Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Danielle Wood, Chief executive officer, Grattan Institute

This is an edited extract from Danielle Wood’s keynote address to the jobs summit. Read other articles in The Conversation’s series about the summit here.

In an economic landscape that is increasingly digital, increasingly focused on services sector work, and increasingly focused on a looming deadline for net zero emissions, I would like to put forward three priorities for future-proofing Australia.

Priority 1: investing in human capital

Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates has argued that the best leading indicator of a country’s outlook in 20 years’ time is the performance of its education system. Unfortunately, that indicator doesn’t look too crash hot for Australia.

OECD data shows the performance of Australian school students in reading and maths is going backwards, both over time and compared with other countries.

The average year 9 student is more than one year behind in maths compared to where the student of the same age was at the turn of this century. For reading it is around 9 months.

Read more:
As the jobs summit talks skills – we predict which occupations will have shortages and surpluses in the next 2 years

Just as worrying, the learning gap between students from advantaged and disadvantaged backgrounds more than doubles between year 3 and year 9.

If we are going to thrive as a nation, we simply have to turn this around.

There is a growing evidence base around what works in terms of teaching, but we struggle more with how to flow that through to practice on the ground. And we need to do much more to attract and retain high-performing teachers.

There are other aspects of education that will also need to evolve if we are going to remain a leading economy in coming decades:

• boosting the vocational education and training system that has been left as the poor cousin to universities

• improving links between industry and vocational and higher education institutions to build feedback loops on what’s needed as jobs evolve

• acknowledging that education is a lifelong endeavour – for example, through recognition of micro-credentials and support for on-the-job training

• attracting the best and brightest to Australia by improving the composition and functioning of our migration program.

Priority 2: making better use of our talent pool

Australian women are some of the world’s most highly educated, yet we rank 38th in the world when it comes to women’s economic opportunities.

Women are often excluded from full-time work, and from the most prestigious high-paid roles, because these so-called “greedy jobs” are incompatible with the load of unpaid care still disproportionately shouldered by women.

I can’t help but reflect that if untapped women’s workforce participation was a massive ore deposit, we would have governments lining up to give tax concessions to get it out of the ground.

High-quality, low-cost early education and care is necessary to unlock participation from women who would like to work more but who are sidelined by substantial cost hurdles.

But generational change will only come if men are also encouraged to participate more in unpaid care. Cultural shifts like this tend to play out over decades rather than years, but policy can shape culture.

Read more:
Yes, we know there is a ‘skills shortage’. Here are 3 jobs summit ideas to start fixing it right away

It is equally important we tackle the economic and structural barriers to other groups participating to their fullest, including Australians with disabilities, our First Nations people, and older Australians.

Making sure care jobs are good jobs – properly remunerating care work is going to be critical to providing the quality and quantity of health, disability, and aged care services that our older population will need.

Fifty-eight per cent of early childhood workers are paid award wages, which can be as low as $22 an hour. You can certainly understand why an early childhood educator might decide to step away from their important but emotionally taxing role to take up a higher-paid position at Bunnings or McDonalds.

Priority 3: restoring economic dynamism

The Australian economy, like all of us, looks increasingly older, fatter, and slower.

Rates of company startups and exits declined in the years before COVID, impeding the normal flow of resources from lower-productivity to higher-productivity activities.

Not only is Australia not experiencing a “great resignation”, we are experiencing something like the opposite – the proportion of workers switching jobs has been declining for decades.

Lower levels of dynamism and innovation have been linked to a lack of competitive pressure in the economy. In competitive markets, excess profits should be dissipated as new and innovative competitors enter. Increasingly, the most profitable firms are untroubled by new competitors.

Grattan Institute work shows that among the 20% of Australia’s most profitable firms in 2015, almost one-third were among the most profitable a decade previously. Recent research by Australia’s Competition Minister Andrew Leigh finds turnover among our market leaders has slowed.

Read more:
The summit needs to get us switching jobs. It’d make most of us better off

Being relaxed and comfortable may be profitable, but it is not good for Australia’s long-term economic prospects.

Making sure Australia’s competition laws are fit for purpose would help. The former head of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, Rod Sims, has argued the current mergers laws are failing to adequately protect competition. His warnings should prompt serious thought.

Economists have long warned of the productivity-sap from rent-seeking (seeking special favours). We should not be a country where firms see more upside in lobbying to get a better deal from governments than from investing in better products and services.

Grattan Institute’s 2018 report, Who’s in the Room?, suggests this concern is real for Australia. Heavily regulated sectors such as mining, property and construction, and gambling are characterised by remarkably high levels of political donations and lobbying compared to their relative economic contribution.

We need to be bolder

Finally – what of our people? How do we encourage workers to be bold and thrive in a more dynamic economy of the future?

The 2018 international OECD school education survey found 42% of Australian teenage boys and 52% of teenage girls expect to work in one of just ten common jobs by the age of 30, including lawyer, doctor or police officer. This set of aspirations has actually narrowed since the turn of the century.

This lack of awareness of the universe of possible jobs, particularly in fast-growing sectors, diverts young people from career paths that would generate the greatest benefits for them and the country.

High household indebtedness constrains the capacity of young people to change jobs later or take the risk of starting a business.

If we want to genuinely improve worker mobility, we have to also consider the role of the social safety net. Upgrading skills or even changing jobs can be costly and risky, particularly for more vulnerable workers.

Read more:
First Nations workers are everywhere. The jobs summit must tackle Indigenous-led employment policy too

The summit comes at an extraordinary time. Unemployment is lower than I’ve experienced in my lifetime, and we are in the early phase of significant structural shifts in jobs and activity as our economy decarbonises and digitises.

We need to lock in full employment as a policy objective, and capitalise on the extraordinary opportunity to give our long-term unemployed, older job-seekers, and people with a disability a chance to participate in paid work.

We need to invest in human capital big time, turning around the slide in our school results, rebuilding vocational education, and improving the quality of the signals we send to our young people about what will be needed in future.

Read more:
When you change jobs, you get more pay – but less than you used to

We need to embrace the principle that no one who wants a job or more hours should be held back by structural barriers such as expensive or inaccessible care.

And we need to recognise the importance of boosting innovation, of strong market competition, of better policy design, and of government investment in enablers like cyber security, to become an economy on the technological frontier.

The Grattan Institute 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.

– ref. The jobs summit needs to think big: here are 3 priorities for future-proofing Australia – https://theconversation.com/the-jobs-summit-needs-to-think-big-here-are-3-priorities-for-future-proofing-australia-189771

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Guay Lim, Professorial Research Fellow, Melbourne Institute, The University of Melbourne

This article is part of The Conversation’s series looking at Labor’s jobs summit. Read the other articles in the series here.

