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

University of Canberra Professional Fellow Michelle Grattan and University of Canberra Associate Professor Caroline Fisher discuss the week in politics.

They canvass the elevation of cost of living pressures in the election battle, with the big spike in inflation and interest rates set to rise as early as next Tuesday (and no later than next month). Meanwhile national security has played into the campaign, but in a way that has had the government on the back foot, warding off criticism it hadn’t done enough to prevent the Solomons-China security pact.

The climate debate is running again, with division within the Coalition, the teals nipping at Liberal heels, and the government trying to raise a scare about Labor’s policy.

Michelle and Caroline also discuss Albanese’s week in “iso” and Labor’s campaigning when the leader was on his sickbed.

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. VIDEO: Inflation, Solomons and ‘Albo’s iso’ dominate campaign’s third week. – https://theconversation.com/video-inflation-solomons-and-albos-iso-dominate-campaigns-third-week-182146

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lucyna Kedziora-Chudczer, Program Manager / Adjunct Research Fellow, Swinburne University of Technology

Will the big storm on Jupiter ever go away? — Edgar Nuttall, age 5, Brisbane

Hi Edgar! Thank you for such a unique question.

Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar neighbourhood, and its weather is very wild. We have beautiful images of Jupiter which show striped, stormy clouds covering the whole planet.

In fact, Jupiter is covered with storms. Some are only small, but some are so big they could cover all of Earth.

The largest of these storms is the famous Great Red Spot — which I see you already know about. This spot is actually a cyclone, similar to hurricanes and cyclones here on Earth.

It is made of powerful winds blowing in circles, a bit like tea swirling in a cup when you stir it. These winds are more than five times faster than any hurricane winds on Earth.

The Great Red Spot is like the grandfather of Jupiter’s storms. It has been roaming for many, many years – but recently we’ve seen it get smaller.

Does that mean it will one day go away? Well, not necessarily.

Stormy stripes

Jupiter looks like a giant, stripy ball that spins very fast. The light-coloured stripes are clouds with rising air, while the dark-coloured stripes are clouds that are sinking.

When you see dark and light stripes next to each other on Jupiter, you’re actually seeing winds blowing in opposite directions. When this happens, they can spin up big cyclones, kind of like how pushing a beach ball with one hand and pulling it with other will make it spin.

Humans have been watching the Great Red Spot for at least 200 years and it has been blowing strong winds almost this whole time.

Like all storms, it can change from day to day. Sometimes it looks round, sometimes like an egg. Its colour can also change from brownish-red to pale red. Sometimes it looks almost white.

But recently, scientists have noticed the enormous cyclone shrinking. About 100 years ago, the Great Red Spot was almost three times larger than it is today.

Read more:
Curious Kids: why are some planets surrounded by rings?

Why is it shrinking?

To understand why it’s shrinking, it helps to first understand why cyclones shrink (and eventually stop) on Earth.

On Earth, cyclones often form above deep, warm oceans before moving onto the hard land or cooler water. When a cyclone’s winds rub against the hard land, the winds slow down (and therefore the cyclone slows down).

Cyclones on Earth are also hit by other weather and winds around them, which can makes the cyclone “flake” away within a few days.

But Jupiter doesn’t have a hard, rocky surface like Earth. And even though the air in Jupiter’s clouds is freezing, the air towards the inside is very hot. This hot air gives storms plenty of energy to rage on for months, or even years.

So even while the Great Red Storm is shrinking, it can actually still get a bit taller as it does. And it has plenty of energy to keep spinning.

We can also see it “flaking” away at the edges as it slams into other storms and winds around it. But astronomers still don’t know if this will make it go away entirely. Some think it might one day break up into many smaller storms.

Recently, the Juno space probe (which has been flying around Jupiter since 2016) took many beautiful pictures of Jupiter’s storms while flying by the planet. We may learn something new from these images.

Until then, we may as well admire the Great Red Spot as it rages on.

Lucyna Kedziora-Chudczer 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. Curious kids: will the big storm on Jupiter ever go away? – https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-will-the-big-storm-on-jupiter-ever-go-away-180573

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachel Hogg, Lecturer in Psychology, Charles Sturt University

“Therapy-speak” advice on relationships and dating is widely available outside of the psychotherapist’s office. Much of this advice places responsibility on women for managing their emotional reactions to problematic dating and relationship experiences.

The advice women are given about dating, relationships, and finding love largely falls into three categories.

1. How to not attract emotionally unavailable men

Instagram is full of relationship advice that tells women to take responsibility for their “healing”. It advises them on attachment styles, co-dependency, and emotional wounds, as well as how to deal with avoidant and narcissistic partners. Such advice varies in quality from patronising and exploitative, to nuanced and compassionate. Some of this advice is helpful, much of it is not.

One example that falls in the latter category is the cliché that in order to find love, you must first love yourself. Psychiatrist and trauma expert, Dr Bruce Perry, notes that in reality you cannot love yourself unless you have been loved, noting, “the capacity to love cannot be built in isolation.”

“Loving yourself” is valued by modern society if it helps you to get ahead. Constant self-improvement is what matters in a performance-focused society that positions people as objects of enhancement and optimisation. Neoliberalism assumes women’s lives are shaped by deliberate choices for which they, as individuals, are responsible. Little attention is paid to the contexts that constrain women’s choices.

Being responsible for self-love and self-healing only furthers the responsibility that women already shoulder for their health, well-being, careers, and relationships.

2. How to get a man to commit

Women are instructed on how to develop “a huge advantage over other women” in the “battle” to “get him to put a ring on it”. For example, dating coach Benjamin Daly tells his 500,000 Instagram followers that his book reveals “the secret to getting any man begging for commitment”.

Not only are women encouraged to strategise their dating moves, they must also self-monitor to avoid emasculating men, with authors encouraging women to observe the rules of traditional femininity and let men “lead”.

The strategies underpinning such advice are, at best, confusing. To quote author, Emily Brooks, “We are told to lean in at work, but wait for him to call”. It’s OK to hustle at work, but don’t overreach in your relationships.

The dating advice outlined in this category pits women against each other, polices women’s femininity, and reinforces a performance-centric framework of thinking about intimate relationships.

3. How to navigate toxic behaviours online

Online dating, while positive in some respects, is a minefield for toxic male behaviour.

This behaviour varies from rejection violence, where women are confronted with violence when turning down a man’s advances, to unsolicited graphic images, to more subtle forms of damaging behaviour. These include but are not limited to lovebombing, where men bombard women with attention in order to gain control, and breadcrumbing, where a person leads someone on but remains noncommittal.

These behaviours are not exclusive to male dating app users, but advice around how to handle such behaviour is largely directed at women.

Read more:
From ghosting to ‘backburner’ relationships: the reasons people behave so badly on dating apps

Why are these trends a problem?

Modern dating advice often implies women can and should fix themselves, and their relationships. This creates feelings of shame, and is particularly harmful advice for the vulnerable women in our communities.

Telling women to love themselves before they can have a relationship is at best, nonsensical, and at worst, cruel, especially for those who have suffered the mental violence that accompanies sexual assault and domestic violence.

As of 2021, 23% of women in Australia, a total of 2.2 million women, had experienced sexual assault, with women eight times more likely than men to experience sexual assault by an intimate partner. In 2020, Australia recorded its most dangerous year for domestic violence.

One in six Australian women have experienced sexual or physical violence at the hands of a former or current partner, while one in four women have experienced emotional abuse; over a quarter of the women in Australia.

Lowered self-esteem and a diminished sense of self-worth are just some of the psychological effects of sexual, physical, and emotional violence that may make “self-love” difficult.

Women need safety more than dating advice

Teaching women how to react effectively to emotionally dysfunctional behaviour may help women to cope, but it doesn’t address the fundamental issue of intimate interpersonal relationships: safety.

Rather than upskilling women to deal with the harm they risk in dating men, the self-help industry should focus on male behaviour – not the reactions of women to this behaviour. Women need safety more than they need advice.

Read more:
Clementine Ford reveals the fragility behind ‘toxic masculinity’ in Boys Will Be Boys

We need to redirect the focus to male behaviour

The most important dating advice the self-help industry can offer is for a male audience: do not harm the women around you.

Mateship is revered in Australia, yet male friendships are often devoid of vulnerability, openness, intimacy, and self-disclosure. This likely has to do with toxic expectations around masculinity that may manifest in emotional suppression and masking of distress, misogyny and homophobia. Research has found male attitudes towards masculinity, feminism, and homophobia are predictive of date-rape-supportive attitudes and self-reported histories of sexual coercion.

Rather than teaching women how to respond to dangerous dating behaviours, the self-help industry should examine what men are taught about dating and relationships. The self-help industry could play an important role in educating online dating app users about how to avoid perpetrating harassment, discrimination, and sexual violence.

“Teaching” women how to deal with the men they’re dating is not the solution to the problems of modern dating and relationships.

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

– ref. When it comes to dating advice, why is it always women who must improve? – https://theconversation.com/when-it-comes-to-dating-advice-why-is-it-always-women-who-must-improve-180877

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Ward, PhD candidate, University of Sydney

The election campaign is well underway and the ABC is barely registering as an issue. Why is that, when according to the Morrison government’s own figures, the ABC’s real funding will continue to decline over the next three years?

Not that the government acknowledges this.

“The evidence is clear,” communications minister Paul Fletcher declared in February. “The Morrison government has provided strong and consistent support to the ABC.”

This is a breathtakingly misleading statement.

Read more:
The ABC’s budget hasn’t been restored – it’s still facing $1.2 billion in accumulated losses over a decade

Accumulated losses

Two of us, Michael Ward and Alex Wake, have tracked the Coalition government’s support several times on this site, most recently in February, writing that the ABC’s budget hasn’t been restored – it’s still facing A$1.2 billion in accumulated losses over a decade.

Ward has also conducted research on how much the ABC has lost and will continue to lose in aggregate over the course of a 12-year period. Ward used a number of public financial sources to build the data sets behind the tables and figures in this article, including ABC portfolio budget statements, a 2014 Budget paper, and a 2022 Budget Strategy Paper. He also used Australian Parliamentary Library reports and ABC answers to Senate Questions on Notice in 2018 and 2021.

The evidence is clear: but for a series of decisions made over the nine years of the Coalition government, the ABC would have far more funding at its disposal.

The Morrison government has been neither a strong nor consistent supporter of the ABC. Yes, the ABC benefits from deals with Google and Facebook under the government’s news media bargaining code, but the government initially excluded the ABC from the code and the deals are for a limited period.

As the below table shows, decisions by the Coalition government since 2013 have left the ABC far worse off financially.

There was the axing of the Australia Network, (a service providing soft power diplomacy in the Asia-Pacific region) announced in May 2014, at a cost of $186 million.

There was the simultaneous 1% reduction of ABC funding, which has since cost the ABC $72 million.

There have been “efficiency” savings of $353 million, beginning in November 2014.

There have been cuts to tied funding initiatives totalling $122 million, announced in May 2017. (“Tied funding” means grants tied to a specific purpose or project.)

And, since 2019, there has been a freeze on indexation for ABC funding that has cost the broadcaster $84 million.

By 2025–26, we project these all decisions will leave the ABC $1.3 billion worse off.

Meanwhile, the government has sought to trumpet the slightest reprieves and slenderest funding increases as evidence of its commitment to the public broadcaster.

Fletcher’s declaration in February, alongside his announcement of the government’s plans for the ABC’s next triennial funding period, was entirely in this vein.

The government reversed its freeze on indexation for ABC funding and increased the ABC’s operational funding by a total of $38.3 million between 2022-23 and 2025-26.

The budget papers , released on March 29, stagger the funding increases by 0.7% in 2022–23, 2.0% in 2023–24, and 1.6% in 2024–25. This is an average 1.5% annual increase over the next three years.

But those same budget papers predict inflation to be 3%, 2.75% and 2.75% over the same period. And already the first prediction has needed to be increased to 5.1% after the Australian Bureau of Statistics released the latest Consumer Price Index figures on Wednesday.

What this means is that the modest increases in nominal funding will be outpaced by inflation, leaving the ABC worse off in real terms.

The government’s strategy of anaesthetising the ABC’s funding as an election issue appears to be working because few in the media are talking about it. But they should be.

Reductions over the past nine years have already led the ABC to significant job losses and programming changes. Remember when each state and territory had its own edition of 7.30 on television on Fridays? That level of scrutiny has been sorely missed during the global pandemic when we have all been reminded how important state and territory government services are.

In real terms, analysis of Budget papers and a Parliamentary Library report show ABC operational funding has declined by 12% since the Hawke Labor government. The table below compares average annual funding for each government since 1971.

This historical comparison shows that, barring changes to the plans of whoever is in government, ABC funding in 2025–26 will be at its lowest level in real terms in 45 years.

As we (Matthew Ricketson and Patrick Mullins) show in our book, Who needs the ABC?, the environment in which the ABC operates is profoundly different to that of two decades ago. Apart from sustained Coalition government hostility, the ABC is under almost continuous attack from sections of the commercial news media.

Yet the ABC does more now than it ever has, running six television channels, more than 60 capital city, local, and digital radio stations, four national radio services, a vast array of online resources, and live music.

On funding, one side, the Coalition, is clearly associated with an overall reduction in ABC funding.

The ABC is too important a national cultural institution for voters to be denied a clear picture of how it is being treated by the government, and by the Labor opposition. For its part, the opposition has promised to move funding agreements beyond the electoral cycle, to five years, and to reverse the indexation decisions of 2019.

As we have noted, though, this will not restore the funding lost over the past nine years. Both major parties should commit to restoring ABC funding.

Read more:
Is the latest ABC inquiry really just ‘business as usual’?

Michael Ward is a Ph.D. candidate in media and communications at the University of Sydney. From 1999 to 2017 he worked for the ABC, including as a senior executive contributing to funding submissions.

Alexandra Wake was a senior journalist with the ABC, and did her last shift with ABC Radio Australia in 2015.

Matthew Ricketson last year conducted paid in-house feature writing training sessions for journalists in the ABC’s Asia Pacific Newsroom. He is the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance’s representative on the Australian Press Council.

Patrick Mullins has received funding from ArtsACT and the Museum of Australian Democracy.

– ref. No-one is talking about ABC funding in this election campaign. Here’s why they should be – https://theconversation.com/no-one-is-talking-about-abc-funding-in-this-election-campaign-heres-why-they-should-be-181948

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Apisalome Movono, Senior Lecturer in Development Studies, Massey University

As daylight hours shorten and temperatures drop, and with borders reopening across the Pacific, many will be tempted to escape pandemic fatigue by flying somewhere warm and welcoming.

Fiji, in particular, has wasted no time mounting a major campaign targeting New Zealand and Australian tourists. Fronted by celebrity Rebel Wilson, the ads promise the island nation is “open for happiness”.

Fiji is now averaging around 1,200 tourist arrivals each day. With quarantine requirements and other COVID restrictions recently removed, tourist numbers are expected to exceed 400,000 by the end of this year.

This will bring millions of much-needed dollars into a tourist economy hit hard by the pandemic. Many resorts have now re-opened, with around 50% of Fiji’s 120,000-strong tourism workforce having returned to work so far.

But behind the smiles and sunny marketing hype, how is Fiji really coping after such a challenging COVID experience?

Behind the smiles

When Pope John Paul II dubbed Fiji “the way the world should be” in 1986, he coined a tourist slogan that would last for years. But it hid some of the harsher realities of the country, including the ethnic and political fractures that led to a succession of coups.

These days, it’s estimated around 30% of the population lives in poverty. Crime has been increasing and there are ongoing concerns over the fragility of the health system.

