule (PBS) in 2016. These subsidised medicines were made available to all Australians, including people in prison. Prisoners are usually excluded from the federal government’s PBS subsidies, with medication costs falling to states and territories.

While overall hepatitis C treatment rates stagnated in Australia, the prison sector accounted for a rising percentage of all people treated. Between March 2016 and February 2017, around 6% (2,052) of all hepatitis C treatments occurred in Australian prisons. In 2020, this rose to 37% (3,005).

For some people, prison is one of few places they can receive hepatitis C treatment.

A pilot evaluation of a nurse outreach program in Victorian prisons found of the 416 people who started direct-acting antiviral treatment, most (86%) had never had hepatitis C care before.

An additional 75 people were released from prison before they could start treatment. After referral to their preferred physician, only 19 were prescribed direct-acting antivirals within six months of release. Seven of those people were treated only after they were re-incarcerated.

Many people leaving prison face multiple challenges, including housing instability, poverty, obtaining meaningful and reliable employment, and social connectedness. These are all potential barriers to accessing health care, including hepatitis C treatment.

Read more:
Incarcerated people with disability don’t get the support they need – that makes them more likely to reoffend

Treatment in prison can also prevent new infections, as a recent study showed. This same study also saw a reduction in people being reinfected with hepatitis C.

One Queensland prison has even reported eliminating hepatitis C. However, new entrants and the lack of prison-based needle and syringe programs have made it difficult to maintain its hepatitis C-free status.

But prisons have more to do

While significant progress has occurred, there is more work to be done within the prison sector to accelerate hepatitis C elimination.

Rapid point-of-care hepatitis C tests could be used to diagnose people entering prison, enabling anyone who tests positive to be promptly referred for treatment.

Harm reduction is critical. Strategies proven highly effective in the community should be widely accessible inside prisons, including opioid substitution treatment and needle and syringe programs. Despite widespread support for prison-based needle and syringe programs and international evidence showing that they can operate without compromising safety, no Australian jurisdiction has introduced one.

Many people serving supervised correctional orders in the community are likely to have undiagnosed or untreated hepatitis C. Greater coordination and provision of health services across the criminal justice system – including police detention, the courts and community-based corrective services – will enable more people to be diagnosed and treated.

These measures will reduce rates of hepatitis C in prisons and in the community.

Read more:
Prisoners need drug and alcohol treatments but AA programs aren’t the answer

Freya Saich is a member of the Public Health Association of Australia.

Alexander J. Thompson receives research funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia. He has received research funding for investigator-initiated projects focused on increasing testing and treatment for people living with hepatitis C, evaluation of novel treatments for people living with hepatitis C and evaluation and validation of novel diagnostics for hepatitis B from the following companies – Gilead Sciences, Abbvie, MSD Australia, Roche Molecular Systems, Inc (Gilead Sciences and Abbvie both produce DAAs that are used in Australia). In his clinical capacity, he has served on advisory boards to the following companies – Abbvie, Gilead Sciences, Roche Diagnostics, BMS, Merck, Immunocore, Janssen, Assembly Biosciences, Arbutus, Vir Biotechnology, Eisai, Ipsen, and Bayer. He has received speaker fees for presenting at educational conferences or seminars from the following companies – Abbvie, Gilead Sciences, Roche, BMS. He is a board member of the Gastroenterology Society of Australia.

Jacinta A. Holmes receives research funding from the Gastroenterological Society of Australia and has received unrestricted research funding for investigator-initiated projects from Gilead Sciences (who produces DAAs) focused on point of care testing for hepatitis C infection. She has received speaker fees from AbbVie and Gilead Sciences for presenting at conferences, education sessions, and post-conference webinars (which may include updates regarding hepatitis C infection and treatment of hepatitis C infection).

Rebecca Winter has previously received funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council. She holds an Honorary position at St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne and is an Adjunct Research Fellow at Monash University in the School of Population Health and Preventive Medicine. She is a member of the National Prisons Hepatitis Network.