We are changing jobs less, an observation that has been offered as an explanation for why pay increases remain low.

The proportion of Australians switching jobs per year has fallen from 12.8% in the mid-1990s to 9.5%, after hitting a low of 7.5% in the year to February 2021.

We are unable to say why, but we are able to present new information from the Melbourne Institute’s monthly survey of consumer attitudes, sentiments and expectations on what happens to their pay and their expectations when they change.

Using the full range of survey results from 2009 to 2022 (2022 is for the first eight months) we compared the self-reported changes in total pay over the previous year for those that have stayed in their job with the self-reported changes for those that have changed jobs.

The averaging method we used was the 30% trimmed mean.

Read more:
The summit needs to get us switching jobs. It’d make most of us better off

One of our findings was expected: the increase in total pay for those who changed jobs was generally significantly bigger.

The other was not: the gap narrowed over time. By 2021 those who changed jobs got a lower increase than those that remained – a pay cut of 1.3% compared to a pay increase of 0.44% for those that stayed.

Even if the 2021 result can be dismissed as a one-off, it is clear that over time the financial reward for switching jobs has shrunk.

Although the financial reward for switching declined across all occupations, we find it declined fastest for trades workers and “para-professionals” such as community and personal service workers who as a group have taken cuts for changing jobs since 2018.

When we asked about expected pay changes over the following 12 months we found the expectations of those who changed their jobs and those who did not to be much more aligned, converging to the same expectation by 2022.

Our findings suggest that pay has become an increasingly unimportant motivator for changing jobs. It might be that since COVID, considerations such as working from home have become more important.

Read more:
As the jobs summit talks skills – we predict which occupations will have shortages and surpluses in the next 2 years

Nothing to disclose

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

– ref. When you change jobs, you get more pay – but less than you used to – https://theconversation.com/when-you-change-jobs-you-get-more-pay-but-less-than-you-used-to-189534

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Baker, Professor of Housing Research, University of Adelaide

The recent release of 2021 Census data revealed a shocking “one million homes were unoccupied”.

This statistic sent housing commentators, government agencies and policymakers into a spin. At a time of significant housing shortages, this extra million homes would surely make a big difference. They could provide housing for some homeless, ease the rental affordability crisis, and get first-home owners into their first home.

There has been a great deal of speculation about how this has happened. Has it been caused by overseas millionaires buying up housing and leaving it as an empty investment? Is it Airbnb taking up homes that could be used for families? Or are cashed-up Gen-Xers double-consuming by living in one house while renovating another?

So, why were 1,043,776 dwellings empty on census night?

In fact, we’ve got a pretty good idea of what’s going on. First, it’s not a new phenomenon. When we compare 2021 with previous censuses, a slightly smaller percentage of our private dwelling stock was classified as unoccupied – just under 10%, compared with nearly 11% at the previous census in 2016.

Read more:
Taxing empty homes: a step towards affordable housing, but much more can be done

Since the release of the data, many journalists have pointed to this startling number of empty homes, portraying them as abandoned or left empty. There is almost certainly a much more ordinary and less startling story to tell. We suspect there are three main explanations.

A big part of the story is how the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) determines whether a dwelling is occupied or not. In short, it does its best by using a variety of methods, but, for the majority of dwellings, occupancy “is determined by the returned census form”. If a form was not returned, and the ABS had no further information, the dwelling was often deemed to be unoccupied.

This is important to our interpretation of the empty homes story. At any one time, lots of things are going on in the housing market, and most of it is a long way from abandoned or empty.

For example, 647,000 dwellings were sold in 2021. This means many thousands of dwellings were unoccupied on census night because they were up for sale or awaiting transfer.

The second and perhaps most important contributor to the empty homes story is holiday homes. Estimates vary, but we know 2 million Australians own one or more properties other than their own home. It’s estimated up to 346,581 of these properties may be listed on just one rental platform, Airbnb.

It’s part of the census design to pick a night of the year when the most Australians are at home. If you think back to Tuesday, August 10 2021, it was a Tuesday night in mid-winter, so many of Australia’s holiday homes would have been empty – and counted as unoccupied.

Read more:
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Where are these unoccupied dwellings located?

If we map the distribution of unoccupied dwellings across Australia, two things stand out.

Firstly, unoccupied dwellings tend to be concentrated in sea-change and inner-city holiday spots, such as Victor Harbor in South Australia (as the map below shows) , Lorne in Victoria and Batemans Bay in New South Wales. This reinforces the holiday homes explanation.

It’s also striking how few unoccupied homes are in our major cities. Sydney is a great example. The map below shows a very uniform absence of unused housing across the whole metropolitan area.

You can use the interactive map below to see how many homes were classified as unoccupied in your local area (click and drag map to your area).

iFrames are not supported on this page.

So should we worry about the ‘million unoccupied homes’?

Yes and no. An unknown proportion in that million are not empty, just assumed to be vacant because a census form wasn’t returned. We should regard this as a systematic error in the counting process. No doubt the ABS will be aiming to reduce this in future censuses.

Some of that million are genuinely vacant due to the way the housing market works. This includes, for example, the sales process and the need for vacant possession.

Yet, even if there are substantially fewer than a million vacant dwellings, the reality is that there are too many ways homes in Australia can be left unoccupied for weeks, months, years – and it’s costing all of us. Those who are homeless are paying the highest price. But the rest of us feel the pain through higher rents, increased rates to pay for infrastructure constructed for housing that isn’t occupied, and greater difficulties in getting into the housing market.

Read more:
‘We’ve all done the right things’: in Under Cover, older women tell their stories of becoming homeless

We need to find ways to ensure houses are full of people, not left empty as owners wait for investment opportunities to mature, or for absentee owners to go on holiday. We know there are solutions out there. Removing caps on council rates and treating short-term rentals as commercial properties essential to the tourism industry are just two ways we can get better occupancy of our stock. We just need to find the will to implement them.

Emma Baker receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the National Health and Medical Research Council, and the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute . She currently serves on the board of Habitat SA.

Andrew Beer receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the National Health and Medical Research Council, the iMove CRC, CRC Time and the Department of Infrastructure, Regions, Communications and the Arts.

Marcus Blake is employed at the Universities of Canberra and Adelaide and is presently a consultant with the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

– ref. Look where Australia’s ‘1 million empty homes’ are and why they’re vacant – they’re not a simple solution to housing need – https://theconversation.com/look-where-australias-1-million-empty-homes-are-and-why-theyre-vacant-theyre-not-a-simple-solution-to-housing-need-189067

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Timothy Minchin, Professor of History, La Trobe University

Electric vehicles, we are often told, are the future. A whole range of carmakers and nations have plans to go electric.