Read more:
Without stricter conditions, NZ should be in no hurry to reopen its border to cruise ships

As tourism resumes, COVID is still lingering, and there have been outbreaks of leptospirosis, typhoid and dengue fever, contributing to around 60 deaths since the start of the year.

Despite a strong vaccination drive that reached 90% of the eligible population, COVID took a high toll. Unlike Vanuatu and Samoa, whose borders are still closed to tourism, Fiji’s relatively relaxed approach had serious consequences. Medical experts suspect the official estimate of 862 deaths from the coronavirus is vastly under-reported.

Read more:
As borders reopen, can New Zealand reset from high volume to ‘high values’ tourism?

Well-being during the pandemic

Given the hardships of the past two years, then, one might think that Fiji being “open for happiness” might apply to Fijians as well as tourists. But some recent research showed surprising results (see graph below).

The survey of people living in tourism-reliant communities, conducted just before the border opened in December 2021, found most people felt their mental, social, physical, spiritual and environmental well-being had actually improved during the pandemic when there were no international tourists. For many people, these things had “strongly improved”.

In the absence of tourism jobs, people had gone back to the land and sea to source food, and reconnected with their culture and kin. As two former tourism workers said:

I am now very close with my cousins and family because we spent time together catching food and planting. That is what life is about […] the pandemic gave me this time to be close with my community on a deeper level.

Things have been very positive for our village. We are now closer as clans… Especially for us youth to learn and know what we are supposed to do to care for each other – that’s the Fijian way!

Respondents also talked about improvements in the natural environment:

With no tourists around the lagoon, the reef and land has had time to relax and recover so that has been positive – to see fish come back.

Survey: well-being improved during the pandemic – agree or disagree?

Tourism that benefits hosts and guests?

Everyone enjoys a holiday, being pampered, enjoying new experiences and returning home relaxed. But can this be achieved in ways that benefit the Fijian economy while also supporting the well-being of the hosts?

Many New Zealand and Australian tourists report their interactions with the local people and culture were the most enjoyable aspect of their Fijian holidays. The 2019 visitor survey showed a key reason for choosing Fiji was that “the local people are friendly” – a close second to being a “family-friendly” destination.

Those qualities in the people and their culture were also the foundation of the adaptation and resilience that got them through the toughest times of the pandemic.

Read more:
Pacific tourism is desperate for a vaccine and travel freedoms, but the industry must learn from this crisis

And while many businesses are eager to get back to the way things were, not all workers are sure they want to return to tourism jobs. Those who experienced greater well-being in the absence of tourists are looking for a more balanced approach that recognises the importance of health, family, culture and environment.

Tourists themselves can help, firstly by listening to the Fijian people’s own ideas about how best to reconfigure tourism to improve well-being, including a fairer deal for those working in resorts: a Fiji Trade Union Congress assessment of 2,132 workers during the pandemic found 99% wanted the government to do more to support labour rights and protect their jobs.

Tourists, too, can support local movements for better wages and conditions, job security, stronger unions and social insurance schemes. Ultimately, putting host well-being on the same page as guest well-being will give “open for happiness” a deeper meaning.

Apisalome Movono receives funding from Royal Society Te Apārangi under a Marsden Fast-Start Grant.

Regina Scheyvens receives funding from Royal Society Te Apārangi under a James Cook fellowship

– ref. Fiji is officially ‘open for happiness’ – will that apply to its tourism workers too? – https://theconversation.com/fiji-is-officially-open-for-happiness-will-that-apply-to-its-tourism-workers-too-181603

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ritesh Chugh, Associate Professor – Information and Communications Technology, CQUniversity Australia

With nearly 84% of the world’s population now owning a smartphone, and our dependence on them growing all the time, these devices have become an attractive avenue for scammers.

Last year, cyber security company Kaspersky detected nearly 3.5 million malicious attacks on mobile phone users. The spam messages we get on our phones via text message or email will often contain links to viruses, which are a type of malicious software (malware).

There’s a decent chance that at some point you’ve installed malware that infected your phone and worked (without you noticing) in the background. According to a global report commissioned by private company Zimperium, more than one-fifth of mobile devices have encountered malware. And four in ten mobiles worldwide are vulnerable to cyber attacks.

But how do you know if your phone has been targeted? And what can you do?

How does a phone get infected?

Like personal computers, phones can be compromised by malware.

For example, the Hummingbad virus infected ten million Android devices within a few months of its creation in 2016, and put as many as 85 million devices at risk.

Typically, a phone virus works the same way as a computer virus: a malicious code infects your device, replicates itself and spreads to other devices by auto-messaging others in your contact list or auto-forwarding itself as an email.

A virus can limit your phone’s functionality, send your personal information to hackers, send your contacts spam messages linking to malware, and even allow the virus’s operator to “spy” on you by capturing your screen and keyboard inputs, and tracking your geographical location.

In Australia, Scamwatch received 16,000 reports of the Flubot virus over just eight weeks in 2021. This virus sends text messages to Android and iPhone users with links to malware. Clicking on the links can lead to a malicious app being downloaded on your phone, giving scammers access to your personal information.

Flubot scammers regularly change their target countries. According to cyber security firm Bitdefender, FluBot operators targeted Australia, Germany, Poland, Spain, Austria and other European countries between December 1 2021 and January 2 of this year.

Read more:
Being bombarded with delivery and post office text scams? Here’s why — and what can be done

Is either Apple or Android more secure?

While Apple devices are generally considered more secure than Android, and less prone to virus attacks, iPhone users who “jailbreak” or modify their phone open themselves up to security vulnerabilities.

Similarly, Android users who install apps from outside the Google Play store increase their risk of installing malware. It’s recommended all phone users stay on guard, as both Apple and Android are vulnerable to security risks.

That said, phones are generally better protected against viruses than personal computers. This is because software is usually installed through authorised app stores that vet each app (although some malicious apps can occasionally slip through the cracks).

Also, in comparison to computers, phones are more secure as the apps are usually “sandboxed” in their own isolated environment – unable to access or interfere with other apps. This reduces the risk of infection or cross contamination from malware. However, no device is entirely immune.

Watch out for the signs

While it’s not always easy to tell whether your phone is infected, it will exhibit some abnormal behaviours if it is. Some signs to watch out for include:

• poor performance, such as apps taking longer than usual to open, or crashing randomly

• excessive battery drain (due to the malware constantly working in the background)

• increased mobile data consumption

• unexplained billing charges (which may include increased data usage charges as a result of the malware chewing up your data)

• unusual pop-ups, and

• the device overheating unexpectedly.

If you do suspect a virus has infected your device, there are some steps you can take. First, to prevent further damage you’ll need to remove the malware. Here are some simple troubleshooting steps:

1. Use a reliable antivirus app to scan your phone for infections. Some reputable vendors offering paid and free protection services include Avast, AVG, Bitdefender, McAfee or Norton.

2. Clear your phone’s storage and cache (in Android devices), or browsing history and website data (in Apple devices).

3. Restart your iPhone, or restart your Android phone to go into safe mode – which is a feature on Android that prevents third-party apps from operating for as long as it’s enabled.

4. Delete any suspicious or unfamiliar apps from your downloaded apps list and, if you’re an Android user, turn safe mode off once the apps are deleted.

As a last resort, you can back up all your data and perform a factory reset on your phone. Resetting a phone to its original settings will eliminate any malware.

Protecting your phone from infection

Now you’ve fixed your phone, it’s important to safeguard it against future viruses and other security risks. The mobile security apps mentioned above will help with this. But you can also:

• avoid clicking unusual pop-ups, or links in unusual text messages, social media posts or emails

• only install apps from authorised app stores, such as Google Play or Apple’s App Store

• avoid jailbreaking or modifying your phone

• check app permissions before installing, so you’re aware of what the app will access (rather than blindly trusting it)

• back up your data regularly, and

• keep your phone software updated to the latest version (which will have the latest security patches).

Continually monitor your phone for suspicious activity and trust your gut instincts. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Ritesh Chugh 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. Can your mobile phone get a virus? Yes – and you’ll have to look carefully to see the signs – https://theconversation.com/can-your-mobile-phone-get-a-virus-yes-and-youll-have-to-look-carefully-to-see-the-signs-181720

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Griffiths, Deputy Program Director, Grattan Institute

Corruption in politics is a big issue for Australian voters this federal election.

Over 10% of respondents to The Conversation’s #SetTheAgenda poll said they wanted candidates to be talking about integrity, corruption and a federal independent commission against corruption (or ICAC) this election campaign.

One voter asked us: “Will they implement a national anti-corruption commission (with teeth!) that can investigate retrospectively?”

Research from Griffith University and Transparency International Australia found 67% of Australians surveyed supported the idea of a federal anti-corruption commission.

So we asked five experts to analyse and grade the major parties’ policies on the issue of a federal ICAC.

Here are their detailed responses:

Coalition

Labor

Kate Griffiths works for Grattan Institute, which began with contributions to its endowment of $15 million from each of the Federal and Victorian Governments, $4 million from BHP Billiton, and $1 million from NAB. In order to safeguard its independence, Grattan Institute’s board controls this endowment. The funds are invested and contribute to funding Grattan Institute’s activities. Grattan Institute also receives funding from corporates, foundations, and individuals to support its general activities as disclosed on its website.

Adam Graycar has received funding from the Australian Research Council, and the Victorian Broad Based Anti-Corruption Commission, and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

A J Brown is a boardmember of Transparency International Australia, and Transparency International globally. He has received research funding from the Australian Research Council and partner organisations including anti-corruption agencies, Ombudsman’s offices, other regulatory and integrity agencies and other government agencies relating to public integrity, accountability, public interest whistleblowing and anti-corruption reform.

Gabrielle Appleby has previously received funding from the Local Government Association (SA) to undertake research into perceptions of corruption in local government. She is a board member of the Centre for Public Integrity.

Yee-Fui Ng 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 do the major parties rate on an independent anti-corruption commission? We asked 5 experts – https://theconversation.com/how-do-the-major-parties-rate-on-an-independent-anti-corruption-commission-we-asked-5-experts-181077

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tess Newton Cain, Adjunct Associate Professor, Griffith Asia Institute, Griffith University

I was once asked “why should Australians care about what happens in the Pacific? and my response was (or started with) “This is where you live”.

Being in the neighbourhood is a fact of geography. Being a good neighbour requires thought, care, activity, and participation. When it comes to being a good neighbour in the region, how has Australia’s statecraft rated in the past and how can it be improved for the future?

Two years ago I led a research team that spent a good while listening to Pacific islanders (from Fiji, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu). I have distilled some of what we heard into what I describe as the “Australia paradox”. Essentially this means that for people in these countries, the relationship with Australia is far and away the most important one, the one they care the most about. And because they care so much about it, they want it to be better.

The importance of ‘how’, not just ‘what’

So how do we do it better? Is it more aid, better labour mobility, economic integration, more support for Pacific regionalism, all of the above? Everyone is looking for or putting forward an answer. But first, we need to look at the questions and what underpins them.

In the Pacific, the number one currency is relationships. Relationships need to be nurtured and built on solid foundations. The “how” of what Australia does has been given insufficient attention. The narrative of the Pacific step-up has been too much about the “what”. This has led to it being something that is perceived as being done “to” or “for” the Pacific. It is only by addressing the “how” that it can be elevated to something Australia does “with” the Pacific.

There are four components to establishing the solid foundation that is needed to sustain and enrich Pacific relationships: listening, talking, Pacific literacy, and capacity building.

Read more:
Labor’s Pacific plan is underdone and risks further politicising foreign policy

When it comes to listening, there needs to be more of it, and it needs to be done better. Australian policymakers need to listen to a wider range of voices, and they need to be open to listening to things that may be uncomfortable to hear.

Most importantly, Pacific voices need to be the ones doing the talking. In particular, Pacific diaspora communities in Australia are key sources of knowledge and expertise who often feel that they are overlooked when it comes to critical conversations.

As for talking, a lot of what we have seen during this election campaign, particularly in regard to the pact between China and the Solomon Islands, indicates that there needs to be less bluster and more self-awareness and respect. The words that political leaders, commentators and journalists use matter. They can be offensive or even inflammatory. Solomon Islands is not a “fly-speck country” or a “little Cuba” and neither is it in anyone’s “back yard”.

Even without the hyped up political rhetoric of an election campaign, too often how the Pacific is discussed or reported on reveals some rusted on tropes and prejudices. It doesn’t require much scratching to see they are based on a toxic mix of racism and neo-colonialism. Not only is this unattractive, it is also counter-productive.

Australians need to improve their Pacific literacy

Pacific islanders know a lot about Australia, but the reverse is far from true. The Australian policy community and the wider society need to make a meaningful and sustained investment in building Pacific literacy. Too little is taught in schools and universities about the diversity and dynamism of the Pacific neighbourhood.

The mainstream media has paid too little attention to the Pacific, other than in a reactive, knee-jerk way. A major gap in the Australian consciousness relates to historical links. Fortunes were made by plantation owners in Queensland and New South Wales on the back of labour that was blackbirded from Vanuatu, New Caledonia, and Solomon Islands. This is part of a shared history, and it needs to be acknowledged and understood if there is to be shared prosperity in the region.

Read more:
From the Caribbean to Queensland: re-examining Australia’s ‘blackbirding’ past and its roots in the global slave trade

“Capacity building” is possibly the most commonly and over-used phrase associated with Australian policy in the Pacific. But Australia’s leaders and officials have their own serious capacity deficits in the development and implementation of policies in our region.

Particular areas of focus are linguistic and cultural capacity. An unwillingness or refusal to engage with the cultural underpinnings of Pacific ways of thinking and being is more than just bad manners – it is intellectually lazy and strategically inept.

Other partners, including New Zealand and China, are able to develop stores of social and political capital by investing in cultural capacity, and Australian recalcitrance does not go unnoticed by Pacific counterparts.

These are the building blocks that can create a foundation for whatever strategy, policy, programme or project Australia seeks to develop with Pacific partners. They can form the basis of reinvigorated relationships that will be nurtured by trust, reciprocity, and respect.

Tess Newton Cain 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. This is where we live: has Australia been a good neighbour in the Pacific? – https://theconversation.com/this-is-where-we-live-has-australia-been-a-good-neighbour-in-the-pacific-182040

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Diesendorf, Honorary Associate Professor, UNSW Sydney

Many climate activists, scientists, engineers and politicians are trying to reassure us the climate crisis can be solved rapidly without any changes to lifestyle, society or the economy.

To make the vast scale of change palatable, advocates suggest all we have to do is switch fossil fuels for renewable power, electric vehicles and energy efficiency technologies, add seaweed to livestock feed to cut methane and embrace green hydrogen for heavy industries such as steel-making.

There’s just one problem: time. We’re on a very tight timeline to halve emissions within eight years and hit net zero by 2050. While renewables are making major inroads, the world’s overall primary energy use keeps rising. That means renewables are chasing a retreating target.

My new research shows if the world’s energy consumption grows at the pre-COVID rate, technological change alone will not be enough to halve global CO₂ emissions by 2030. We will have to cut energy consumption 50-75% by 2050 while accelerating the renewable build. And that means lifestyle change driven by social policies.

The limitations of technological change

We must confront a hard fact: In the year 2000, fossil fuels supplied 80% of the world’s total primary energy consumption. In 2019, they provided 81%.

How is that possible, you ask, given the soaring growth rate of renewable electricity over that time period? Because world energy consumption has been growing rapidly, apart from a temporary pause in 2020. So far, most of the growth has been supplied by fossil fuels, especially for transportation and non-electrical heating. The 135% growth in renewable electricity over that time frame seems huge, but it started from a small base. That’s why it couldn’t catch fossil fuelled electricity’s smaller percentage increase from a large base.