Timothy Papaluca 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. Direct-acting antivirals can cure hepatitis C and prisons are now leading efforts to eliminate the virus – https://theconversation.com/direct-acting-antivirals-can-cure-hepatitis-c-and-prisons-are-now-leading-efforts-to-eliminate-the-virus-182854

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jane Goodall, Emeritus Professor, Writing and Society Research Centre, Western Sydney University

This week’s announcement that Stan Grant will be permanent host of the ABC’s Q&A follows widespread speculation about the future of the program. On some estimates, ratings have fallen by more than 50% from a peak of over 600,000 during its first decade under Tony Jones, who served as host from 2008.

Hamish Macdonald succeeded Jones in November 2019 but resigned in July last year, describinghis 18-month tenure as “a bruising experience”. Aside from being attacked on Sky News for his “far left Green agenda”, he was relentlessly trolled on social media, with virulent accusations of bias from both the left and the right.

Curiously, the BBC’s Question Time – Q&A’s prototype – has followed a parallel trajectory. Its ratings have fall precipitously, from nearly nine million to just over a million – and the decline coincides with the replacement of veteran host David Dimbleby by seasoned BBC personality Fiona Bruce, whose own brand of charisma is no match for the gravitas of her predecessor.

Question Time is something of a cuckoo in the nest. In its 43-year history it has consistently featured leading commentators and parliamentarians; its two most longstanding presenters, Dimbleby and Robin Day, were the equivalent of BBC royalty. But since its takeover by a commercial production company in 1998, the program has crossed the line into terrain more generally associated with tabloid media.

Now its producers prefer guests like Brexiteer Nigel Farage, conservative psychologist Jordan Peterson and John Lydon (alias punk rocker Johnny Rotten), who serve to ratchet up the controversy. It’s been claimed that paid audience plants are instructed to ask heavily weighted questions, and that the chairing is biased. And Bruce endures the kind of social media onslaught that drove Macdonald out.

Reports of “disastrous” ratings may themselves be a form of motivated attack. Audiences now have many more viewing options than the original live transmissions, and the BBC has persistently asserted that audience figures are higher than some surveys suggest.

Q&A is in much the same situation: while Sky claims the “lefty lovefest” has scored as low as 228,000, the ABC estimates the regular following through 2021 at more than 400,000. But that’s still quite a drop-off since the program’s heyday.

Business as usual

Are we just jaded with celebrity opinion shows, especially those founded in the left–right dramaturgy? The predictability is at times exhausting.

Macdonald’s best episode was his first, in February 2020, when he chaired a session on the bushfires with a panel that included Kirsty McBain, then mayor of Bega, and Andrew Constance, Liberal MP for the area. The panel sat on office chairs in a semi-circle, genuinely sharing what they had all just been through, including Macdonald himself, who had reported from an evacuation centre as the fire front approached.

A few weeks later, though, it was back to business as usual, with the presenter in a glossy suit fielding the play of left–right argy-bargy in the studio.

We don’t need this anymore. In many ways, the conventions of “robust disagreement” and “both sides-ism” are no longer a positive feature of civil society but rather a threat to it. As Republican Liz Cheney put it in a recent statement to the January 6th Committee, “the normal sort of vitriolic, toxic partisanship has got to stop. And we have to recognise what is at stake.”

Stan Grant has several times taken the helm as guest host of Q&A since Tony Jones’s departure. He prompted a furore in March this year when he expelled an audience member who expressed support for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, asserting the program was contributing to media bias against Russia. There were calls of “propaganda” from the audience as the speaker proceeded to claim that Ukraine was responsible for all the violence.

Aired in the second week of the Russian invasion, this episode included speakers and audience members with family in the war zone. “We encourage different points of view here,” Grant said. “But we can’t have anyone who is sanctioning, supporting, violence.”

Clearly caught off guard by an unscheduled audience intervention, Grant may have missed the essential point: that the statement, intentionally or not, was Russian propaganda. It was a critical moment for many reasons, one of which is that Grant’s subsequent appointment as host could signal a change in direction for the program.

Expertise versus opinion

That moment also raised the question of when we should call foul on claims about the right to express opinion, especially in a media culture increasingly subject to influence from organised, even state-run, propaganda. And what is propaganda? How does it manifest and how should we respond?