The largest US manufacturer, General Motors, says it will phase out fossil-fuel vehicles by 2035. Norway has set a goal to end sales of new petrol and diesel cars by 2025, the UK by 2030, and France by 2040.

In Australia, only about 2% of new cars sold today are electric. Federal government modelling in 2021 predicted a jump to 90% of the vehicle fleet by 2050.

The new federal government has put electric vehicles firmly on the agenda. Industry Minister Chris Bowen did so in a speech at the EV Summit on August 19. As global consultancy McKinsey and Co has declared, “the automotive future is electric”.

Read more:
Why Labor’s new tax cut on electric vehicles won’t help you buy one anytime soon

A very long and troubled history

What is often overlooked is that electric vehicles have a history as well as a future. If we look back we can see they are not a futuristic dream but a longstanding transport option.

This history also illuminates the barriers that electric vehicles face – and are steadily overcoming. It is a troubled history with particular relevance to Australians, so long attached to internal combustion.

Electric vehicles have been around since car manufacturing began. Robert Davidson built the first practical electric vehicle – a 16-foot (4.9 metre) truck driven by electro-magnetic motors – in Scotland in 1837. This was decades before the internal combustion engine was invented.

As early as 1881, battery-operated buses operated in Paris. They were soon adopted in other cities, including Berlin, London and New York.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, electric car makers competed toe-to-toe with their emerging fossil-fuel rivals. Beginning in 1914, for example, the Detroit Taxicab and Transfer Company built and ran a fleet of nearly 100 electric taxis. This was not unusual. A New York Times article observed:

“At the turn of the 20th century, quiet, smooth, pollution-free electric cars were a common sight on the streets of major American cities.”

Made by the Anderson Carriage Company, the Detroit Electric was a mainstream model in the late 1910 and early 1920s. In an era when petrol-powered cars were smelly and greasy, electric cars were popular with women. Even Henry Ford’s wife, Clara, drove a Detroit Electric car until 1930 because she did not like the noise and fumes of the Ford Model T.

Although the internal combustion engine gradually gained the upper hand – partly because of the limited range of electric vehicles – little-known ventures into electric car-making continued. As author Tom Standage has written in his book, A Brief History of Motion, these vehicles have a “lost history” that is important to explore.

Read more:
Beyond electric cars: how electrifying trucks, buses, tractors and scooters will help tackle climate change

A new post-war breed

After the second world war, a new breed of electric vehicles emerged. Most were modified versions of fossil-fuelled cars. They included the 1959 Henney Kilowatt, which used a Renault Dauphine chassis and body, and the 1979-80 Lectric Leopard, made by the US Electricar Corporation, based on a Renault 5.

One of the most popular was the Citicar, built between 1974 and 1976 by the Sebring-Vanguard Company in Florida. Based in Massachusetts, Solectria later made the Solectria Force, derived from a GM Geo.

Although petrol-powered cars remained dominant, the electric car’s rise was predicted for decades. In the US, automotive writer David Ash saw electric cars as the future as early as 1967. “On a clear day, you will see the electric car,” he wrote, noting that it offered a solution to America’s rising air pollution and dependence on foreign oil. “Produce Electric Cars”, energy expert Edwin F. Shelley advocated in 1980, following the second oil crisis of the 1970s.

At the time, the US Congress agreed. It passed the 1976 Electric and Hybrid Vehicle Act with the aim of developing vehicles that did not depend on foreign oil.

In the late 1980s, GM developed the pioneering Impact (or EV1). The EV1 was ultimately killed when California – following sustained industry lobbying – reversed a strict emission mandate. In 2021, however, Automotive News declared the EV1 had “planted the seed for the industry embrace of EVs now”.

Read more:
Who’s holding back electric cars in Australia? We’ve long known the answer – and it’s time to clear the road

Breakthrough depended on better batteries

Early electric vehicles suffered from limited battery range, a big drawback in large countries such as Australia and the US. The breakthrough came as early as the 1990s, when rechargeable lithium ion batteries emerged. Almost 20 years ago, Tesla was founded to take advantage of this technology.

Between 2008 and 2020, the price of battery packs dropped 80%, to around US$20,000. This made electric vehicles a viable alternative to fossil-fuel-powered cars, especially if government policies encouraged consumers to make the switch. In markets where such policies apply, they are making rapid strides.

History also informs us about the barriers to mass adoption of electric vehicles. The same concerns – range, lack of sound and smell, brand recognition – have been raised for decades. As David Ash wrote in 1967:

“The modern auto is only part transportation. It is also power symbol, magic carpet, toy and companion. Will we buy cars that cannot be made to roar?”

Read more:
On an electric car road trip around NSW, we found range anxiety (and the need for more chargers) is real

A vehicle whose time has come

Today, the electric car’s hour seems to have finally come. In an era of climate change, tightening regulations aimed at the internal combustion engine are producing real change. In 2021, road vehicles produced 17% of global carbon dioxide emissions. As a 2017 New York Times editorial declared:

“There is simply no credible way to address climate change without changing the way we get from here to there […].”

The electric vehicle’s environmental credentials – noted by consumers in the early 20th as well as early 21st century – are overcoming the century-long dominance of the fossil-fuel-powered car. Rather than being new, electric cars have played – and are now winning – the long game.

Timothy Minchin receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. The surprising history of how electric vehicles have played the long game and won – https://theconversation.com/the-surprising-history-of-how-electric-vehicles-have-played-the-long-game-and-won-189127

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

As well as her interviews with politicians and experts, Politics with Michelle Grattan includes “Word from The Hill”, where she discusses the news with members of The Conversation’s politics team.

In this podcast, politics and society editor Amanda Dunn and Michelle canvass the start of the jobs summit – at which Anthony Albanese announced a package of more than $1 billion in federal-state funding for TAFF places. They also discuss the government’s continued commitment to the Stage 3 tax cuts, national cabinet’s easing of COVID restrictions, and the inquiry into Scott Morrison’s multi ministries.

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. Albanese announces more than $1 billion in federal-state TAFE funding – https://theconversation.com/albanese-announces-more-than-1-billion-in-federal-state-tafe-funding-189776

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Parwinder Kaur, Associate Professor | Director, DNA Zoo Australia, The University of Western Australia

The native Australian rodent Pseudomys fumeus, named smoky mouse for its colour, was already fighting off extinction when the 2019–20 bushfire season hit.