As a renewable energy researcher, I have no doubt technological change is at the point where we can now affordably deploy it to get to net zero. But the transition is not going to be fast enough on its own. If we don’t hit our climate goals, it’s likely our planet will cross a climate tipping point and begin an irreversible descent into more heatwaves, droughts, floods and sea-level rise.

Our to-do list for a liveable climate is simple: convert essentially all transportation and heating to electricity while switching all electricity production to renewables. But to complete this within three decades is not simple.

Even at much higher rates of renewable growth, we will not be able to replace all fossil fuels by 2050. This is not the fault of renewable energy. Other low-carbon energy sources like nuclear would take much longer to build, and leave us even further behind.

Do we have other tools we can use to buy time? CO₂ capture is getting a great deal of attention, but it seems unlikely to make a significant contribution. The scenarios I explored in my research assume removing CO₂ from the atmosphere by carbon capture and storage or direct air capture does not occur on a large scale, because these technologies are speculative, risky and very expensive.

The only scenarios in which we succeed in replacing fossil fuels in time require something quite different. We can keep global warming under 2℃ if we slash global energy consumption by 50% to 75% by 2050 as well as greatly accelerating the transition to 100% renewables.

Individual behaviour change is useful, but insufficient

Let’s be clear: individual behaviour change has some potential for mitigation, but it’s limited. The International Energy Agency recognises net zero by 2050 will require behavioural changes as well as technological changes. But the examples it gives are modest, such as washing clothes in cold water, drying them on clotheslines, and reducing speed limits on roads.

Read more:
Affluence is killing the planet, warn scientists

The 2022 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on climate mitigation has taken a step further, acknowledging the importance of collectively reducing energy consumption with a chapter on “Demand, services and social aspects of mitigation”. To do this effectively, government policies are needed.

Rich people and rich countries are responsible for far and away the most greenhouse gas emissions. It follows that we have to reduce consumption in high-income countries while improving human well-being.

We’ll need policies leading to large scale consumption changes

We all know the technologies in our climate change toolbox to tackle climate change: renewables, electrification, green hydrogen. But while these will help drive a rapid transition to clean energy, they are not designed to cut consumption.

These policies would actually cut consumption, while also smoothing the social transition:

• a carbon tax and additional environmental taxes
• wealth and inheritance taxes
• a shorter working week to share the work around
• a job guarantee at the basic wage for all adults who want to work and who can’t find a job in the formal economy
• non-coercive policies to end population growth, especially in high income countries
• boosting government spending on poverty reduction, green infrastructure and public services as part of a shift to Universal Basic Services.

You might look at this list and think it’s impossible. But just remember the federal government funded the economic response to the pandemic by creating money. We could fund these policies the same way. As long as spending is within the productive capacity of the nation, there is no risk of driving inflation.

Yes, these policies mean major change. But major disruptive change in the form of climate change is happening regardless. Let’s try to shape our civilisation to be resilient in the face of change.

Mark Diesendorf has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Net zero by 2050 will hit a major timing problem technology can’t solve. We need to talk about cutting consumption – https://theconversation.com/net-zero-by-2050-will-hit-a-major-timing-problem-technology-cant-solve-we-need-to-talk-about-cutting-consumption-181951

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cher McGillivray, Assistant Professor, Bond University

In the film Turning Red (2022), a young 13-year-old girl, Meilin “Mei” Lee, turns into a red panda whenever she has strong emotions: when she is angry, when she is sad and when she is excited.

She begins to believe that strong emotions are embarrassing and tries to suppress her true self.

In the film Encanto (2021), the multi-generational Madrigal family keep their emotions from each other, causing their house to crumble.

As in Inside Out (2015) and Frozen (2013) before them, in these films the traditional animation villain is gone, and the “villain” becomes the character’s emotions.

Only when the characters learn to embrace all of their feelings – and realise they aren’t villains in our stories – can they become their true, authentic selves.

Emotions are important

A sense of self is the way a person thinks about their traits, their purpose and the beliefs that define their identity.

Developing a sense of self is vital not only for the developing child, but across the lifespan. A strong positive sense of self is integral for well-being.

An important part of this sense of self and living authentically is the ability to feel and express all of our emotions. Yet many parents, like Mei’s mother Ming in Turning Red, struggle to live authentically, often putting on a brave face and hiding their inner turmoil.

Suppressing our fears and self-doubts places us at greater risk for chronic illness and depression, whereas opening up is good for the body, mind and soul.

Read more:
What the world can learn from the Buddhist concept loving-kindness

When parents don’t demonstrate how to express and give voice to feelings, children are taught to suppress their distress. This restricts their ability to grow and form safe and healthy attachments.

Self-compassion involves being kind to yourself and recognising flaws are common to us all. In Encanto, the sisters Mirabel, Isabela and Luisa all believe they need to suppress their emotions, and they judge themselves for having difficult feelings at all.

Self-compassion can shield against negative emotions when imagining distressing social events. It has a greater buffering effect than self-esteem, and can help us acknowledge our role in difficult events without being overwhelmed by negative emotions.

Strong emotions can be perceived as weaknesses, yet connecting to them with curiosity and self-compassion instead of judgement may hold the key to finding your identity.

Expressing emotions can lead to growth

These films intimately understand the importance of expressing and befriending our emotions, and how this leads to connection with others. Positive social connection produces the love hormone oxytocin, releasing dopamine and decreasing anxiety.

As Turning Red’s Mei connects with her friends and shares her true self, her feelings become less overwhelming.

When Encanto’s Madrigal family learn they are allowed to express their fears with each other, the magic in the family grows.

These films provide opportunities for parents and children to talk about how we approach our emotions, and for parents to help their children move compassionately towards their difficulties – rather than away from them.

Inside Out can help us understand all emotions are normal and not to be feared. The personified characters of Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger and Disgust can help children learn to embrace uncomfortable emotions.

When children use emotions to guide how they are feeling, this gives them opportunities to grow.

Parenting with love

“Parenting from the inside out” is a psychological concept which means parents need to take care of their own emotional world in order to take care of their child’s emotional world.

When parents have a deeper understanding of themselves, they can form stronger attachments with their children. It is also helpful when parents understand the developmental brain changes of children, how emotions shift and change as children grow, and how this can affect your experiences as a parent.

Understanding this can help you raise children who flourish. Helping children to name their emotions helps them tame the emotion.

Encouraging children is not always easy for parents, especially if they did not grow up being encouraged themselves. Treating your children with unconditional positive regard means giving your children (and yourself) complete acceptance and love. This will set children up for success.

These recent films can be the perfect starting point for a conversation about those often unspeakably messy places to help your child fear less and grow more.

Read more:
Yes, the ‘terrible twos’ are full-on – but let’s look at things from a child’s perspective

Cher McGillivray 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. You can’t be happy all the time: how Encanto and Turning Red can help families wrestle with anger and sadness – https://theconversation.com/you-cant-be-happy-all-the-time-how-encanto-and-turning-red-can-help-families-wrestle-with-anger-and-sadness-181782

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

“The world has moved past Matt Canavan,” Nationals deputy leader David Littleproud declared on Wednesday, tossing his party colleague and former resources minister firmly under the bus as the “climate wars” exploded within the Coalition.

These wars have damaged Coalition leaders for decades (right back to John Howard). Now they’ve erupted again close to the election, they threaten to burn both Scott Morrison and Barnaby Joyce. And that’s just when Morrison wants to turn the issue against Labor.

The outbreak was predicable – the issue has been smouldering ever since Morrison had the government sign up to the net zero 2050 target ahead of the Glasgow climate conference. But perhaps Morrison felt he could keep the fire smothered. If so, that underestimated Nationals maverick Queensland senator Matt Canavan.

Last year Morrison decided his government had to adopt the 2050 target. It was a pragmatic judgment driven by pressure from moderate Liberals facing threats in their city seats and strong external urgings from the Biden and Johnson administrations.

That meant getting the Nationals on board – via cajoling Joyce with huge amounts of money (for projects being rolled out in this campaign) and having the Nationals leader carry the policy within his party room.

Ironically, fearful their previous leader Michael McCormack might sell out on climate policy under Morrison’s pressure, the Nationals had reinstalled Joyce, one of whose strongest supporters was Canavan.

But then a reluctant Joyce was co-opted by the PM. He took a majority of his split party along with a deal he negotiated with Morrison, though telling his party room he was personally against the change in policy.

Joyce gave in but Canavan never did. He has been indefatigable in his scepticism about the 2050 target. This week said: “the net zero thing is all sort of dead anyway.

“Boris Johnson said he is pausing the net zero commitment, Germany is building coal and gas infrastructure, Italy’s reopening coal-fired power plants. It’s all over. It’s all over bar the shouting here.”

The trouble for government leaders, who are publicly treating Canavan as an outlier, is that they know he speaks for quite a few in the Coalition’s base in the deep north, and that he’ll continue to prosecute his case.

His latest statements came after Colin Boyce, the Liberal National Party’s candidate for the marginal seat of Flynn, which the Nationals fear losing, said earlier in the week that Morrison’s 2050 policy was “a flexible plan that leaves us wiggle room”. What precisely he meant was disputed but it was clear he is not a fan of the target, which he has rejected before.

Morrison on Wednesday reaffirmed the (unlegislated) policy: “We did the hard yards to get everyone together. And of course there’ll be some who disagreed with it at the time, and I suspect they still will, but that doesn’t change the government’s policy”.

Josh Frydenberg – who is under a lot pressure from a “teal” candidate in his seat of Kooyong – said the target was clear, firm and non-negotiable.

Joyce said: “We’ve made an agreement. We’re going to honour that agreement.”

Joyce and Morrison were both at the same function in Rockhampton on Wednesday but (probably wisely) held separate news conferences. As the deputy PM put it, “we don’t have to be in each other’s pockets.”

The imbroglio feeds right into the hands of the teals. They have been saying for months that the Liberals in their sights might be moderate in name but they vote with Barnaby Joyce.

Now they can claim that in a re-elected government the Nationals could revert to their old policy and press Morrison to ditch the target. As Nationals frontbencher Bridget McKenzie said on Wednesday, while insisting the party is united, “there is a very broad range of views on climate change within the National Party party room, from net zero never, to net zero yesterday”.

It mightn’t matter what assurances the government gives – the teal argument could likely resonate in the leafy seats (where Joyce is a trigger point).

We saw another version of this movie in 2019, when Labor had different slants on its climate policy in the north and the south of the country.

Even while it eats itself again on climate, the government is trying to conjure up a scare that Labor would bring in a “sneaky carbon tax”.

Labor’s emissions reduction policy has solid belts and braces this election compared to 2019. Over the past week, however, the opposition has left itself open to the inevitable Coalition attacks by its various spokespeople sounding all over the place on the impact of the policy on coal mines.

Although it has muddled its explanation of its plan’s precise working, Labor’s reply to the government is that its policy would simply use (robustly) the safeguards mechanism that was put in place by the Coalition.

How the conflicting climate policy arguments work out in the coal areas we’ve yet to see.

But it seems clear that in the leafy suburbs the latest outbreak of the climate wars within Coalition ranks is another blow for embattled sitting Liberals.

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. View from The Hill: Warring within Coalition over 2050 target brings some gold dust for ‘teals’ – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-warring-within-coalition-over-2050-target-brings-some-gold-dust-for-teals-181944

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

After Wednesday’s larger-than-expected inflation number, all attention has turned to the Reserve Bank’s meeting on Tuesday. If the bank moves next week, it will be the first time there’s been a rise in a campaign since 2007, the election John Howard lost.

Pointing to recent rate rises overseas, independent economist Saul Eslake says: “If the Reserve Bank were to do nothing in the face of this much sharper-than-expected acceleration in inflation, it would be leaving itself open to a charge of acting in a political way, which would undermine its credibility for an extended period.

“So I think the Reserve Bank really has to raise interest rates at its meeting next week.” If it doesn’t, Governor Philip Lowe would require “a very persuasive explanation”.

If the bank didn’t act next week, it could subsequently have to make a 75 basis points rise in one hit, “which would be a considerable shock to the mortgage-paying population in particular, but I think for small businesses and a whole lot of other participants in Australia’s economy more broadly.”

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

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Economist Saul Eslake on why Reserve Bank needs to raise rates next week – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-economist-saul-eslake-on-why-reserve-bank-needs-to-raise-rates-next-week-182059

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jean Burgess, Professor and Associate Director, ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society, Queensland University of Technology

The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, seems set to purchase the social media platform Twitter for around US$44 billion. He says he’s not doing it to make money (which is good, because Twitter has rarely turned a profit), but rather because, among other things, he believes in free speech.

Twitter might seem an odd place to make a stand for free speech. The service has around 217 million daily users, only a fraction of the 2.8 billion who log in each day to one of the Meta family (Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp).

But the platform plays a disproportionately large role in society. It is essential infrastructure for journalists and academics. It has been used to coordinate emergency information, to build up communities of solidarity and protest, and to share global events and media rituals – from presidential elections to mourning celebrity deaths (and unpredictable moments at the Oscars).

Twitter’s unique role is a result of the way it combines personal media use with public debate and discussion. But this is a fragile and volatile mix – and one that has become increasingly difficult for the platform to manage.

According to Musk, “Twitter is the digital town square, where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated”. Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey, in approving Musk’s takeover, went further, claiming “Twitter is the closest thing we have to a global consciousness”.

Are they right? Does it make sense to think of Twitter as a town square? And if so, do we want the town square to be controlled by libertarian billionaires?

What is a town square for?

As my coauthor Nancy Baym and I have detailed in our book Twitter: A Biography, Twitter’s culture emerged from the interactions between a fledgling platform with shaky infrastructure, an avid community of users who made it work for them, and the media who found in it an endless source of news and other content.

Read more:
Friday essay: Twitter and the way of the hashtag

Is it a town square? When Musk and some other commentators use this term, I think they are invoking the traditional idea of the “public sphere”: a real or virtual place where everyone can argue rationally about things, and everyone is made aware of everyone else’s arguments.

Some critics think we should get rid of the idea of the “digital town square” altogether, or at least think more deeply about how it might reinforce existing divisions and hierarchies.

I think the idea of the “digital town square” can be much richer and more optimistic than this, and that early Twitter was a pretty good, if flawed, example of it.

If I think of my own ideal “town square”, it might have market stalls, quiet corners where you can have personal chats with friends, alleyways where strange (but legal!) niche interests can be pursued, a playground for the kids, some roving entertainers – and, sure, maybe a central agora with a soapbox that people can gather around when there’s some issue we all need to hear or talk about. That, in fact, is very much what early Twitter was like for me and my friends and colleagues.

I think Musk and his legion of fans have something different in mind: a free speech free-for-all, a nightmarish town square where everyone is shouting all the time and anyone who doesn’t like it just stays home.

The free-for-all is over

In recent years, the increasing prevalence of disinformation and abuse on social media, as well as their growing power over the media environment in general, has prompted governments around the world to intervene.

In Australia alone, we have seen the News Media Bargaining Code and the ACCC’s Digital Platform Services Inquiry asking tougher questions, making demands, and exerting more pressure on platforms.

Perhaps more consequentially for global players like Twitter, the European Union is set to introduce a Digital Services Act which aims “to create a safer digital space in which the fundamental rights of all users of digital services are protected”.

This will prohibit harmful advertising and “dark patterns”, and require more careful (and complex) content moderation, particularly on of the larger companies. It will also require platforms to be more transparent about how they use algorithms to filter and curate the content their users see and hear.