This, surely, would be a good focus for a Q&A program. Peter Pomerantsev, who has studied Russian propaganda for decades, would be the perfect guest. These are times in which we need sustained, forensic focus on complex issues. We need insight and analysis from people with knowledge and experience, not extemporised opinion from celebrities.

The Ukraine invasion is the starkest manifestation of the transformed geopolitical environment. With Donald Trump already moving to gather support for another tilt at the presidency, and the US justice department taking its time over the evidence against him, the future of American democracy is in jeopardy. In Australia we have a leader of the opposition who talks openly about war with China.

Jones, Macdonald and Grant have all had extensive experience as foreign correspondents. With domestic politics increasingly dwarfed by the massive geopolitical tensions of our era, those issues should be to the fore. Q&A, which originated as a premier platform for the opinion wars, now has an opportunity to lead the way out of them.

Jane Goodall 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. Can Q&A lead us out of the opinion wars it’s helped to fuel? – https://theconversation.com/can-qanda-lead-us-out-of-the-opinion-wars-its-helped-to-fuel-187699

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Kenny, Professor, Australian Studies Institute, Australian National University

When Bill Clinton’s campaign manager, James Carville, scrawled, “the economy, stupid” on a sign in 1992, he merely wanted the campaign volunteers to stick to their presidential candidate’s talking points.

After Clinton became president, Carville’s axiom – by then lengthened to “it’s the economy, stupid” – seemed pitch-perfect for the pro-market zeitgeist taking hold in most Western democracies.

Policy initiatives were increasingly dashed against this irreducible metric. The economy was emerging as an end in itself – as if separate from the people and reified as the foundation of happiness, national fulfilment and political success.

In Australia’s parliamentary system, economic ministers happily embraced placing the economy at the centre of all political conversation. The role of treasurer is often seen as the penultimate political position before becoming prime minister: if the person is seen as performing well in the role, they can become political stars. If not? Well, their political careers can be cut short.

Even before Clinton’s arrival in the White House, Paul Keating had come to dominate as Bob Hawke’s bold reforming treasurer – the architect of a new and determinedly rational Australian prosperity. Tariffs went by the wayside, the dollar was floated, government services were privatised.

Until 1983, the price of goods was “set by officials”, Keating told author George Megalogenis in 2015, lamenting that everything from wages to import tariffs and quotas had been centrally fixed.

So when I became treasurer, on the Cabinet table sat the rate of exchange and interest rates […] I had to decide whether to be a passive participant in the scam, or to blow the scam up.

Desperate to unlock the opportunities of global and regional integration, Keating also began educating Australian voters in the economic lexicon, frequently referring to the current accounts, the J-curve, monetary policy and inflation.

The results of this new econo-politics were mixed. Keating said Australia risked being seen as a “banana republic” if it refused to pitch its producers and their markets against foreign competitors.

That made headlines, but it was his remark in the sharp downturn of November 1990 that really attracted criticism. Amid double-digit unemployment, he said this was the recession “we had to have” to tame inflation.

Intentionally or not, Keating had found the outer political limits of technical economic argument. So while he recovered to win the 1993 election (by then as prime minister), it was largely because the Liberals under John Hewson had delved even further into arcane economic jargon with his unpopular Fightback manifesto.

Read more:
Issues that swung elections: the ‘unlosable election’ of 1993 still resonates loudly

Several treasurers later, and the role of administering economic medicine now resides with Jim Chalmers, Anthony Albanese’s freshly minted treasurer. He will deliver his first budget on October 25. Before then, on July 28, he will deliver his state-of-the-economy address to parliament.

The circumstances he faces are diabolical.

Which is why in the weeks since Labor’s election Chalmers has been reframing expectations about what is achievable. And therefore, what is not.

An ongoing pandemic, natural disasters and a war in Europe following Russia’s illegal invasion have combined with the fiscal hangover of Australia’s effervescent (pre-election) COVID response. All of this has coalesced into a cost-of-living crisis.

Now that crisis is being deepened further by the use of monetary policy (interest rates) to bring inflation under control. Voters will be asked to accept that in order to stem rising prices, their housing costs will be dramatically increased. It is an argument only an economist could love.