The Black Summer bushfires, which torched more than 24 million hectares, may have killed an estimated 1 billion animals and put more than 100 threatened species at risk. The fires also destroyed more than 90% of the smoky mouse’s habitat, with nine mice even dying at a captive breeding facility near Canberra from bushfire smoke inhalation.

But all is not lost – a newly sequenced reference genome will now help the ongoing conservation efforts of this native Australian species.

Precious pockets of mice

We haven’t seen wild smoky mice in the Australian Capital Territory since 1987. In Victoria, the species is only around in the Grampians, Central Highlands and alpine regions, and in New South Wales in the alpine regions of Kosciuszko National Park and southeastern forests near Nullica.

An active recovery plan was established for the mouse in 2006. As part of this, conservationists started two captive populations, with releases taking place into southeastern forests near Nullica, and a predator-proof reserve in the ACT.

These little native mice are beyond cute, roughly double the size of the introduced house mouse (Mus musculus). Their charcoal fur is soft and silky, and they smell really nice, too. Males especially smell kind of like smoky burnt vanilla; these animals have lovely, calm temperaments.

In the past 12 months, a Museums Victoria team has been undertaking surveys to search for surviving pockets of the endangered mouse’s population with an eye towards future reintroduction efforts of captive bred mice.

To support these ongoing conservation efforts, DNA Zoo at The University of Western Australia teamed up with Museums Victoria Senior Curator of Mammals Kevin Rowe to sequence a world-first full chromosome-length reference genome for the animal.

Protecting what we have

We can now use this reference genome to inform conservation strategy. Researchers will map 70 individual smoky mouse DNA sequences from across the animal’s habitat range – in the Grampians in western Victoria to southeastern New South Whales.

Increasing our understanding of living wildlife and responsibly stewarding available resources are among the most crucial scientific and social challenges we face today.

Despite great technological advances, there’s much we don’t know about Australia’s native biodiversity. At the same time, it’s increasingly threatened by wildfires, climate change, habitat destruction, species exploitation and other human-related activities.

Thankfully, we can use genomics to help formulate an informed conservation strategy. That’s because sampling genomic diversity can give us a baseline understanding of how well the species is faring (what biologists call “population fitness”). With that knowledge in hand, we can better design conservation programs.

For example, in endangered species with severely reduced populations, we can avoid inbreeding if we use genomic data to help design breeding programs. That way, the animals will have fewer genes that lead to premature death, and have increased disease resistance.

Read more:
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Consulting the genetic blueprints

Obtaining the genetic blueprints for Australian wildlife will create a powerful source of discovery for improving and increasing ecosystem services. A well-designed monitoring framework is crucial to the on-ground success of conservation programs.

As part of the recovery plan for the smoky mouse, we have DNA sequences from individuals in the Grampians, as well as historical samples dating back to 1934 from extinct populations in the Otways and Far East Gippsland.

The Grampians samples are of particular interest. That’s because this population is the most isolated, removed by about 350 kilometres from the nearest known population in the Yarra Ranges of the Central Highlands.

Since 2012, Museums Victoria and partners have trapped, marked and collected samples – ear biopsies and poo pellets, neither of which are harmful to the animals – from more than 200 smoky mice in the Grampians. Thanks to this work, we now have the most numerous and continuous record of the species in Victoria.

In addition, trapping and wildlife camera surveys at more than 100 sites have revealed smoky mouse populations localised to two areas less than 10km from the Victoria Range and Mt William Range, respectively.

Researchers will now be looking for genetic clues on how these animals persisted despite drought, invasive predators and significant fire.

What’s encouraging is how powerful technology – such as genome sequencing, bioinformatics, and more combined together – is now helping us to understand and preserve biodiversity. For the first time in history, we can fast-track and efficiently sequence the genomes of our unique native Australian species.

Read more:
It’s not too late to save them: 5 ways to improve the government’s plan to protect threatened wildlife

Parwinder Kaur 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. Scientists release world-first DNA map of an endangered Australian mouse, and it will help to save it – https://theconversation.com/scientists-release-world-first-dna-map-of-an-endangered-australian-mouse-and-it-will-help-to-save-it-189629

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amy Pennay, Research Fellow, La Trobe University

Gendered expectations around alcohol are far from equal. Safety suggestions around alcohol and even the way that alcohol is marketed are very much dependent on gendered use and expectations.

Even the perception of the “appropriateness” of drinking is often viewed though a gendered lens. This has been demonstrated recently by reactions to social drinking by two prime ministers: Sanna Marin from Finland and Australia’s Anthony Albanese.

Read more:
Women’s alcohol consumption catching up to men: why this matters

A tale of two prime ministers

Marin was castigated both within Finland and abroad after a video of her partying with friends was posted online earlier this month. Critics slammed her behaviour as “unfitting of a prime minister” and she was accused of acting like a “ladette”. She subsequently had to take a drug test in what she said was “for her own legal protection” amid calls for her to step down.

In Australia a few days later, Albanese was spotted at a Gang of Youths concert in Sydney drinking a beer.

The reaction to Albanese’s drinking went viral as well – for completely different reasons. He was cheered by the crowd and the harder he chugged the beer, the louder the cheers.

To date, there has been no outrage. No calls for Albanese to do a drug test or to step down.

Why would similar behaviour by two world leaders be treated so differently?

Gender double standards

The wildly disparate reactions have sparked a conversation around gender double standards.

In Australia, drinking alcohol itself has long been a gendered activity. Women were not permitted in pubs in Australia until the 1960s.

Alcoholic beverages are even marketed at men and women differently. Ads for beer drinking emphasise masculinity, while wine drinking is associated with femininity. Studies have shown that middle-aged men and women drink for different reasons, with men more likely to see drinking as a reward for hard work and women more likely to drink in response to stresses or to wind down.

Read more:
‘Oh well, wine o’clock’: what midlife women told us about drinking – and why it’s so hard to stop

When it comes to young adults and public intoxication, men’s drinking tends to be associated with public disorder, while women’s drinking is often associated with promiscuity and sexual vulnerability.

Alcohol and ‘acceptable’ behaviour

But one of the clearest ways gender is implicated in drinking is in notions of “acceptable behaviour”.

We know that men’s drinking tends to be seen as more acceptable than women’s drinking. This includes greater acceptability of heavy drinking and public drunkenness among men.

Women are also subject to greater criticism for intoxicated images of them on social media. Women drinkers are criticised even more harshly if they are mothers of young children – a double standard that doesn’t seem to carry across to fathers.

In fact, gender expectations can mean that men are judged more harshly if they choose not to drink. That is, men are expected to drink.