Such moves are just the beginning of states imposing both limits and positive duties on platform companies.

So while Musk will likely push the boundaries of what he can get away with, the idea of a global platform that allows completely unfettered “free speech” (even within the limits of “the law”, as he tweeted earlier today) is a complete fantasy.

What are the alternatives?

If for-profit social media services are run not in the public interest, but to serve the needs of advertisers – or, even worse, the whims of billionaires – then what are the alternatives?

Small alternative social media platforms (such as Diaspora and Mastodon), built on decentralised infrastructure and collective ownership, have been around for a while, but they haven’t really taken off yet. Designing and attracting users to viable alternatives at a global scale is really hard.

Proposals for completely separate, publicly supported social media platforms created by non-profits and/or governments, even if we could get them to work together, are unlikely to work. They would be hugely expensive, and will ultimately encounter similar governance challenges to the existing platforms, if they are to achieve any scale and to operate across national boundaries.

Of course, it is still possible Musk will discover running Twitter is much harder than it looks. The company is to some extent responsible for what is published on its platform, which means it has no choice but to engage in the messy world of content moderation, and balancing free speech with other concerns (and other human rights).

While Musk’s other companies (such as Tesla) operate in heavily regulated environments already, the “global social media platform” business is likely to be far more complex and challenging.

Twitter has already been looking at ways out of this situation. Since 2019, it has been investing in an initiative called Bluesky, which aims to develop an open, decentralised standard for social media which could be used by multiple platforms including Twitter itself.

Facebook’s attempt to move into the “metaverse” is a similar maneouvre: avoid having to deal with content and restrictions by building the (proprietary) infrastructure for others to create applications and social spaces.

To try out another “blue-sky” idea for just a moment: if the existing corporate giants were to vacate the social media space, it might leave room for a publicly funded and governed option.

In an ideal world, public service media organisations might collaborate to build international social media services using shared infrastructure and protocols that enable their services to talk to and share content with each other. Or they might build out new social media services on top of the internet we have now – requiring the commercial players to ensure their platforms are interoperable would be an essential part of that.

Of course, either way, this model would ultimately require taxpayer support and serious, long-term investment. If that were to happen, we might have something even better than a digital town square: a public service internet.

Read more:
We need a full public service internet – state-owned infrastructure is just the start

Jean Burgess receives research funding from the Australian Research Council and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canada). She has previously engaged with Facebook as an academic consultant in an advisory capacity.

– ref. The ‘digital town square’? What does it mean when billionaires own the online spaces where we gather? – https://theconversation.com/the-digital-town-square-what-does-it-mean-when-billionaires-own-the-online-spaces-where-we-gather-182047

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ria Hopkins, PhD Candidate, National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, UNSW Sydney

Hospital patients are often given strong, opioid pain medicines when discharged home after surgery and other treatments. This can sometimes lead to long-term use and dependence.

New national standards, released today by the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care, aim to reduce prescribing that increases the risk of dependence.

The standards encourage hospital doctors to consider prescribing alternative pain relief such as paracetamol and ibuprofen for mild to moderate pain where possible.

When stronger pain relief is required – and medicines such as oxycodone, morphine, fentanyl, tramadol and codeine are prescribed – the standards recommend discharging patients with up to seven days’ supply, depending on their circumstances.

So what are the risks of dependence? And how can clinicians ensure pain is adequately managed?

Read more:
2,200 deaths, 32,000 hospital admissions, 15.7 billion dollars: what opioid misuse costs Australia in a year

Treating pain is a human right

Acute pain isn’t just unpleasant to experience. Pain causes the body to enter a stress response. This can have wide-ranging effects on the body, from raising your heart rate, to reducing the functioning of your immune system.

Uncontrolled pain in hospital may lead to poorer patient outcomes: people in pain take longer to recover and may experience longer hospital stays.

Uncontrolled acute (short-term) pain may even progress to chronic pain, which is much harder to manage and can have significant impacts on a person’s quality of life.

Treating pain is also ethical, and access to adequate pain management has been recognised as a fundamental human right.

There are several reasons why people may experience pain in hospital, including injury, illness or surgery. Internationally, 84% of hospital patients report experiencing pain. And up to three-quarters of patients experience moderate to severe pain after surgery.

Opioid medicines are commonly used to manage pain in hospital. But with hospitals encouraged to get patients home earlier, many people may still be experiencing pain when they’re discharged. So opioids are also often prescribed on discharge.

Opioids are high-risk medicines

Although opioids are effective in treating many types of pain, they are considered “high risk medicines”. They can cause multiple unwanted effects which range in severity from nausea and constipation, to life-threatening breathing problems and loss of consciousness.

Prescription opioid use has increased internationally over the past 30 years. In Australia, we’ve seen a 15-fold increase in opioid prescriptions dispensed on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme between 1995 and 2015.

Over the same time period, harms from opioids have also risen. Between 2001 and 2012, deaths from pharmaceutical opioid overdoses in Australia rose from 21.9 per million population to 36.2 per million population: an increase of 6% per year.

Prescription opioids are now involved in more deaths than illicit opioids such as heroin.

Read more:
Opioids continue to be the leading cause of overdose deaths in Australia. What else can we do?

To address these issues, government bodies have introduced strategies to improve the safety of opioid use. Although many focus on addressing opioid use in the community, opioids are also commonly used in acute care settings such as hospitals.

Finding a balance between benefits and risks

Good pain management aims to ensure pain is well managed while making sure the risk of any unwanted effects is low.

One of the risks is that short-term opioid use may become long-term opioid use. Studies have found that among people who receive opioids after surgery, 1-10% are still using them up to one year later.

Existing opioid treatment guidelines recommend doctors prescribe the lowest dose of opioids needed for sufficient pain relief, for the shortest amount of time possible.

However, this does not always occur in practice. There is wide variation in what patients are prescribed at discharge, even within the same hospital or surgical unit.

Guiding principles for clinicians

Clinical care standards are a set of quality statements written by an expert writing group for consistent and high-quality health care. They aren’t rules; they’re guiding principles that inform patients and clinicians about “best practice” for a clinical area.

In many ways, the new opioid standards aren’t new – they’re consistent with current guidelines and research. However, they provide “indicators” for health care organisations to measure their performance against. Given ongoing issues with opioids, indicators may provide important feedback on how opioids are being used.

Building on regulatory changes implemented in 2020, such as smaller pack sizes when filling prescriptions from community pharmacies, these new standards come at a good time and will play an important role in ensuring opioids and other analgesic medicines are used appropriately and safely for short-term pain.

However, they don’t cover chronic pain, cancer pain, palliative care, or patients with opioid dependence.

It’s now up to clinicians to ensure they’re implemented, with patients given adequate pain relief and prescribed the lowest dose for the shortest time possible.

Read more:
Smaller pack sizes from today: could new opioid restrictions stop leftover medicines causing harm?

Ria Hopkins receives funding from the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council.

Natasa Gisev 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. Patients leaving hospital sometimes need opioids. Doctors can reduce risks of long-term use and dependence – https://theconversation.com/patients-leaving-hospital-sometimes-need-opioids-doctors-can-reduce-risks-of-long-term-use-and-dependence-181941

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Hawkins, Senior Lecturer, Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society and NATSEM, University of Canberra

Australian consumer prices jumped an extraordinary 2.1% in the first three months of the year, the biggest quarterly jump since the introduction of the 10% goods and services tax at the start of the century.

The outsized increase, together with a larger than normal increase in the months to December, pushed Australia’s annual inflation rate way above the Reserve Bank’s 2-3% target to 5.1% – the biggest annual inflation rate for two decades.

Petrol prices rose to a record high. The Bureau of Statistics says averaged unleaded petrol averaged A$1.83 per litre in the March quarter.

The annual increase, 35.1%, was the biggest since Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

New dwelling prices rose due to shortages of labour and materials, and fewer government grants. Fresh food prices have increased due to floods.

Home prices, sometimes erroneously thought to be excluded from the consumer price index, surged 13.7% over the year, the most since the start of the GST.

Read more:
What’s in the CPI and what does it actually measure?

The increase tracks the cost of buying a new dwelling by an owner occupier, and reflects what the Bureau describes as high levels of building activity combined with ongoing shortages of materials and labour.

While the cost of housing is included in the consumer price index, the cost of land is not, being treated as an investment rather than a consumer good.

To get a better idea of what would be happening were it not for these unusual and outsized moves, the Bureau of Statistics calculates what it calls a “trimmed mean” measure of underlying inflation.

The trimmed mean excludes the 15% of prices that climbed the most in the quarter and the 15% of prices that climbed the least or fell.

This underlying measure, closely watched by the Reserve Bank, climbed 3.7% – the first time it has climbed beyond the bank’s 2-3% target range since 2010.

Many people don’t believe the official inflation figures. They say they are too low (although interestingly this time, the 5.2% estimate in the Melbourne Institute’s April consumer survey matched reality).

In part this is because people tend to notice the prices that have jumped. Petrol prices are particularly visible. People tend not to notice the many other prices, including rents in some parts of Australia, that have been falling.

Read more:
As petrol prices rise, will carbon emissions come down?

And in part it is because movements in the consumer price index are an average.

The price of the bundle of goods and services used by around half the households would have gone up by more than 5.1%, and the price of the bundle used by the other half by less than 5.1%. The households facing the increases notice it more.

Over the past ten years the price of clothing has fallen 6%, and the price of communications services 23%. The price of health services has climbed 40%

Looking ahead, inflation is likely to drop in the June quarter. Oil prices are falling, and the budget petrol price relief will cut prices a further 22 cents a litre.

Some supply chain problems and skilled labour shortages caused by the pandemic are likely to ease. And the Australian dollar has climbed, which should push down the price of imports.

Read more:
Despite record vacancies, Australians shouldn’t expect big pay rises soon

Unless there is a significant pickup in wage growth (we find out in three weeks, three days before the election) inflation may start to come back down of its own accord, without the need for the Reserve Bank to push up rates.

But there are certainly alternative scenarios.

Over to the Reserve Bank

The response of the Reserve Bank to higher prices is not as automatic as often supposed. But with the RBA cash rate at an all-time low, and an increasing risk that the current inflation will become embedded in expectations, an increase in rates is a matter of “when” not “if”.

As Prime Minister John Howard and Treasurer Peter Costello discovered in the election they lost in 2007, the Reserve Bank won’t hold off on increasing interest rates just because an election is imminent.

Read more:
The RBA has lost patience on rates, but it isn’t rushing to push them up

Asked if the bank would tighten rates if the evidence suggested it needed to near an election, the then governor said: “of course we would, because we do our job”.

After its April meeting the bank said it would wait for information before moving.

over coming months, important additional evidence will be available on both inflation and the evolution of labour costs. Consistent with its announced framework, the board agreed that it would be appropriate to assess this evidence

The labour cost (wage) data are released on May 18, meaning the first increase in interest rates may well not be until after the election, at the board’s June 7 meeting. If the wages data show no acceleration, it might be later.

How high for mortgage interest rates?

The Reserve Bank generally tries to move the “cash rate” (the interest rate on overnight loans) in steps of 0.25 percentage points. But, unusually, the current target is 0.10%. So it might first move 15 points to 0.25%.

If it wants to send a stronger signal, it will move 40 points to 0.50%. Banks are generally not shy about passing these changes on.

If the Reserve Bank hikes more than once, mortgage interest rates might climb from their present range of 3-3.5% to 4-5% over the course of the year.

Read more:
There are 4 economic wildcards between now and election day. The first gets played this week

But the Reserve Bank will not push interest rates as high as it did during previous tightening cycles. Households have more debt, meaning that a rate increase of any given size has more impact than it once would have.

It’s hard to know where a series of rate rises would end, but it’s a fair bet the cash rate will end up higher than the Reserve Bank’s 2-3% inflation target, making the real interest rate positive (above inflation).

Banks are required to assure themselves that borrowers could meet repayments if rates rose by three percentage points, which is just as well.

Who will be hurt?

About a third of households have a mortgage, and face higher payments.

But it will take a while for all of them to be affected. Around 40% of borrowers have “fixed-rate” loans where the interest rate is only adjusted every three years.

And according to the Reserve Bank, typical borrowers are currently two years ahead on repayments, which suggests most will be able to cope.

John Hawkins is a former economic forecaster in the Reserve Bank and Australian Treasury.

– ref. Inflation hits an extraordinary 5.1%. How long until mortgage rates climb? – https://theconversation.com/inflation-hits-an-extraordinary-5-1-how-long-until-mortgage-rates-climb-181832

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

Elon Musk’s US$44 billion offer to buy Twitter and turn the social media platform into a private company is almost a done deal.

But not quite. While Twitter’s board has endorsed his offer, Musk now needs the nod from a majority of Twitter’s shareholders and US corporate regulators.

Before we get on to the details of these remaining hurdles, let’s recap the tumultuous events that got us to this point.

It became public in early April that Musk – an avid Twitter user – had acquired 9.2% of the company’s shares, making him the biggest shareholder. There were talks about him joining Twitter’s board, but Musk demurred.

About a week later, on April 14, Musk launched a full takeover bid, offering US$54.20 a share – about 38% more than the company’s share price on April 1.

Twitter’s board responded with a “poison pill” provision. This would allow other shareholders to buy new shares issued by the board at a discount if Musk acquired a 15% stake (more than 15% is considered a controlling stake). This would have diluted Musk’s stake, thwarting his takeover ambitions.

Read more:
Do poison pills work? A finance expert explains the anti-takeover tool that Twitter hopes will keep Elon Musk at bay

Musk responded to that by flagging a hostile takeover. This involved bypassing the board with a “tender offer” direct to shareholders, asking them to tender their shares for sale despite the board’s opposition.

With no competing bidder, and with no alternative plan to create value for shareholders, Twitter’s board this week finally accepted Musk’s bid of US$54.20 a share in cash.

Musk plans to finance the bid using equity and debt, according to his filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. He has secured about US$25.5 billion in loans. He has also raised his own equity, totalling around $21 billion, including through margin loans against Tesla stock.

How might regulators react?

The acquisition still requires regulatory and shareholder approval. While these are unlikely to sink the deal, they are not trivial.

There are two main regulatory approvals here. First the Securities and Exchange Commission – which is akin to a financial watchdog – must approve the takeover. Then the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice will consider if the takeover may reduce competition.

Musk has had negative interactions with the SEC in the past. In 2018 it charged him with fraud over him tweeting he had funding to take his electric vehicle company Tesla private. Musk ultimately settled, paying a US$20 million fine and stepping down as chair of the Tesla board. Some shareholders are suing him for losses suffered as a result of his tweet.

Musk’s conduct during his bid for Twitter could also influence regulators. There are questions about whether he disclosed his 9.2% holding in a timely enough manner. Ordinarily a shareholder should disclose their stake once they own 5% of a company. Musk appears to have acquired more than 5% of Twitter on March 11 2022 but filed with regulators on 4 April.

Further, Musk appears to have made a “short form” filing with the SEC, reserved for passive shareholders. His subsequent behaviour, however, suggests he is an activist investor.

Given Musk’s disclosure record, the SEC is likely to be be especially careful to ensure Twitter’s shareholders are properly informed. If it finds Musk violated any laws, it could impose penalties or require undertakings covering Musk’s role with Twitter after the acquisition. It is, however, unlikely to stop the deal.

The other US anti-trust and competition regulators are also likely to scrutinise the bid, given its high profile and bipartisan concerns about the power of Big Tech.