A historically low jobless rate of 3.5% and strong demand two-and-a-half years into the pandemic reflect the previous government’s decisions to close the international border through 2020 and 2021, and to pump more than $300 billion into the economy to keep it buoyant. The result is an economy that is now faced with galloping inflation, capacity constraints and large budget deficits into the future.

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

All with a budget heaving with a trillion dollars of debt, as Chalmers told parliament.

Hopes for reform possibilities under a new centre-left government are being hosed down as Chalmers girds voters for bad news.

His message is: do not to expect the direct cash handouts of the lockdown years because the national credit card is maxed out, and any such expenditure would feed inflation and send interest rates even higher.

Politically, the question is: will voters grant the new Labor government the latitude to navigate out of this inflation-and-interest-rate spiral, or will voters expect relief? Will they blame Labor for a situation that has been brewing since last year? And how culpable is the Reserve Bank for setting interest rates so low and promising to leave them there?

That may be a judgment for the review of the RBA Chalmers has asked to have back on his desk by March. That will be before he fills two vacancies on the board, and considers reappointing the current RBA governor, Philip Lowe.

Another element of Labor’s expectation adjustment is the conception of the economy itself.

Albanese believes it should be viewed through the prism of jobs and wages.

“It’s not an economy for itself, but it’s an economy in terms of the impact that it has on living standards,” he told 7.30’s Sarah Ferguson on Wednesday.
“We want an economy that works for people, not the other way around.”

Wednesday’s inflation number of 1.8% for the June quarter made for a worrying 6.1% rate of inflation over 12 months.

When Chalmers makes his economic statement to federal parliament on Thursday, fresh in his mind will be the latest warning from the International Monetary Fund that inflation will remain high globally until 2024.

“Tighter monetary policy will inevitably have real economic costs, but delaying it will only exacerbate the hardship. Central banks that have started tightening should stay the course until inflation is tamed,” said IMF economic counsellor Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, in comments not a million miles away from saying this might be a recession we have to have.

But you won’t hear that from Chalmers.

Mark Kenny 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. Chalmers’ challenge: why the treasurer’s words on the economy carry so much weight – https://theconversation.com/chalmers-challenge-why-the-treasurers-words-on-the-economy-carry-so-much-weight-187618

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

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

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

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

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

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

Australia’s cases, hospitalisations and deaths

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

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

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

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

Why is the ratio of cases to hospitalisations so high?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How does Australia rank globally?

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

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

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

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

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

Why does Australia rank so poorly on key COVID indicators?

Low population immunity

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

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

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

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

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

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

Seasonal effects

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

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

Low vaccine booster rate

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

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

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

Masks and other measures

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

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

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

No one reason for Australia’s poor ranking

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

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

Read more:
Do we care enough about COVID?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mangroves are immensely important

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why the mangroves probably won’t recover this time

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Protecting these vital ecosystems

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They need greater monitoring

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why does it matter if we lose soil microbial diversity?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Can we protect our soil fungi?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Adam Frew receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

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

Eleonora Egidi receives funding from the Australian Research Council

Meike Katharina Heuck receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

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

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

Review: Spowers & Syme, Geelong Gallery.

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

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

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

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

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

Discovering a new art form

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Urban transformation

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

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

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

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

The movement of people

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

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

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

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

A sense of optimism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Both versions of the cost-push theory are problematic.

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

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

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

Cost-push can’t explain what’s happening

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

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

Our research on imperfectly competitive markets clarifies things.

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

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

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

What is a strategic industry supply curve?

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

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

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

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

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

When demand increases, the losses from markups are lower.

Market power cuts both ways

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

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

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

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

Firms smooth shocks, even for petrol

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New laws are not needed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Room to move on a climate ‘trigger’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Making real progress

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

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

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

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

John Quiggin is a former Member of the Climate Change Authority

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What does the R0 actually tell us?

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

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

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

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

What about the Reff?

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

The Reff will therefore change over time.

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

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

How do new variants out-compete existing ones?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shorter generation time

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

Intrinsic transmissibility

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

Immune evasion

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

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

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

Implications for Reff

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

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

How has this played out in the COVID pandemic?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not a simple calculation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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