While drinking is common among both men and women in Australia, men are more likely to drink, and to drink more heavily than women. However, the acceptability of men’s drinking and its association with traditional forms of masculinity creates double standards.

Debate terms

Terms such as “hegemonic masculinities” and “appropriate femininities” are often used in debates about men’s and women’s drinking.

Hegemonic masculinity refers to patterns of behaviour that allow men’s dominance over women to continue. Appropriate femininities refer to traits that are traditionally conceived of as feminine, such as passivity, caring, nurturing and self-control.

These terms are important because differences in the way women and men are represented when drinking reflects broader societal gendered norms.

Read more:
Australians are embracing ‘mindful drinking’ — and the alcohol industry is also getting sober curious

In our recent research drawing on interviews with young people aged 16-19 in Australia, the UK, Denmark, and Sweden, we reported how drinkers and states of intoxication were described in gendered terms. Examples for men included ‘”predatory”, “violent” and “rowdy”, while for women terms used were “childish”, “bitchy” and “hysterical”. Clearly even among young people, some gendered stereotypes around alcohol persists.

The future of drinking

What is perhaps a silver lining to our research is that the young people in our studies expressed displeasure at displays of drinking that drew on the gendered norms described above. They talked about drinking less than the generations before them and objected to intoxication being linked to “toxic masculinities” or emotional and vulnerable femininities.

They also talked about non-drinking or moderate drinking as a way to reshape and challenge normative gendered drinking practices. Swedish research has shown that young men have new ways of “doing masculinity” (for example, through sport or gaming), putting less pressure on them to drink heavily to fit in.

Although young people are challenging some of the gender double standards and expectations that come with alcohol, mainstream media often punish women’s drinking more than men, as reflected in the disparate treatment of Marin and Alanese’s drinking escapades.

While their drinking practices outside of working hours have no bearing on their professional capabilities, the last few weeks have shown that gendered drinking stereotypes remain and have a significant impact.

Amy Pennay receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the National Health and Medical Research Council, VicHealth, Beyond Blue, the National Drug Law Enforcement Research Fund and the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation.

Gabriel Caluzzi receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Sarah J MacLean is a member of the Australian Greens. She receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation.

– ref. Reactions to Marin and Albanese show how women’s alcohol consumption is treated differently from men’s – https://theconversation.com/reactions-to-marin-and-albanese-show-how-womens-alcohol-consumption-is-treated-differently-from-mens-189454

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Letitia Campbell, Aboriginal Research Officer, School of Medicine, Western Sydney University

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children experience ear disease – fluid build ups, perforated eardrums and ear infections that can impair hearing – more frequently than most populations in the world. Rates are 8.5 times as high as for non-Indigenous children in Australia.

Early childhood development related to speech, language and learning, relies heavily on being able to hear. The consequences of poor hearing can greatly disadvantage a child in the classroom, in the criminal justice system and cause delays in other medical diagnoses.

While testing for ear disease in the community for two clinical trials, we listened to what the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community had to say about their experiences and committed to sharing their story. We followed Indigenist research principles and interviewed 28 caregivers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children.

They described how easy it is to mistake ear disease and hearing loss for misbehaviour.

Read more:
Bulging ear drums and hearing loss: Aboriginal kids have the highest otitis media rates in the world

Hearing and behaviour

Middle ear disease, known medically as otitis media, is a common childhood condition. Fluid builds up behind the ear drum, usually with a cold of flu. When chronic, this condition is also known as “glue ear”. When fluid prevents the ear drum from responding to sound, the reduction in hearing can be severe.

Treatment options for acute ear infections include careful monitoring or antibiotics (if the body does not heal itself). Glue ear that lasts longer than three months is referred to an ear, nose and throat surgeon who can consider surgically inserting ventillation tubes. Any persistent ear problems are monitored with hearing tests.

Ear disease is often a silent disease and when it develops into a chronic condition, physical symptoms become secondary to the serious social and emotional problems. Changes in behaviour, poor balance and coordination, shorter attention spans and irritability can be signs of ear disease and hearing loss.

The caregivers we spoke to noted common behaviours included children talking loudly, turning up the TV or devices, being distracted, talking in class, “not listening” or not responding. When families, teachers or carers assume this behaviour is deliberate, it causes significant distress for children. They feel like they are always in trouble, misheard and misunderstood, no matter how hard they try.

One caregiver we spoke to, whose family member had chronic glue ear and more than ten infections in two years, told us:

With her behaviour though, she wasn’t herself, but she would play up, would be a bit more than usual, [need] more attention, and [get] very frustrated […] even to this day she still gets so frustrated with us because we don’t understand her, so she cries.

Read more:
My child has glue ear – what do I do?

Guilty feelings

A diagnosis of chronic ear disease (fluid in the middle ear with or without being infected) in a child can be distressing for caregivers, who might experience complex feelings of guilt.

They told us they felt bad because they had misjudged their own child. They experienced self-doubt about their parenting for “not noticing” there was a medical problem or for not sticking to their “gut feeling” something was wrong when their concerns were dismissed by doctors or family members. One parent said:

I just thought that she was just a bit ignorant, you know, when I’d call out to her, she wouldn’t look at me and then I’d take her to the doctor’s, and she’s got glue ear. I felt bad afterwards.

Race adds an additional layer of complexity, with some caregivers feeling too afraid to visit a GP for fear of being reported to authorities for having a sick child.

Other caregivers said they visit the doctors office for even the most minor of concerns, afraid they would be judged and labelled as neglectful if they did not. Both are evidence of systemic racism, which tries to attribute child health disparities to poor parenting rather than the broader structural factors that affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Read more:
First Nations people in rural NSW lived with more anxiety and fear about COVID-19 than non-First Nations people

Watching closely

Caregivers demonstrated resilience against health-care system challenges and sought greater understanding of the disease and its treatment.

Ear disease can be highly variable, with different symptoms presenting at different times. Caregivers described closely monitoring their children to detect changes and know when to seek or change treatment. Many took the time to consider the different possible treatments and advocated for better care by engaging in detailed discussion with their doctors, seeking different opinions or travelling out-of-area to receive timelier treatment (such as surgery).

I would take her to the doctors and they’d just give her antibiotics or drops and send her home. I kept taking her back to the doctors, same thing, day in, day out. I got to the point where I got fed up so, I took her to the hospital.

Our interviews revealed that a strong relationship of respect, collaboration and information-sharing between the caregiver and health professionals is a key component to successfully navigating ear disease.

The best clinical care empowers caregivers to confidently seek medical help to identify and manage ear disease in the long-term. This allows them to support children through ear or hearing problems, instead of focusing on the behavioural symptoms. As researchers and practitioners, we can focus on providing quality care and sharing knowledge – so caregivers can focus on managing their child’s symptoms, rather than managing the health system.