But it is also unlikely they would block Musk’s bid, because he has little other financial interest in tech companies to clearly suggest his takeover is anti-competitive.

How will other shareholders respond?

Shareholders must approve the deal via a shareholder vote, which is yet to be scheduled. If a majority approve the bid, then all shareholders must sell.

In making their vote, some shareholders might consider non-financial matters, such as their view of Musk and what – if anything – the acquisition means for free speech.

Read more:
Twitter: not even Elon Musk is wealthy enough to bring absolute free speech to the platform – here’s why

But for most price is the key.

Some shareholders have complained that Musk’s $54.20 bid is too low. Twitter briefly traded above US$70 in July 2021 – in line with the rise of tech stocks generally in 2021, but it fell steadily thereafter to US$32.42. In February 2022, Goldman Sachs valued Twitter shares US$30 over the next 12 months based on its most recent earnings.

Twitter’s share price

Twitter’s earnings have been variable and face continued pressure. While revenues have increased, Twitter is not profitable, owing partly to a litigation charge.

Other tech firms have signalled continued pressure to advertising revenue. For example, Google’s parent company, Alphabet, reported a decline in YouTube ad revenue in the first quarter of 2022, relative to the end of 2021.

Twitter’s earnings

These facts should influence how most shareholders vote. Musk’s US$54.20 bid price offers a solid takeover premium: 18% above the price before the takeover bid, 38% above the price on April 1, and about 50% above the price before Musk accrued shares on January 31 2022. This is on the upper end of takeover premiums reported by Boston Consulting Group.

So what now

So Musk is very likely to complete the acquisition for Twitter. Regulators may impose conditions but are unlikely to block the deal.

The big questions now are how Musk will enable “free speech” without turning Twitter into a cesspool, how he will deal with censorious countries in which his other companies (Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink and others) do business, and if he will make money from Twitter.

But these headaches will be Musk’s alone, not the former shareholders.

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

– ref. Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover isn’t quite a done deal: what happens now – https://theconversation.com/elon-musks-twitter-takeover-isnt-quite-a-done-deal-what-happens-now-181955

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Collins, Laureate Professor in Nutrition and Dietetics, University of Newcastle

Results of a new weight loss study were published this week, leading to headlines proclaiming intermittent fasting “isn’t a magic diet trick after all”.

The researchers aimed to test whether adding a restriction on what time of day you were allowed to eat (or not) to the usual low calorie (or kilojoule) diet led to greater weight loss compared to just following a low calorie diet. They recruited 139 adults whose average weight was 88 kilograms and age 32 years.

The participants were randomised to follow either the low calorie diet that had reduced their usual daily energy intake by 25%, or the same low calorie diet with the addition of a time period during which they were allowed to eat in an eight-hour window between 8am and 4pm each day.

This approach is called “time-restricted eating” or a “16-hour intermittent fast”. Both groups received support from health coaches to follow their diets for 12 months.

Results showed that after one year, people in both groups lost 7-10% of their baseline body weight. While the low calorie group lost an average of 6.3 kilograms, the low calorie plus time restricted eating group lost 8 kilograms. Although there was a 1.8 kilogram difference between the groups, it was not a statistically significant difference.

Participants in both groups also had better blood sugar and blood fat levels and improved insulin sensitivity, but again there was no significant differences between groups.

Read more:
What are ‘fasting’ diets and do they help you lose weight?

There are four reasons this weight loss trial is important.

1. It wasn’t based in the US

Most intermittent fasting studies have been conducted in the United States. This trial was done in China and recruited people in Guangzhou, so it provides important data using a culturally sensitive, prescribed calorie restriction over 12 months.

2. It showed small extra time restrictions on eating don’t make much difference

In their normal lives, the participants in Guangzhou had a usual window for daily eating of about 10.5 hours. Studies in other populations, particularly the US, show about 90% of adults have an eating window of 12 hours, with only 10% of adults having an overnight fasting period greater than 12 hours.

For more than 50% of people in countries like the US, the overnight fast is less than nine hours, meaning they eat over a 15 hour time period each day. So in the current study, the time restriction on eating was only minor – at about two hours less per day than what’s usual for people in China. This would not have been too big a difference from usual.

The researchers also reported that in China, the biggest meal is usually eaten in the middle of the day, so that was not influenced by the time restriction. In countries where the evening meal is the biggest or people snack all evening, then time restriction may still be a beneficial way to reduce intake.

A 2020 review of 19 studies that used time-restricted intermittent fasting found it was an effective treatment for adults with obesity, leading to greater loss of body weight and body fat, with significantly lower systolic blood pressure and blood glucose.

3. It showed support is imperative

Both groups in this trial were given a lot of support to adhere to the kilojoule-restricted diet. They were provided with one meal replacement shake per day for the
first six months, to make it easier to follow the kilojoule restriction and help improve adherence to the diet.

They also received dietary counselling from trained health coaches for the 12 months of the trial. They received dietary information booklets that included advice on portion size and sample menus. They were encouraged to weigh foods to improve their accuracy in reporting kilojoule intakes and were required to keep a daily log with photographs of foods eaten and the time, using the study app.

They also received follow-up calls or app messages twice a week and met with the health coach individually every two weeks for the first six months. In the second six months, they continued to fill out their dietary records for three days per week and received weekly follow-up telephone calls and app messages and met with a health coach monthly. They also attended monthly health-education sessions.

This was a lot of support and is very important. Receiving long-term support to achieve health behaviour changes typically achieves a weight loss of 3–5% of body weight, which significantly lowers risk of weight-related health conditions, including a 50% lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes over eight years.

4. Even with good adherence, individual weight loss varies

Individual weight loss responses were very variable, even though adherence was high in this trial.

About 84% of participants adhered to the prescribed daily calorie targets and time restricted eating period. Weight loss at 12 months varied from 7.8 to 4.7 kilograms in the low calorie only group, and 9.6 to 6.4 kilograms in the low calorie plus time-restricted eating group.

As we have seen many times previously, this study confirms there is no one best diet for weight loss. It also shows small decreases in the window of time you’re eating probably won’t make a difference to weight loss.

Read more:
Health Check: what’s the best diet for weight loss?

Clare Collins is a Laureate Professor in Nutrition and Dietetics at the University of Newcastle, NSW and a Hunter Medical Research Institute (HMRI) affiliated researcher. She is a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Leadership Fellow and has received research grants from NHMRC, ARC, MRFF, HMRI, Diabetes Australia, Heart Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, nib foundation, Rijk Zwaan Australia, WA Dept. Health, Meat and Livestock Australia, and Greater Charitable Foundation. She has consulted to SHINE Australia, Novo Nordisk, Quality Bakers, the Sax Institute, Dietitians Australia and the ABC. She was a team member conducting systematic reviews to inform the 2013 Australian Dietary Guidelines update and the Heart Foundation evidence reviews on meat and dietary patterns.

– ref. Restricting calories leads to weight loss, not necessarily the window of time you eat them in – https://theconversation.com/restricting-calories-leads-to-weight-loss-not-necessarily-the-window-of-time-you-eat-them-in-181942

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vanessa Teague, Adjunct associate professor (ANU) and CEO, Thinking Cybersecurity, Australian National University

As we head towards the federal election, you may be wondering why we can’t skip the polling booth queues and vote online instead.

The reason is the difficulty of verifying that each person’s vote is accurately recorded and tallied. As yet, there is no safe way to ensure this over the internet.

But there are ways technology can improve the election – if we are careful. Recent legislative changes will help make this year’s electronic Senate count more secure and transparent.

House of Representatives voting

Think for a minute about how Australian election results earn public trust. House of Representatives ballots are cast on paper, voters put their own ballot into a ballot box, they are then manually counted and scrutineers are entitled to watch every aspect of the process.

Except for some requirements to trust the postal service (for postal votes) and a phone-based remote voting service (for the small minority unable to vote by post) the entire process can be independently verified.

We don’t know how to replicate this transparent, verifiable process in a paperless way over the internet.

What’s the problem with online voting?

Australia has no secure or universal way of verifying a citizen’s identity online, so online voting incurs a risk of allowing ineligible people to vote, perhaps a very large number of times.

Another key problem is enabling voters to verify the electronic vote they sent is the one they wanted.

Unlike a postal ballot paper, an electronic vote cannot be directly verified. Malware, or a bug, on the voting device might change the vote without the voter’s knowledge.

Read more:
As the election campaign begins, what do the polls say, and can we trust them this time?

Some countries have tried to address this, but issues remain.

In Estonia, voters can use an independent device to redo the vote encryption and check it matches what they asked for. This method has some good security properties, but introduces problems around coercion and vote-buying.

In Switzerland, voters receive a code sheet in the mail and use the codes to check their vote was properly received. In 2019 colleagues and I discovered some subtle flaws in this process, and in the later stages of the SwissPost verification process. These could allow a malicious attacker to alter votes while making it appear that verification had passed.

Online voting in Australia

New South Wales used an online voting option called iVote for its local government elections in 2021.

Although originally justified as a necessity for special classes of voters, by 2021 iVote eligibility had expanded to include anyone who said they would be outside their local government area on election day. More than 600,000 votes, including one third of votes for the Sydney City Council, were received over this system.

The system suffered outages under this load – the NSW Electoral Commission estimated 10,000 or more people couldn’t cast a vote. This estimate is probably conservative, but nobody knows for sure how many people were disenfranchised. The NSW Supreme Court determined in February that three council election outcomes should be voided and re-run.

Analysis by mathematical scientist Dr Andrew Conway and myself shows for 36 additional councils, the number of people acknowledged by the NSW Electoral Commission to have been excluded was enough to have possibly changed the outcome.

The systems used for local elections elsewhere in Australia may be even worse. The ACT allowed some overseas voters to vote online in the 2021 election for the ACT Assembly. A February 2022 report on that system by Australian National University computing lecturer Thomas Haines found it didn’t use end-to-end encryption to protect the privacy of the votes and didn’t use any sound cryptographic method to protect them from being modified when they passed through an internet-facing server. Nor does it appear to have any method of allowing voters to verify their votes are cast as they intended.

This is why it’s a good thing internet voting isn’t permitted for federal elections in Australia. And it’s important to remember it’s the verification issues, more than reliability failures, that are the problem.

Senate vote counting

Senate ballots are cast on paper and then scanned and digitised in a hybrid human and automated process. First preference votes for the Senate are manually tallied. But the rest of the Senate count is conducted electronically.

The electronic preferences are published online, so the counting step can be independently checked using any open source Senate counting software.

The hard part is ensuring the published preferences are accurate representations of the ballot. Until recently, there was no careful way to assess this. If a software error or security problem caused a divergence between the paper ballots and the scanned images, or between the scanned images and the final preferences, it might not have been detectable even by the Australian Electoral Commission, let alone scrutineers.

New laws, which passed parliament in December 2021, represent a tremendous improvement. They mandate a statistical audit of the ballot papers to verify they’re accurately reflected in the digital preferences.

Read more:
#SetTheAgenda: What The Conversation’s readers want politicians to address this federal election

By law, the electoral commission must publish their audit methodology in advance, which should be soon. We need to see a clear, rigorous procedure for randomly choosing ballot papers and comparing them to their digitised preferences, in the presence of scrutineers. Observers also need to be able to check the pencil marks on the ballot paper have been accurately digitised.

This will provide a complete evidence trail all the way from the ballot papers to the election outcome.

Earning and maintaining public trust

We don’t know how to run trustworthy elections over the internet, but we can use technology to improve some electoral processes, without sacrificing the public evidence trail that is absolutely central to earning public trust in the results.

It is tempting but wrong to emphasise secrecy rather than transparency, to hide problems rather than exposing them to public scrutiny. The new Senate bill bucks this trend.

Auditing the Senate ballot papers is hard work and it’s not fashionable or convenient, but it will make a huge difference to the security of Australian elections.

Vanessa Teague is consults for the Swiss Federal Chancellery for examination of their Internet voting system through their Expert Dialogue. She is a member of the advisory board of Verified Voting, a US nonprofit dedicated to improving the integrity of US elections. She is the chairperson of Australian not-for-profit Democracy Developers Ltd, which has received a research grant from Microsoft.

– ref. Australia doesn’t have online voting for federal elections and we should keep it that way – https://theconversation.com/australia-doesnt-have-online-voting-for-federal-elections-and-we-should-keep-it-that-way-180865

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hamish John Wilson, Associate Professor in General Practice, University of Otago

The COVID pandemic has highlighted several interesting features of modern medical practice – most recently the “nocebo” response, which may account for a significant number of side effects people experience following vaccination.

Nocebo responses (from Latin noci: to harm) are the opposite of the better known placebo. While the latter describes improvements in symptoms following inert medication, the nocebo response heightens symptoms if a person anticipates them. It can increase pain if someone expects something will hurt.

A fascinating meta-analysis examined data from 12 clinical trials of COVID vaccines, involving over 45,000 participants, and found about two-thirds of common side effects people experience after vaccination could be due to a nocebo response, rather than the vaccine itself.

Nocebo responses can be troublesome and significant. They include headaches, fatigue, muscle pains, nausea or diarrhoea. Such symptoms may be related to anxiety or negative expectations, or day-to-day sensations being incorrectly attributed to a treatment.

While previous analysis in other fields had already confirmed the presence of nocebo responses in randomised trials, COVID vaccine research dramatically highlights its frequency.

The latest study found up to 35% of patients in the placebo arm of vaccine trials had adverse events such as headaches and fatigue. Mathematical analysis showed 50-75% of patient symptoms after the real vaccination (not placebo) may have been caused by those nocebo responses.

Read more:
It’s still not fully understood how placebos work – but an alternative theory of consciousness could hold some clues

A different group of researchers from Italy reviewed other COVID vaccine trials and confirmed these conclusions. These findings are potentially significant, as vaccine hesitancy and refusal have been linked to patient concerns about side effects or major adverse events. Knowing how frequently self-limiting nocebo responses happen may reduce vaccine hesitancy.

The ‘meaning response’

Together, the placebo and nocebo effects are better understood as two aspects of what medical practitioners call a “meaning response”. Both occur in relation to the importance and meaning patients place on their illness, their relationship with their healthcare providers, and their thoughts and beliefs about proposed treatments.

Nocebo responses are now being recognised as potentially important contributors to patient outcomes. For example, if a doctor or nurse give pessimistic or negative information about pain, various studies have demonstrated the patient’s pain can worsen, regardless of the degree of tissue damage.

Not feeling validated or respected by the doctor may also inhibit the efficacy of medications and increase side effects.

Previous research in New Zealand has also illustrated how negative media coverage may increase patients’ experiences of adverse events after compulsory changes to their medication regimes. For example, brand switches of thyroxine in 2007 and of an antidepressant in 2018 were followed by increased reporting of side effects and adverse events.

Acknowledging and publicising the potential contribution of nocebo responses may be useful for further generic substitutions.

Implications for COVID vaccinations

Vaccinators need to avoid inadvertently contributing to nocebo responses when advising their patients. They could use positive framing about the very low risk of serious adverse events. They could also briefly explain that nocebo responses are common and self-limiting.

However, my own experience as a patient receiving three COVID vaccinations was disconcerting. No one in the various vaccinating teams said anything positive about the vaccine or its efficacy in preventing me or my family from catching the virus, or reducing the severity of the illness if we did.

And just after receiving the third injection, I was further disquieted by warnings about chest pain and reminders I should seek immediate medical attention if I experienced any. This extra information on heart problems as a potential adverse event followed recent concerns about rare cases of myocarditis after vaccination.

Read more:
Coronavirus: could reading about the pandemic cause harm?

All the vaccinating staff were conscientious and kind, but it seemed odd they hadn’t been instructed to discuss the benefits of vaccination. It might have been a useful approach to country-wide vaccine hesitancy.

While well intended, it is possible their emphasis on serious side effects from the vaccine may increase the incidence of nocebo responses in a population already primed for them. This could mean more patients will present to their doctors or emergency departments with symptoms unrelated to the vaccine itself.

How to improve awareness

Anecdotally, advice from vaccinators appears to be quite variable. It may be helpful if they incorporated an understanding of potential placebo and nocebo responses into their vaccination advice to each patient.

Health authorities and health professionals need to understand meaning responses and their role in clinical practice. Incorporating those insights into healthcare communication may prevent unnecessary patient anxiety, worrisome symptoms and considerable healthcare expenditure.

Read more:
Vaccine resistance has its roots in negative childhood experiences, a major study finds

Respecting autonomy means patients need to be asked if they want to receive information about side effects or adverse events. The juggle is how to inform patients about the very low risk of serious harm while not increasing their apprehension.

Pandemic research is now also exploring potential parallels between long COVID and other chronic conditions such as Myalgic Encephalitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome as well as tentative associations between adverse childhood experiences and vaccine hesitancy.

Without intending to minimise the pandemic’s devastating impact, it is providing us with useful insights into wider current medical and sociological issues.

Hamish John Wilson 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. Anticipating a side effect makes it more likely you’ll experience it – this could contribute to vaccine hesitancy – https://theconversation.com/anticipating-a-side-effect-makes-it-more-likely-youll-experience-it-this-could-contribute-to-vaccine-hesitancy-180331

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Benjamin Clark, Deputy Engagement Editor, The Conversation

Former independent federal MP Cathy McGowan has hit back at John Howard’s description of independent candidates as “anti-Liberal groupies”.

In this Below the Line exclusive, McGowan says the former Prime Minister’s use of the term was clearly meant to be derogatory. “I suspect someone has given it to him,” she said. “It doesn’t bring to mind the calibre of the people who are standing. If he is trying to talk to people in the leafy suburbs of Melbourne and Sydney, and calling those candidates groupies, then he has missed the mark totally.”

McGowan argues that independents cannot be put into just one category. While some are high-profile, have branded themselves with the colour teal and receive funding from the Climate200 group to promote action on climate change, “there are orange and pink and yellow and other colours as well… There are at least 25
community independents running and you could not group them together.”

McGowan, who defied the odds and won the traditional Liberal seat of Indi (previously held by Liberal Sophie Mirabella), predicted as many as ten independents could get over the line on polling day. “There is an incredible sense across the country of disillusionment with the government, and people are desperate to send a message to both parties that they are not doing well enough, and the independents are putting their hand up as a very viable alternative,” she said.

If McGowan’s prediction came true, independents would likely hold the balance of power in the lower house, forcing a minority government. Below the Line’s Anika Gauja says working with such a large crossbench would be “unprecedented in Australian federal politics”. And if the independents do poll well, Simon Jackman explains it may make counting the vote complicated on election night, possibly slowing down the final result.

Our expert panel also discuss Defence Minister Peter Dutton’s recent comment that “the only way you can preserve peace is to prepare for war”, the record number of female candidates this election (39%, up from 32% last time around), and large numbers of young people enrolling to vote at the last minute.

Below the Line is a twice-weekly election podcast hosted by award-winning broadcaster Jon Faine and brought to you by The Conversation and La Trobe University.

Image credit: Diego Fedele/AAP

Disclosure: Simon Jackman is an unpaid consultant on polling data for the Climate 200 network of independent candidates.

– ref. Below the Line: former independent Cathy McGowan hits back at John Howard’s ‘anti-Liberal groupies’ jibe – podcast – https://theconversation.com/below-the-line-former-independent-cathy-mcgowan-hits-back-at-john-howards-anti-liberal-groupies-jibe-podcast-182038

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Caldicott, Senior lecturer, Australian National University

Days out from the event, festival goers for Canberra’s Groovin the Moo festival were told the event would no longer be offering a free drug checking service after Pill Testing Australia, which provides the testing service, had public liability insurance withdrawn, without explanation from insurers.

Pill testing in the Australian Capital Territory was hard fought and won, and this represents a setback for an intervention that can reduce the harms of drug consumption.

A history of pill testing in Australia

In Australia, the ACT has been ahead of other states in applying innovative drug policies. In 2018, it gave permission for Australia’s first trial of pill testing at a music festival. Pill testing, or “drug checking” as it’s often called internationally, is a harm reduction intervention with clear benefits.

Read more:
Six reasons Australia should pilot ‘pill testing’ party drugs

Acknowledging a “drug-free” Australia is magical thinking, and that some people will always use drugs, pill testing provides consumers with information about the actual content of their chosen substance, so they might make better decisions about consumption. It also gives us access to an otherwise invisible group of “functional” drug consumers.

Advocates have been working to have pill testing made legal in Australia since the early 2000s. And while there was apprehension in the ACT in 2018, it was deemed a huge success at its first trial there.

Colleagues in other states have followed progress in the ACT with interest, but several proposals have stumbled as a consequence of political or ideological objections by conservative elements.

Pill testing reduces drug harms

Since 2002, several studies have clearly shown pill testing has never been associated with increased drug use, or drug-related harm – no matter how much opponents of pill testing would have you believe.

Work conducted by colleagues from the ANU shows quite clearly a deep trust by those using the service and in broader health services providing services to drug users.

Read more:
Here’s why doctors are backing pill testing at music festivals across Australia

Research increasingly confirms pill testing does influence the behaviour of people who use drugs, especially when pill testing results show unexpected results, or drugs of concern. From our own work in Canberra, we have also found consumers spaced out doses, reduced doses, or even disposed of their drugs, following conversations with those providing the service.

These general findings have been corroborated by several coronial inquests in Australia into music festival deaths and a special inquiry commissioned by the New South Wales government.

Both recommended, independently, further trials of pill testing in those jurisdictions, as have subsequent coronial inquiries in Victoria. The Australian Medical Association also officially supports calls for medically supervised, ethically approved pill testing.

Read more:
While law makers squabble over pill testing, people should test their drugs at home

Such has been the success of the festival-based testing in Canberra, a fixed site is now on the cusp of opening, ensuring a service that functioned only at music festivals, and for the demographic groups that attend them, can now be extended to benefit a broader group of consumers over a longer period of time.

There is no research comparing festivals that did or did not deploy pill testing – it would be quite the design challenge to try to conduct controlled experiments in the chaos of a music festival. But we can follow the behaviours of those who participate in the pill testing process, and when we do, most early indications suggest those who use drugs change their behaviour in such a way as to be less likely to result in harm.

What has to happen to ensure pill testing goes ahead?

In this recent instance, the issue was not with government, but with private insurers. We cannot say what made them pull out, but the fact a private entity determined the course of public health policy is a disappointment and should not be allowed to happen again. Given the manner and timing in which this was done, it suggests the prevention of pill testing was the intended outcome.

Governments could address this by requiring insurers to provide the actuarial basis for any decisions they make about insurance. They might also consider their insurance options when choosing insurance providers, selecting those prepared to support evidence-based health care.

Read more:
More Australians back legalising cannabis and 57% support pill testing, national survey shows

Pill testing, now established in the ACT, is not going away. It is only a matter of time before other jurisdictions find a way to introduce their own systems in their own way.

Insurers should be trying to win customers with ethical and evidence-based policies. Harm reduction is insurance, not just for people who use or who have used drugs, but also for people who love the people who use drugs. Between those two groups, that represents a lot of Australians – all of them who have choices as to where to source their insurance products.

Dr David Caldicott is the clinical lead for Pill Testing Australia.

– ref. Pill testing really does reduce the risk of harm for drug users – https://theconversation.com/pill-testing-really-does-reduce-the-risk-of-harm-for-drug-users-181778

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Shortis, Lecturer, RMIT University

This is part of a foreign policy election series looking at how Australia’s relations with the world have changed since the Morrison government came into power in 2019. You can read the other pieces here and here.

It feels like a lifetime ago now former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull had a very tense conversation with the recently inaugurated Donald Trump.

Aside from some carefully worded diplomatic statements, however, the alliance under Joe Biden and Scott Morrison remains the central pillar of Australian foreign policy.

Its strength was demonstrated by the trilateral AUKUS pact between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States last year.

But the future of this historic security partnership remains uncertain.

What impact will elections, climate policy, and tumultuous relations with China have on Australia’s alliance with the United States?

Read more:
View from The Hill: For Morrison AUKUS is all about the deal, never mind the niceties

Broad bipartisanship

From mid-2018, the Morrison government has pursued a closer relationship with the US.

In the Trump years, Morrison was one of just two world leaders invited to a White House state dinner – and arguably the only one who did not later regret it.

Most recently, the Morrison government affirmed Australia’s long-standing security ties to the US through the AUKUS agreement, which represents the most significant development in the alliance since the foundational ANZUS Treaty in 1951.

Yet the Morrison government was also criticised for pursuing a close relationship with Trump. Opposition leader Anthony Albanese echoed arguments the government’s focus on Trump left Australia exposed after his 2020 election loss to Biden.

Nevertheless, former US ambassador to Japan and incoming US Ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy praised Australia for its bipartisan commitment to the alliance in a US Senate confirmation hearing earlier this month.

Read more:
Avoiding the China trap: how Australia and the US can remain close despite the threat

Kennedy’s comments reflect a desire to keep the alliance above the fray of domestic politics. This is understood as especially crucial in what Morrison called the world’s “most difficult and dangerous security environment in 80 years”.

The Biden administration has proved willing to indulge the Morrison government on climate partly because of Australia’s ongoing loyalty.

Biden can expect this to continue no matter which party wins the May election.

This broad bipartisanship does not mean, however, that there wouldn’t be important differences between an Albanese and a Morrison government.

The alliance under a second Morrison government

Should Morrison win the election, we can expect Australia’s alliance with the United States to remain largely the same.

The current government is clearly aware of the Indo-Pacific’s strategic importance to the alliance. But its actions and rhetoric suggest an almost singular focus on China; it appears to consider the Pacific a diplomatic afterthought.

A second Morrison government would likely uphold the alliance as the bulwark against the so-called “arc of autocracy” represented by Russia and China.

This would see Australia continue to pursue a reactive foreign policy at the expense of strengthening its own diplomatic capabilities.

And looking closely, the primacy of the security relationship obscures deep ideological differences. While the security relationship will hold sway, Morrison has been seemingly dismissive of Biden’s politics.

Read more:
Why pushing for an economic ‘alliance’ with the US to counter Chinese coercion would be a mistake

The alliance under an Albanese government

Should the Labor Party win the May election, opposition leader Anthony Albanese has affirmed its commitment to a robust US-Australia alliance.

Labor’s endorsement of the AUKUS agreement reflects the party’s prioritisation of Australia’s national security and its commitment to deepening the alliance.

More broadly, Labor’s foreign affairs spokeswoman Penny Wong has outlined a foreign policy agenda directing resources to reinforce Australia’s independent diplomatic presence. Wong has argued this is crucial for countering China’s influence in the Pacific and “maximising” Australia’s influence.

And Albanese has explicitly linked Australia’s national security to its “environmental security”.

Unlike the Morrison government, it seems Labor intends to foreground climate action in its alliance with the United States.

An unpredictable future

Whichever party wins the May election will only have six months until the American mid-term elections in November.

Nothing is inevitable, but a historically consistent result would see the Democrats lose their congressional majority.

The impact on the security alliance would be negligible. However, this would likely see Australia engage with a US administration less able to pursue its own political agenda – particularly on climate action.

This development would likely be welcomed by a second Morrison government, while it would strike a blow to Labor’s more ambitious foreign policy goals.

Perhaps of even greater consequence, about two-thirds of the way through the next government’s term, the world will be faced with another US presidential election and the potential return – through legitimate process or otherwise – of Trump.

It’s not clear if either party, or the rest of the world, has a plan for that.

Emma Shortis’ research draws on projects funded by Jean Monnet Awards from the European Union’s Erasmus Plus program.

– ref. A brief history of the US-Australia alliance – and how it might change after the May election – https://theconversation.com/a-brief-history-of-the-us-australia-alliance-and-how-it-might-change-after-the-may-election-179377

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Hawkins, Senior Lecturer, Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society and NATSEM, University of Canberra

In a surprise capitulation, the board of Twitter has announced it will support a takeover bid by Elon Musk, the world’s richest person. But is it in the public interest?

Musk is offering US$54.20 a share. This values the company at US$44 billion (or A$61 billion) – making it one of the largest leveraged buyouts on record.

Morgan Stanley and other large financial institutions will lend him US$25.5 billion. Musk himself will put in around US$20 billion. This is about the size of a single bonus he is expected to receive from Tesla.

In a letter to the chair of Twitter, Musk claimed he would “unlock” Twitter’s “extraordinary potential” to be “the platform for free speech around the globe”.

But the idea that social media has the potential to represent an unbridled mode of public discourse is underpinned by an idealistic understanding that has surrounded social media technologies for some time.

In reality, Twitter being owned by one person, some of whose own tweets have been false, sexist, market-moving and arguably defamatory poses a risk to the platform’s future.

Can Twitter expect a total overhaul?

We see Musk’s latest move in a less-than-benign light, as it gives him unprecedented power and influence over Twitter. He has mused about making several potential changes to the platform, including:

• reshuffling the current management, in which he says he doesn’t have confidence
• adding an edit button on tweets
• weakening the current content moderation approach – including through supporting temporary suspensions on users rather than outright bans, and
• potentially moving to a “freemium” model similar to Spotify’s, whereby users can pay to avoid more intrusive advertisements.

Read more:
Why an edit button for Twitter is not as simple as it seems

Shortly after becoming Twitter’s largest individual shareholder earlier this month, Musk said “I don’t care about the economics at all”.

But the bankers who lent him US$25.5 billion to eventually acquire the platform probably do. Musk may come under pressure to lift Twitter’s profitability. He claims his top priority is free speech – but potential advertisers may not want their products featured next to an extremist rant.

In recent years, Twitter has implemented a range of governance and content moderation policies. For example, in 2020 it broadened its “definition of harm” to address COVID-19 content contradicting guidance from authoritative sources.

Twitter claims developments in its content moderation approach have been to “serve the public conversation” and address disinformation and misinformation. It also claims to respond to user experiences of abuse and general incivility users must navigate.

Taking a longer-term view, however, it seems Twitter’s bolstering of content moderation could be seen as an effort to save its reputation following extensive backlash.

Read more:
Instead of showing leadership, Twitter pays lip service to the dangers of deep fakes

Musk’s ‘town square’ idea doesn’t hold up

Regardless of Twitter’s motivations Musk has openly challenged the growing number of moderation tools employed by the platform.

He has even labelled Twitter a “de facto public square”. This statement appears naïve at best. As communications scholar and Microsoft researcher Tarleton Gillespie argues, the notion that social media platforms can operate as truly open spaces is fantasy, given how platforms must moderate content while also disavowing this process.

Gillespie goes on to suggest platforms are obliged to moderate, to protect users from their antagonists, to remove offensive, vile, or illegal content and to ensure they can present their best face to new users, advertisers, partners, and the public more generally. He says the critical challenge then “is exactly when, how, and why to intervene”.

Platforms such as Twitter can’t represent “town squares” – especially as, in Twitter’s case, only a small proportion of the town is using the service.

Public squares are implicitly and explicitly regulated through social behaviours associated with relations in public, backed by the capacity to defer to an authority to restore public order should disorder arise. In the case of a private business, which Twitter now is, the final say will largely default to Musk.