Letitia Campbell received funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, Centre for Excellence in Ear and Hearing Health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children and the National Health and Medical Research Council to conduct this study. She is also an employee of Kalwun Health Service, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander medical service on the Gold Coast.

– ref. More Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children have ear and hearing problems – and it’s easy to mistake for bad behaviour – https://theconversation.com/more-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-children-have-ear-and-hearing-problems-and-its-easy-to-mistake-for-bad-behaviour-189376

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Margaret Cook, Lecturer in History, University of the Sunshine Coast

A battle is brewing in South-East Queensland over water. Despite heavy rains and flooding, the water supply authority, Seqwater, has flagged the need to find more water sources to keep up with urban growth.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has already expressed a preference for building a desalination plant on the Sunshine Coast instead of using recycled water. Perhaps her government wants to avoid a repeat of the divisive 2006 debate over water recycling in Toowoomba – dubbed “Poowoomba” at the time.

Our new book, Cities in a Sunburnt Country, traces the fraught history with recycled water in Australia’s biggest cities. A focus on expanding capacity to extract or produce more potable water has dominated urban water policy in Australia. City residents have come to expect abundant water from sources they perceive as “pure”: dams, aquifers and desalination.

Continuing down this path is not sustainable. Yet once again a state government looks set to pursue the costly, energy-intensive desalination option.

Read more:
When water is scarce, we can’t afford to neglect the alternatives to desalination

A history of being diverted by desalination

Desalination has been a reassuring project in times of crisis, but has not always proven its value. In response to the impacts on city water supplies of the Millennium Drought (2001–09), desalination plants were built to supply most of the capital cities.

In 2006, Perth residents became the first in Australia to drink desalinated seawater. By 2012, desalination plants had been built to supply Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane.

A 2005 poll commissioned by “SCUD” (Sydney Community United against Desalination) found 60% of Sydney residents opposed a desalination plant. The following year a parliamentary inquiry concluded such a plant would not be needed if the government pursued water recycling and reuse strategies. The plant was still built.

The Victorian government also faced a backlash when it announced in 2007 a privately financed plant near Wonthaggi on the Bass Coast. Completed in 2012, the plant was mothballed until 2017.

Read more:
Cities turn to desalination for water security, but at what cost?

There are better alternatives

In 2011 the Productivity Commission found only some desalination infrastructure was justified. Other projects could have been deferred, made smaller, or replaced by lower-cost sources, including recycled water.

During the Millennium Drought, the Beattie government built the Brisbane Water Grid connecting all major dams in South East Queensland. By 2008, the 600km network of pipelines was connected to the A$2.9 billion Western Corridor Recycled Water Scheme. The state-owned desalination plant at Tugun on the Gold Coast was completed a year later.

Queensland had opted for a desal quick fix. The government went for the high-cost, high-energy and high-emissions road, instead of more sustainable approaches to potable water supplies and climate change. Today, while South-East Queensland’s population and water use continue to grow, the recycled water scheme only provides water for industry.

Read more:
Sydney’s dams may be almost full – but don’t relax, because drought will come again

Recycled water is a well-proven approach

Cities worldwide commonly use recycled wastewater to add to drinking water supplies, including Los Angeles, Singapore and London. Most residents of Australian cities are also drinking some treated wastewater. Hinterland towns discharge treated wastewater into rivers that eventually flow into dams such as Warragamba and Wivenhoe (which supply Sydney and Brisbane respectively).

In 2018, the Productivity Commission’s National Water Reform Report recommended an integrated approach that included reusing urban wastewater and/or stormwater. Implementation has been slow, however. Only one Australian capital has officially overcome the “yuck factor”.

Perth stores treated wastewater in aquifers beneath the suburbs before returning it to the city’s taps. The state-owned Water Corporation’s 50-year plan, Water Forever, includes a 60% increase in wastewater recycling. Even then the state’s main strategy for eliminating the gap between future water demand and supply is desalination, despite strong community support for large-scale recycling.

In Adelaide and Brisbane, wastewater and stormwater are treated and reused only for industry, irrigation and energy production. As the Millennium Drought fades from public memory, state governments have also retreated from attempts to encourage household water tanks.

Read more:
More of us are drinking recycled sewage water than most people realise

By 2050 as many as 10 million extra people may live in Australia’s capital cities. All of them will expect a reliable supply of clean water inside and outside their homes.

Our book shows how governments have historically favoured development of new water sources or desalination over recycling or demand management. These approaches do little to help us learn to use water more wisely in our cities and suburbs. Recycled water, education campaigns and demand management must play a greater role in securing future water supplies.

Margaret Cook received receives funding from the Australian Research Council (Discovery Project DP180100807) and this article is based on that research.

Andrea Gaynor receives funding from the Australian Research Council (Discovery Project DP180100807). She is affiliated with the Beeliar Group: Professors for Environmental Responsibility.

Lionel Frost receives funding from the Australian Research Council (Discovery Project DP180100807).

Peter Spearritt received funding from the Australian Research Council (Discovery Project DP180100807).

Ruth Morgan has received funding for this research from the Australian Research Council (DP180100807). She is also funded by the ARC SR200200322.

– ref. The ‘yuck factor’ pushes a premier towards desalination yet again, but history suggests recycled water’s time has come – https://theconversation.com/the-yuck-factor-pushes-a-premier-towards-desalination-yet-again-but-history-suggests-recycled-waters-time-has-come-188795

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Guay Lim, Professorial Research Fellow, Melbourne Institute, The University of Melbourne

This article is part of The Conversation’s series looking at Labor’s jobs summit. Read the other articles in the series here.

We are changing jobs less, an observation that has been offered as an explanation for why pay increases remain low.

The proportion of Australians switching jobs per year has fallen from 12.8% in the mid-1990s to 9.5%, after hitting a low of 7.5% in the year to February 2021.

We are unable to say why, but we are able to present new information from the Melbourne Institute’s monthly survey of consumer attitudes, sentiments and expectations on what happens to their pay and their expectations when they change.

Using the full range of survey results from 2009 to 2022 (2022 is for the first eight months) we compared the self-reported changes in total pay over the previous year for those that have stayed in their job with the self-reported changes for those that have changed jobs.

The averaging method we used was the 30% trimmed mean.

Read more:
The summit needs to get us switching jobs. It’d make most of us better off

One of our findings was expected: the increase in total pay for those who changed jobs was generally significantly bigger.