Even if Musk were to implement his own town square ideal, it would presumably be a particularly free-wheeling version.

Providing users with more leeway in what they can say might contribute to increased polarity and further coarsen discourse on the platform. But this would again discourage advertisers – which would be an issue under Twitter’s current economic model (wherein 90% of revenue comes from advertising).

Free speech (but for all?)

Twitter is considerably smaller than other major social media networks. However, research has found it does have a disproportionate influence as tweets can proliferate with speed and virality, spilling over to traditional media.

The viewpoints users are exposed to are determined by algorithms geared towards maximising exposure and clicks, rather than enriching users’ lives with thoughtful or interesting points of view.

Musk has suggested he may make Twitter’s algorithms open source. This would be a welcome increase in transparency. But once Twitter becomes a private company, how transparent it is about operations will largely be up to Musk’s sole discretion.

Ironically, Musk has accused Meta (previously Facebook) CEO Mark Zuckerberg of having too much control over public debate.

Yet Musk himself has a history of trying to stifle his critics’ points of view. There’s little to suggest his actions are truly to create an open and inclusive town square through Twitter — and less yet to suggest it will be in the public interest.

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. What will Elon Musk’s ownership of Twitter mean for ‘free speech’ on the platform? – https://theconversation.com/what-will-elon-musks-ownership-of-twitter-mean-for-free-speech-on-the-platform-181626

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tristan Kennedy, Associate professor, Macquarie University

Content warning: This article contains mentions of racial discrimination against First Nations people.

Comments pages on social media too often constitute an echo-chamber for racist rhetoric being peddled by a combination of the misinformed and the malicious.

It seems Australians have, in recent times, recognised racism as a serious problem in this country. Nowhere is the discussion about racism in this country more visible than on social media.

Mainstream media outlets have embraced social media as an avenue to publish regular articles about Indigenous peoples and racism. These posts regularly elicit comments that are misinformed, malicious, and aimed at delegitimising Indigenous peoples’ culture and identity.

Such misinformation needs to be eradicated if the conversations about Australia coming to terms with its past is going to move forward.

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

‘Don’t read the comments’

Indigenous peoples are quite vocal about avoiding the quagmire of negativity in online comments pages. Racist tropes get dug up, recycled, and levelled at Indigenous peoples. This is often done in order to silence Indigenous voices and call into question Indigenous identity.

This is not new. In 2018 Professor Bronwyn Carlson and Dr Ryan Frazer found

Some respondents reported being questioned over whether they were “really Indigenous”, with critics drawing on stereotypical ideas — particularly about skin colour.

Challenging Indigenous identity based on skin colour is a well-known racist strategy.

In other cases, online comments resemble what is called “sealioning” which, according to journalist Chris Stokel Walker,

is the process of killing with dogged kindness and manufactured ignorance by asking questions, then turning on the victim in an instant.

One example of this is found in research into Indigenous peoples and social media. In this research, one participant recalled a post they had seen recently:

[…] there was one commenter just said “I’m confused”, obviously pointing out that how is this person Aboriginal when they’ve got such white skin.

Feigning confusion is a common strategy deployed to call into question Indigenous identity. The alleged confusion is often based on colonial ideas that Indigenous culture is ancient, uncivilised, and incompatible with modern Australia.
The aim: to silence Indigenous voices by delegitimising Indigenous peoples’ connection to community, culture, and identity.

Mainstream media on social media

On April 7 this year, NITV published on Facebook the story of AFL player Eddie Betts’ reflection on his decision not to speak up about the racism he faced early in his AFL career for fear of the retribution.

One of my research participants noted, articles about racism in Australia “only serve to just basically invite hundreds more comments of horrible racist rhetoric”. The publication of Betts’ story was no exception.

One commenter echoed the worn-out trope of Indigenous identity being legitimate only when it is considered “traditional”.

They never do the “traditional” thing where their [sic] was no concept of personal property within the clan […] otherwise they wouldn’t have their mansions, flash cars.

The sentiment here is that the only acceptable Indigenous identity is one which rejects technology, money, or anything considered “modern”.

Read more:
Media inclusion of Indigenous peoples is increasing but there is still room for improvement

What can moderators do?

Social media platforms are interested in stamping out negative content on their platforms. In February 2021 many of the industry’s largest players signed up to a Code of Practice on Disinformation and Misinformation.

Also in 2021, Facebook announced a new admin tool for moderators to “nurture community culture”. This admin tool, powered by artificial intelligence, would alert admins to situations in the comments pages threatening to escalate to a breach of community standards.

Combating the specific types of racist rhetoric faced by Indigenous peoples however, presents unique challenges. Sealioning and feigned confusion sidesteps artificial intelligence as well as non-indigenous peoples’ familiarity with harmful content. The comments typically don’t always include key racist terms and slurs, rather they can appear as confusion and lines of often excessive questioning.

The damage done by the persistence of subtle racism, sealioning and challenges to Indigenous identity in comments sections remains difficult to measure.

What can be done?

Indigenous peoples identify social media as a site for collaboration and connection. Deliberately racist lines of questioning are identified by Indigenous peoples and allies and quickly challenged. In some cases, the responses to racist comments demonstrate some Indigenous peoples’ willingness to educate.

Yet, systems need to be in place to better monitor these interactions, because these interactions often deteriorate into even more violent and racist altercations. However, allies calling out racist trolls could contribute to setting a standard of conversational etiquette and better facilitate meaningful discussions.

One research participant told me:

I think that people’s comments have a lot to do with just not being educated on the real truth of what has happened to all of our peoples.

As more people call out misinformed and malicious commentary, more will begin to understand the complexity of identifying as Indigenous online.

This will help inspire honest conversation about Australia’s past and what it means to be Indigenous.

Tristan Kennedy received funding from Facebook for part of this research.

– ref. ‘Don’t read the comments’: misinformed and malicious comments stifle Indigenous voices – https://theconversation.com/dont-read-the-comments-misinformed-and-malicious-comments-stifle-indigenous-voices-180576

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Walker, Vice-chancellor’s fellow, La Trobe University

Elections held in the shadow of war or overarching national security concerns tend to favour incumbents.

In the three elections since the second world war that have been directly affected by security worries, incumbent governments have prevailed.

In 1951, Robert Menzies fought an election on his determination to ban the Communist party. This was an effort to wedge the Labor party on divisions within its own ranks between a Soviet Union-sympathetic left and an anti-communist right.

Menzies’ election speech of April 28, 1951, delivered in his own electorate of Kooyong, makes interesting reading in light of debates now about surging Chinese influence in the region. He said:

I need not tell you that every way the Communists are delighted with the Labor Opposition.

This speech was delivered against the backdrop of the Korean war, in which Mao Zedong’s forces fought on the side of North Korea and against Australian soldiers defending the south.

Menzies’ Coalition went on to win the election against Ben Chifley’s Labor Party. While the Coalition lost five seats, it was a status quo result in the 121-member House of Representatives, with the Liberal and Country parties maintaining a comfortable majority 69-52. Labor lost control of the Senate.

Menzies subsequently failed to ban the Communist Party at a referendum.

In 1966, Harold Holt, as newly-anointed leader of the Liberal Party and prime minister, won a landslide victory against Arthur Calwell’s Labor largely on the issue of Australia’s commitment to Vietnam.

This was a popular cause at a time of significant community concern about communist influence in the region accompanied by the spectre of dominos falling towards Australia.

Calwell, who had given one of the great parliamentary speeches in 1965 in which he opposed Australia’s commitment to Vietnam, presided over a catastrophic loss for Labor. It was reduced to 41 seats in the 124-member House of Representatives against the Coalition’s 82, with one independent.

Read more:
Issues that swung elections: Labor’s anti-war message falls flat in landslide loss in 1966

In the third example of incumbency proving to be an important element in an election victory, John Howard in 2001 parlayed anxiety about boat arrivals and a terrorist attack on American soil to propel him to victory.

The Coalition had been faltering in the polls.

Howard’s win over Kim Beazley’s Labor in the shadow of the commitment of Australian troops to Afghanistan to root out al Qaeda underscored the advantages of tenure in uncertain times.

The Tampa episode on the eve of the 2001 poll, in which a Norwegian vessel with stranded boat people on board was refused entry to Australia, prompted one of the more telling interventions in an Australian political debate. Howard responded with:

We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.

This brings us to the election of 2022 in which Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Defence Minister Peter Dutton are seeking to use legitimate concerns about a Chinese presence in the Pacific as election fodder.

The Solomon Islands security pact with China has provided a pretext for wedge-politics electioneering, aimed at Labor.

In remarks on Anzac Day, Dutton returned a familiar theme in which he likened China’s rise to that of Third Reich in Nazi Germany, and compared Russian President Vladimir Putin with Adolf Hitler in his efforts to subjugate Ukraine.

We’re in a period very similar to the 1930s. And I think there are a lot of people in the 1930s that wish they would have spoken up much earlier in the decade.

In his own efforts to exploit security concerns arising from China’s growing presence in the Pacific, Morrison warned of a “red line” should Beijing seek to establish base facilities in the Solomon Islands.

With its long history of having paid the price politically on national security, Labor has been skittish on the China issue in its efforts to minimise differences with the government.

Morrison and Dutton have sought to make capital out of Labor’s attempts to argue for a more constructive relationship with Beijing. This has caused discomfort among Labor frontbenchers, notably its deputy leader Richard Marles.

In a speech to Beijing’s Foreign Studies University in September 2019, Marles described talk of a new Cold War as “silly and ignorant”. He went on to say, “to define China as an enemy is a profound mistake”.

These words have been seized on by the government and its friends in the media to portray Marles, who may well become defence minister in an Albanese government, as “soft” on China.

Marles has pushed back against these slurs, but it is unlikely he would deliver a similar speech today given China’s further encroachment into the region.

His Beijing speech is absent from his website.

In his efforts to exert pressure on his opponent over Labor’s more nuanced approach to China, Morrison used a peoples’ forum debate to claim Anthony Albanese had taken “China’s side” in debates over the pandemic and border closures.

Albanese responded “that’s an outrageous slur by the prime minister”.

This matters because if a Coalition is re-elected, the prospects of an improvement in relations with China would remain poor. Morrison’s and Dutton’s interventions have hardened the edges of Australia’s relationship with its largest trading partner.

All this is a very long way from the agreement between then Prime Minister Tony Abbott and visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping in Canberra in 2014, to upgrade relations to a “comprehensive strategic partnership”.

Beijing’s mouthpiece, the Global Times, commented:

When Morrison made the ‘red line’ statement, he jeopardised the red line of the Solomon Islands, an independent country, by failing to recognise the latter’s diplomatic sovereignty.

This year, unlike 1951, 1966 and 2001, Australians are going to the polls not when lives might be lost in foreign conflicts, but at a time when voter concerns are domestically-focused.

Read more:
The Morrison government wants a ‘khaki’ election. How do the two major parties stack up on national security?

A “True Issues” survey by JWS Research in the Australian Financail Review in March found that cost of living and healthcare trumped concerns about defence, security and terrorism.

An ABC Compass poll this month found that climate change was top of mind, followed by cost of living and affordability. Defence and public security rated a lowly eighth in the ABC poll, as it did in the JWS Research poll.

In other words, there is no clear indication a “China threat” will prove significant in an election dominated by bread and butter issues.

Tony Walker is a member of The Conversation board.

– ref. Morrison, Dutton go hard on national security – but will it have any effect on the election? – https://theconversation.com/morrison-dutton-go-hard-on-national-security-but-will-it-have-any-effect-on-the-election-181868

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Thea van de Mortel, Professor, Nursing and Deputy Head (Learning & Teaching), School of Nursing and Midwifery, Griffith University

A Florida court recently overturned mask mandates on planes in the United States, saying the directive was unlawful. That decision is now under appeal.

Before that, Australian comedian Celeste Barber
told her social media followers a passenger sitting next to her on a recent flight took off her mask to sneeze.

So wearing masks on planes to limit the spread of COVID is clearly a hot-button issue.

As we return to the skies more than two years into the pandemic, what is the risk of catching COVID on a plane? And does it really matter where on the plane you are?

Read more:
Worried about COVID risk on a flight? Here’s what you can do to protect yourself — and how airlines can step up

So many variables

It’s impossible to give a precise answer about your risk of catching COVID on a plane as there are so many variables.

For instance, not all countries and airlines require passengers to wear masks or be vaccinated.

Some countries and airlines require a negative COVID test within a certain timeframe before flying, others have scrapped that requirement entirely.

Then there are different rules that may apply if you’re flying domestically or internationally, or leaving or entering a country.

That’s before we start talking about the virus itself. We know more recent variants have emerged (Omicron and the sub-variant BA.2, for example), that are much more easily transmitted than the original virus or the Delta variant. We don’t know how transmissible future variants or sub-variants will be.

So we can only talk in general terms about the risk of catching COVID on a plane. All up, your risk is very low, but the measures airlines put in place help achieve that. You can also reduce your personal risk further in a number of ways.

Read more:
The next COVID wave is here. Why for some of us it’s OMG and for others it’s meh

Air flow and HEPA filters

Air flow is designed to largely travel vertically, from the ceiling to the floor, to reduce the potential spread of contaminated air through the plane.

The height of the seats acts as a partial barrier to air movement from rows in front and behind you.

Cabin air is also replaced every two to three minutes with a half-half mix of recycled and fresh air.

To see how this works in real life, researchers looked at how the virus spread on a long-haul flight when an infected person (the index case) sat in business class.

Twelve of 16 people who were infected on the plane sat within a few rows of this person; another was a flight attendant. This suggests limited spread of contaminated air through the rest of the plane.

Recycled air is also filtered through high-efficiency particulate air (or HEPA) filters. These remove more than 99% of viral particles, further reducing the risk of droplet or airborne transmission.

Read more:
We should install air purifiers with HEPA filters in every classroom. It could help with COVID, bushfire smoke and asthma

Masks

Well fitted masks or respirators (worn properly) can reduce your risk of contracting COVID on a flight. That’s why many airlines say wearing a mask is a condition of flying.

For example, modelling of several known transmission events on planes demonstrates an advantage if both the infected person and others around them wear masks.

Vaccination

Some countries, such as Australia, require entering travellers to be fully vaccinated. This lowers the risk of someone becoming sick with COVID.

Read more:
Your unvaccinated friend is roughly 20 times more likely to give you COVID

Pre-flight COVID testing

Not all flights require a negative COVID test before boarding. For those that do, the time frame before a flight varies, as does the type of test required.

However, we know tests do not detect every single COVID case. A range of factors can influence test sensitivity (ability to detect COVID). These include the type and brand of test you take, whether you have symptoms, your age, and the viral variant.

You can also still test negative two days before a flight and catch COVID in the meantime.

Read more:
15 things not to do when using a rapid antigen test, from storing in the freezer to sampling snot

Sanitisation

Airlines may do additional cleaning of high-touch areas, and overnight disinfection, to reduce the spread of COVID through touching contaminated surfaces.

However, the risk of transmission by this route is low compared to the risk of catching COVID through breathing in infectious droplets and aerosols.

When and where are you most at risk?

The closer you are to the infected person

Most transmission occurs within two to three rows of an infected person. If you sit next to someone who is coughing or has other symptoms you might ask to move seats if spare seats are available.

Distance yourself from others if you can, particularly when getting on and off the plane.

You might also avoid sitting close to the toilets as passengers will hang about in the aisles waiting to use them, particularly on long flights.

The longer the flight

The risk increases with long- versus short- or medium-haul flights. During long-haul flights passengers are also more likely to recline their seats. This somewhat reduces the protection upright seats provide in reducing air movement between rows.