The other was not: the gap narrowed over time. By 2021 those who changed jobs got a lower increase than those that remained – a pay cut of 1.3% compared to a pay increase of 0.44% for those that stayed.

Even if the 2021 result can be dismissed as a one-off, it is clear that over time the financial reward for switching jobs has shrunk.

Although the financial reward for switching declined across all occupations, we find it declined fastest for trades workers and “para-professionals” such as community and personal service workers who as a group have taken cuts for changing jobs since 2018.

When we asked about expected pay changes over the following 12 months we found the expectations of those who changed their jobs and those who did not to be much more aligned, converging to the same expectation by 2022.

Our findings suggest that pay has become an increasingly unimportant motivator for changing jobs. It might be that since COVID, considerations such as working from home have become more important.

Read more:
As the jobs summit talks skills – we predict which occupations will have shortages and surpluses in the next 2 years

Nothing to disclose

Viet Nguyen 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. When you change jobs, you get more pay – but the increase is less than it used to be – https://theconversation.com/when-you-change-jobs-you-get-more-pay-but-the-increase-is-less-than-it-used-to-be-189534

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendan Coates, Program Director, Economic Policy, Grattan Institute

This article is part of The Conversation’s series looking at Labor’s jobs summit. Read the other articles in the series here.

With the Albanese government facing difficult challenges on many fronts in the lead-up to the summit, one decision should be straightforward.

It’s axing the so-called Business Investment and Innovation Program, which offers permanent visas to migrants that establish businesses or invest in Australia.

The Business Investment and Innovation Program is one of a number of programs offered in the skilled stream, along with employer-sponsored visas, skilled independent visas, state and territory nominated visas, and global talent and distinguished talent visas.

It accounted for one in seven of the 79,620 skilled visas issued during 2021-22.

Investment is a visa condition

To be accepted, an applicant needs to meet conditions including a minimum level of wealth and a desire to invest in Australia, including by managing a business you own.

Yet we find few of these people finance projects that would not otherwise occur, or provide entrepreneurial acumen that would not otherwise be available.

Instead, the Grattan Institute finds people who get a business investment visa tend to earn very low incomes in Australia, costing the government more in payments and public services than they pay it in taxes.

They tend to be older, which means they spend fewer years in the workforce (or in business) before they retire, and therefore pay tax for fewer years before they begin to draw heavily on government-provided services.

Australian Treasury calculations suggest a business investment visa holder will cost Australian taxpayers $120,000 more in public services than they pay in taxes over their lifetimes.

That compares to an average positive dividend of $198,000 over the lifetime of other skilled migrants.

Only one in ten hold a postgraduate qualification, compared to one in three other recent skilled visa holders. Less than half have a university degree, compared to 80% of other skilled visa holders.

And they generally have lower proficiency in English, which makes it difficult for them to play meaningful managerial roles in growing businesses in Australia.

Little investment

While investment is important for economic growth, there is little sign these visa holders finance projects that would not otherwise occur.

Most business investment visas are not allocated under the “significant investor” stream which requires visa holders to invest at least A$5 million in Australia. Instead, seven out of ten are issued under the “innovation” stream that requires personal wealth of at least $1.25 million and owning a stake in a business with annual turnover of $750,000.

These assets are typically small businesses in retail and accommodation and food services, industries that not likely to assist the stated goal of the program, which is to boost innovation.

Little innovation

The cost of allocating scarce permanent skilled visas to business investment applicants is high: each visa granted through the business investment program is one less visa granted to a skilled worker who could typically be expected to make a larger contribution to the Australian community over their lifetime.

Abolishing the business visa, and reallocating its places to other skilled worker applicants would on our estimate boost the fiscal dividend from Australia’s skilled migration program by A$3 billion over the next decade, and by $119 billion (in today’s dollars) over the next 30 years.

The growing saving is driven by the fact that business investment visa holders retire up to 20 years earlier than other skilled migrants and pay less tax and draw on more health, aged care and pension benefits.

Unlike most other changes that would boost the budget bottom line, axing the business investment visa would not require legislation.

The government should act soon. There’s already a wait list of over 30,000 for the business visa. Just clearing it would cost budgets $38 billion in today’s dollars over three decades.

Economists are fond of saying there’s no such thing as a free lunch. We reckon abolishing the business investment visa is a $119 billion free lunch, waiting for the government to tuck into it.

Grattan Institute 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. We would also like to thank the Scanlon Foundation for its generous support of this project.

Tyler Reysenbach 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. An idea for the jobs summit: axing the ‘business investment’ visa would save Australia $119 billion over three decades – https://theconversation.com/an-idea-for-the-jobs-summit-axing-the-business-investment-visa-would-save-australia-119-billion-over-three-decades-188836

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Esther Anatolitis, Honorary Associate Professor, School of Art, RMIT University

This article is part of The Conversation’s series looking at Labor’s jobs summit. Read the other articles in the series here.

You’ve heard of the gig economy and the portfolio career. Now quite popular terms, they come from the ways artists work. Think musicians gigging across small bars and large arenas, visual artists with portfolios of work in print, in galleries and online, or actors engaged on a range of short-term projects across a given year.

Once celebrated for flexibility and personal choice, these terms are now synonymous with exploitative, casual and precarious employment, or working conditions lacking entitlements, such as superannuation and sick leave.

But there is much to be learnt from the creative industries when it comes to understanding the future of work.

“Creativity” has been identified by the World Economic Forum, the International Monetary Fund and global business analysts as the key to our future economies.

It was the number-one skillset demanded two years in a row by the 20 million job ads on LinkedIn, which labelled it “the most important skill in the world”.

Creativity is complex. It’s not straightforward to teach and it’s not straightforward to understand. That’s what’s so exciting about it.

Read more:
Summit cheat sheet: what is productivity, and how well does it measure what we do?

Learning creativity

“Innovation”, “disruption” and “agile thinking” are frequently touted as necessary for productivity and economic growth.

Often overlooked by political and business leaders, however, is none of these innovations can be generated without a creative approach.

Developing creative skills requires a sophisticated approach to education and training. You don’t learn critical thinking, ideas generation and problem-solving by rote.

That kind of learning comes from art schools, design studios and humanities degrees. This is education that asks questions, delves deeply and takes time.

Policy priorities across the previous government’s nine-year term, such as excluding universities from pandemic supports and dramatic fee increases, resulted in the diminution or closure of art, design and humanities schools all over Australia.

For artists and arts educators, the outcomes have been devastating.

But it’s not just artists who are impacted by a collapse in creative education. In 2020, leading epidemiologist Michael Osterholm told 7:30 that “the capacity to envision” the pandemic’s consequences would be crucial to saving lives.