If you or others are not wearing a mask or wearing it properly

You can breathe infectious particles in and out via your nose as well as your mouth, so don’t wear your mask under your chin or nose.

The risk also increases when everyone takes off their masks during food service. You might choose not to eat or drink on short flights to avoid this. Alternatively you might bring a snack to eat before food service begins, or eat after those around you.

If you contaminate your food or your face

You can catch COVID through touching your food or face with contaminated fingers. Sanitise your hands regularly and train yourself to not touch your face.

If you are in business class

Based on limited reports, the transmission risk appears higher in business class. This is possibly because of more interruptions to mask wearing due to greater service of food and drinks.

Thea van de Mortel teaches into the Graduate Infection Prevention and Control program at Griffith University.

– ref. Want to cut your chance of catching COVID on a plane? Wear a mask and avoid business class – https://theconversation.com/want-to-cut-your-chance-of-catching-covid-on-a-plane-wear-a-mask-and-avoid-business-class-180333

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ro McFarlane, Assistant Professor in Ecological Public Health, University of Canberra

Global wheat prices have soared since Russia invaded Ukraine in February. The two nations account for 30% of the world’s wheat production.

That means many low-income nations who are net food importers are bracing for a year of hunger. The disruption of war compounds existing drops in food production linked to climate change. On a global scale, climate change has already cut global average agricultural production by at least one-fifth.

Food insecurity often translates to widespread social unrest, as we saw in the 2011 Arab Spring protests, which came after major food price rises.

Countries in the Middle East and North Africa are likely to be hit hardest in the short term, given they are the major importers of Ukrainian wheat and have major food security issues. Countries dependent on specific commodities and which can’t switch to alternative food sources are also at risk.

As many nations face hunger and worsening food security, it is time to redouble our efforts on climate change. Climate change is the great risk multiplier, worsening all existing global crises.

What effect is the war having?

The world produces enough food to feed everyone. Hunger persists due to the critical factors of distribution and access.

We can add war and climate change to this list too. The current wheat price spikes are driven by a combination of war pressures and market speculation.

The world’s largest wheat importer is Egypt, which buys in over half of its calories. At the same time, it exports rice.

This is a dangerous combination. Much of Egypt’s population lives in poverty, with a high reliance on wheat. Civil unrest took root when bread prices rose by almost 40% in 2007-08 due to droughts in food producing nations and oil price rises.

Climate change, conflict and food security will keep compounding

The world’s current 1.2℃ of warming has already slashed the world’s average agricultural production by at least 21%.

To date, rich countries have not seen much effect. But the rest of the world has. In Africa, Central and South America, food insecurity and malnutrition have risen sharply due to floods and droughts damaging crops.

The world’s poor live where land is cheapest and most vulnerable to climatic extremes. They often have sporadic or no access to health care, education, transport, meaningful employment, food and water. Each of these factors amplifies others, which intensifies the underlying disadvantage and can fuel conflict. Climate change can worsen all of these factors.

In 2022, a war between two nations is directly influencing global food, fuel and fertiliser supplies and prices. As the world warms and our agricultural systems begin to fail in some areas, it is a certainty that climate, food insecurity and war will combine to produce more suffering.

Rich countries are not immune

Rich countries like Australia are learning food insecurity can affect everyone. The pandemic years have led to heightened financial vulnerability and food insecurity among more Australians than ever.

The pandemic comes on top of climate change-linked weather events disrupting food supply due to unprecedented bushfires and floods. The record-breaking rains have made it harder to sell recent bumper grain crops at a good price due to water damage to crops as well as export infrastructure damaged by the previous prolonged drought cycle.

Australia exports enough food for 70 million people. That can give a false sense of security. In reality, our position as the most arid inhabited continent in a steadily warming world has led to drops of up to 35% in farm profitability since 2000.

What can be done?

For many in Ukraine, other conflict zones and refugee camps, life becomes a question of knowing how and when the next meal will come.

People who have experienced true hunger know the memory will linger even after living in a food-rich country for decades, as one author knows from living through the war in former Yugoslavia.

Knowledge about food is critical to resilience: food production and preserving skills, diversity of edible weeds and foraging opportunities, how supply chains work and the consequences of trading food in the face of hunger.

To build resilience in the face of these intensifying and overlapping threats, we must move away from our current dependence on wheat, corn and rice for fully 40% of our calories. Of the world’s thousands of plant species, we farm around 170 on a commercial basis. And of these, about a dozen supply most of our needs.

As the threats to food security intensify, we will also need to question why basic foodstuffs are commodities of profit. A radical but widely advocated approach is the model in which foods are traded equitably to address need. Access to food is, after all, a human right.

If we can embed more equitable and resilient food systems, we will be better placed to adapt to climate change already locked in by previous emissions, as well as dampen the sparks of conflict. Improving the way we produce food can also help us tackle climate change and biodiversity loss.

We are heartened by growing interest in urban food production, efforts to reimagine distribution as well as regenerative agriculture and technological innovations on farms. Taken together, these changes can shorten supply chains and increase food diversity and resilience.

Why does that matter? Because producing food closer to home reduces the risk of food insecurity linked to climate change, war and other disruptions.

As more and more of us move to cities, we will have to embrace greater urban production of food and support for the family farms and smallholders who still, to this day, produce more than half of every calorie consumed by humanity.

We have a real opportunity – and need – to rethink how we produce and distribute the food we rely on. We still have a chance to head off some of the suffering heading our way.

Ro McFarlane and family own a cropping farm in Victoria

Nenad Naumovski received research funding from National Health and Medical Research Council NHMRC, ACT government, Dementia Research Foundation, Arthritis ACT, Australian Association of Gerontology; university grants from University of Newcastle, Australian National University, University of Canberra; industry funding from Assistive Technology Australia (P/L), Chiron Health Products (P/L), Capitol Chilled Foods Australia (P/L); received travel funding from Nutrition Society of Australia and Australian Atherosclerosis Society. All grants and funding are registered with University of Canberra Research Office. He lived through the Balkan Wars.

Shawn Somerset has previously received funding for nutrition-related research from Horticulture Australia, Fisheries Research and Development Corporation, State Government Granting Systems and AUSAid.

– ref. A year of hunger: how the Russia-Ukraine war is worsening climate-linked food shortages – https://theconversation.com/a-year-of-hunger-how-the-russia-ukraine-war-is-worsening-climate-linked-food-shortages-181160

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jacqueline Newling, Honorary Associate, History, University of Sydney

A chance find in a colonial newspaper from 1843 has us very excited: have we discovered evidence of Australia’s earliest cookbook?

Until now The English and Australian Cookery Book: Cookery for the Many, as well as the Upper Ten Thousand by Tasmanian-born Edward Abbott, published in London in 1864, have been credited with this honour.

But when searching the National Library of Australia’s digital archive, our colleague Paul Van Reyk came across an advertisement in the December 30, 1843, Parramatta Chronicle and Cumberland General Advertiser for a cookbook none of us knew about: The Housewife’s Guide; or an Economical and Domestic Art of Cookery.

If this is indeed Australia’s earliest colonial cookbook, it would set the date back by 20 years.

A British recipe book

The Housewife’s Guide was published by Edmund Mason, who also published the Parramatta Chronicle.

The son of printer William Mason of Clerkenwell, London, Edmund arrived in Sydney in 1840 to work at the Sydney Morning Herald. He was employed there for two years before setting up his own printing business in Parramatta.

No author’s name is provided in the 1843 advertisement for The Housewife’s Guide, but a book with the identical title, written by Mrs Deborah Irwin, “23 years cook to a tradesman with a large family”, had been published in England by Mason’s father in 1830.

At the time, Australia’s cookery texts were generally imported from Britain, but Mason asserted this Housewife’s Guide was “the only work of the kind published in the colony”.

Perhaps through his father’s connections, Mason was printing Mrs Irwin’s text in downtown Parramatta.

A locally reprinted text does not, to our minds, qualify as an Australian cookbook. But reading the list of contents given in Mason’s advertisement, “native currant jam” leapt off the page.

It is unlikely English Mrs Irwin would have had native currants in her repertoire.

Read more:
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Australian ingredients

The 1830 edition of Mrs Irwin’s Housewife’s Guide has been digitised, allowing us to compare its contents more closely with the list provided in the Parramatta Chronicle. While there are clear similarities, with some sections possibly repeated verbatim, other significant differences convinced us this was a localised version of the original Irwin text.

Fish species common in Britain – sole, carp, haddock, grayling, trout, perch, tench and others – do not appear in the local listing. Varieties such as salmon, mackerel and eels, which are found in Australian waters, have been retained, and snapper has been added.

Irwin’s Housewife’s Guide contains several recipes for game – hare, partridge, pheasant – none of which are listed in the Australian edition. Recipes for rabbits and pigeons, on the other hand, are found in both.

The Parramatta edition also has sections not included in Irwin’s book. A section on preserved meat provides instructions for salting and smoking mutton and ham.

A new section on syrups includes two which may have been incorporated for their local appeal: capillaire made from maiden hair fern – several species of which are native to Australia, and “Pine apply” (presumably pineapple) syrup. Highly exotic in Britain, pineapples were grown in colonial gardens and sold at produce markets.

Clearly this publication was not simply a reprint of Mrs Irwin’s text, but an upgraded, localised edition. It could also be the first formally published cookbook with recipes using native ingredients.

Read more:
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New mysteries

In July 1844 the Chronicle advised “a second impression has been thrown off and is ready for publication”.

This new round of advertising at last provided an author’s name, promoting the book as Mrs Irving’s Housewife’s Guide. The uncanny similarity between Irving and Irwin was impossible to ignore. Had Mason misspelled the name by accident or by intent? Was there indeed a Mrs Irving?

We have not identified a Mrs Irving in the colony at this time, and we are yet to find a physical copy of this early colonial cookbook. It does not appear in library catalogues and has not been referenced in any bibliography of Australian cookbooks.

It is quite probable that no copies have survived the 175-plus years since they were published.

We can confidently claim however, that Mrs Irving’s Housewife’s Guide published by Edmund Mason in Parramatta is the first locally produced Australian cookbook. The majority of recipes may have been British by nature and origin, but departures from the British text are clearly aimed at localising the book for produce available in colonial New South Wales.

Mrs Irving’s Housewife’s Guide indicates there was an appetite for local culinary knowledge, and the use of native ingredients – rather than relying on British authority – 20 years before Edward Abbott’s The English and Australian Cookery Book.

This collaborative research project is independent of Jacqueline Newling’s role as Assistant Curator at Sydney Living Museums.

This research was conducted with Paul van Reyk, author of True to the Land: a History of Food in Australia (Reaktion, 2021).

– ref. Fern syrup, stewed eel and native currant jam: this 1843 recipe collection may be Australia’s earliest cookbook – https://theconversation.com/fern-syrup-stewed-eel-and-native-currant-jam-this-1843-recipe-collection-may-be-australias-earliest-cookbook-181789

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Shaw, Professor of Politics, Massey University

Threats, intimidation and misogyny have long been a reality for women in public life around the world, and the pandemic appears to have amplified this toxic reality.

Aotearoa New Zealand is led by one of the world’s best-known female prime ministers, Jacinda Ardern, and was the first country in the world to grant all women the right to vote.

Yet even here today, attempts to silence, diminish and demean the prime minister, female MPs and other prominent women have plumbed new depths, leading to calls for more robust policing of violent online and offline behaviour.

Unfortunately, the phenomenon extends well beyond elected representatives and public health professionals into most workplaces, including academia.

Women working in universities, including those in positions of academic leadership, are also routinely subjected to online vitriol intended to shut them down – and thus to prevent them exercising their academic freedom to probe, question and test orthodox ways of making sense of the world.

One of the commonest defences of abusive or threatening language (online or not) is an appeal to everyone’s right to free speech. And this has echoes within universities, too, when academic freedom becomes a testing ground of what is acceptable and what isn’t.

A duty to call it out

The international evidence indicates that almost all of this behaviour comes from men, some of them colleagues or students of the women concerned.

The abuse comes in various forms (such as trolling and rape or death threats) and takes place in a variety of settings, including conferences. It is enabled by, among other things, the hierarchical nature of universities, in which power is stratified and unequally distributed, including on the basis of gender.

Read more:
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As male academics we have an obligation not just to call out these sorts of behaviour but also to identify some of the corrosive consequences of the misogyny directed against women academics, wherever they may work.

We need to use our own academic freedom to assess what can happen to that of academic women when digital misogyny passes unchecked.

Whose freedom to speak?

Misogyny in university settings takes place in a particular context: universities have a statutory obligation to serve as producers and repositories of knowledge and expertise, and to act as society’s “conscience and critic”.

Academic freedom is what enables staff and students to carry out the work through which these obligations are met. This specific type of freedom is a means to various ends, including testing and contesting perceived truths, advancing the boundaries of knowledge and talking truth to power.

Read more:
Academic freedom can’t be separated from responsibility

It is intended to serve the public good, and must be exercised in the context of the “highest ethical standards” and be open to public scrutiny.

A great deal has been written about threats to academic freedom: intrusive or risk averse university managers, the pressures to commercialise universities’ operations, and governments bent on surveilling and stifling internal dissent are the usual suspects.

But when women academics are subjected to online misogyny, which is a common response when they exercise academic freedom, we are talking about a different kind of threat.

Betrayal of academic freedom

The misogynists seek to silence, shut down, diminish and demean; to ridicule on the basis of gender, and to deride scholarship that doesn’t align with their own preconceptions of gender and body type.

Their behaviour is neither casual nor accidental. As journalist Michelle Duff put it, it is intended to intimidate “as part of a concentrated effort to suppress women’s participation in public and political life”.

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Its aim is to achieve the obverse of the purpose of academic freedom: to maintain an unequal status quo rather than change it.

It is to the credit of women academics that the misogynists frequently fail. But sometimes the hostility does have a chilling effect. For a woman to exercise her academic freedom when she is the target of online threats to rape or kill requires considerable bravery.

Women who continue to test perceived truths, advance the boundaries of knowledge and speak truth to power under such conditions are academic exemplars. They are contributing to the public good at considerable personal cost.

‘Whaddarya?’

The online misogyny directed at women academics is taking place in a broader context in which violent language targeting individuals and minority groups is becoming increasingly graphic, normalised and visible.

We do not believe the misogynistic “righteous outrage” directed at academic women is justified under the statutory underpinnings of freedom of speech.

Freedom of speech – within or beyond a university – is not absolute, and to the extent that it is invoked to cloak violent rhetoric against women, existing constraints on that freedom (which are better thought of as protections for the targets of misogyny) need strengthening.

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Men who engage in online misogyny almost always speak from an (unacknowledged) position of privilege. Moreover, by hiding their sense of entitlement behind core democratic notions, their self-indulgence does all of us a disfavour.

With academic freedom comes the moral responsibility to challenge misogyny and not stay silent. What so many women across New Zealand’s tertiary sector are subject to poses a challenge to men everywhere.

The kind of conduct our women colleagues are routinely subjected to is the sort of behaviour at the heart of Greg McGee’s seminal critique of masculinity and masculine insecurity in New Zealand, the play Foreskin’s Lament. In the final scene of the play, the main character stares out at the audience and asks: “Whaddarya, whaddarya, whaddarya?”

He might have been asking the question of every man, including those of us who work in universities.

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. Who will call out the misogyny and abuse undermining women’s academic freedom in our universities? – https://theconversation.com/who-will-call-out-the-misogyny-and-abuse-undermining-womens-academic-freedom-in-our-universities-181594