When asked why the world was so woefully unprepared for COVID-19, Osterholm declared decision-makers “lack creative imagination”.

The ways our imaginations are trained and supported are vital to the skills and jobs of the future – and indeed, to securing that very future itself.

Working creatively

While more creative jobs and workplaces might be difficult to envision, the pandemic has already normalised the kinds of flexible working arrangements employers would previously have considered damaging to productivity or impossible to implement. Retaining that flexibility is now seen as crucial to retaining staff.

Care must be taken, however, to avoid the exploitative consequences of the gig economy and portfolio career. While it might once have been a bastion of freedom for an artist to have a wide-reaching and variable working life, we are now more aware than ever of how the gig economy can be synonymous with falling wages.

Questions of where and what hours we work are just the basics of workplace flexibility – and this flexibility shouldn’t be offered at the expense of other entitlements. Workers with multiple jobs generally aren’t entitled to the sick pay and leave provisions as someone working the same hours at just the one job. We need to move beyond those basics.

We need to start taking more adventurous approaches to understanding what work is, what skills are prized and how those skills are developed.

If we don’t, innovation and productivity will continue to suffer, and the most creative employees will continue to frustrate employers by engaging in classic workplace activism such as the work-to-rule or go-slow protests glamorised today as “quiet quitting”.

Worse, we won’t have any means for unlocking unexpected solutions to the unexpected problems we continue to face.

Ours is an era of compound crises – climate change, fires and floods, housing affordability, cost of living, the rapid spread of disease – and we’re not going to get through these by doing what we’ve always done before.

The best way to secure the jobs and skills of the future is to understand how artists train, and invest in the most creative approaches to education and professional development across our working lifetimes.

This means an approach to education that exercises the hands and the body as well as the mind: making, testing, crafting, performing and experimenting.

Arts education balances theory and practice, invites students to be inventive and rewards risk-taking. It trains an artist’s entire body to think differently and prepare for any scenario. And in doing so, it promotes wellbeing, self-esteem and resilience.

Read more:
Why unions and small business want industry bargaining from the jobs summit – and big business doesn’t

A creative future

Arts Minister Tony Burke – also Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations – held two industry roundtables on Monday to hear from arts leaders who could not attend the jobs summit.

Now, the summit must consider how creative skills can be taught extensively and affordably in Australia – well beyond art, design and humanities programs.

Employers must be trained to recognise and value creative skills, and understand how best to deploy them.

And we need to ensure the working conditions of the future are fair and supportive for everyone.

Only the most creative approaches will secure that future.

Esther Anatolitis heads Test Pattern, an arts and cultural consultancy whose clients have included creative industry and government bodies. The Commonwealth Government is not a current client. Esther is Honorary Associate Professor at RMIT School of Art. Arts and media organisations that she has previously led have received funding from government bodies.

– ref. Creative skills will be crucial to the future of work. They should take centre stage at the jobs summit – https://theconversation.com/creative-skills-will-be-crucial-to-the-future-of-work-they-should-take-centre-stage-at-the-jobs-summit-189680

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Lucy, Deputy Science + Technology Editor

A microscope slide that can diagnose cancer, mapping how what we eat affects the environment, and a volunteer effort tracking bushfire damage. These were just a few of the scientific projects recognised at the 2022 Australian Museum Eureka Prizes, announced in Sydney.

The prizes have been awarded each year since 1990 to recognise contributions to science and the public understanding of science.

The ANSTO Eureka Prize for Innovative Use of Technology went to the NanoMslide team, comprising researchers from La Trobe University, the University of Melbourne, the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, and the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. Their invention uses a special nanotechnology coating for microscope slides for quicker, cheaper cancer diagnosis.

Eric Chow, Christopher Fairley, Catriona Bradshaw, Jane Hocking, Deborah Williamson and Marcus Chen, from Monash University and the University of Melbourne, won the Australian Infectious Diseases Research Centre Eureka Prize for Infectious Diseases Research. Their work on sexually transmitted infections (STIs) uncovered the role of saliva in transmitting STIs and pioneered tailored antibiotic treatments.

The Eureka Prize for Excellence in Interdisciplinary Scientific Research was awarded to Manfred Lenzen, David Raubenheimer, Arunima Malik, Mengyu Li and Navoda Liyana Pathirana from the University of Sydney, for their work on how what we eat affects the environment. They traced billions of supply chains that deliver food to consumers.

Read more:
The world’s affluent must start eating local food to tackle the climate crisis, new research shows

The Environment Recovery Project, run by UNSW and the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research, won the Department of Industry, Science and Resources Eureka Prize for Innovation in Citizen Science. The project gathered 1,600 volunteers to survey the damage caused by the devastating bushfires of 2019–20 and gather data on how the environment is recovering.

UNSW Professor Raina MacIntyre was awarded the Department of Defence Eureka Prize for Leadership in Science and Innovation for her “significant leadership role in the international response to the COVID-19 pandemic”. She has written a range of articles for The Conversation, including an early explainer on the novel coronavirus.

The UNSW Eureka Prize for Scientific Research went to Justin Yerbury of the University of Wollongong. Since his diagnosis with motor neuron disease in 2016, he has made key discoveries about the molecular causes of the disease.

The Australian Museum Research Institute also awarded two medals. One went to Stephen Keable, a former manager of the Marine Invertebrates Collections at the Australian Museum, for his work on marine invertebrates. The second was awarded to Graham Durant, the recently retired director of Questacon, for his service to Australian science and science education.

Read more:
Museum or not? The changing face of curated science, tech, art and culture

Other winners included:

NSW Environment and Heritage Eureka Prize for Applied Environmental Research – Sustainable Farms, Australian National University

Macquarie University Eureka Prize for Outstanding Early Career Researcher – Tess Reynolds, University of Sydney

Celestino Eureka Prize for Promoting Understanding of Science – Veena Sahajwalla, UNSW

Australian Museum Eureka Prize for Science Journalism – Jackson Ryan, CNET

Department of Industry, Science and Resources Eureka Prize for STEM Inclusion – Kirsten Ellis, Monash University

University of Sydney Sleek Geeks Science Eureka Prize — Primary – Genevieve S., Bucasia State School, Qld

University of Sydney Sleek Geeks Science Eureka Prize — Secondary – Iestyn R., St John’s Anglican College, Forest Lake, Qld

Eureka Prize for Emerging Leader in Science – Sumeet Walia, RMIT University

University of Technology Sydney Eureka Prize for Outstanding Mentor of Young Researchers – Paul Wood, Monash University

– ref. Mapping food supply chains, nanotech cancer diagnosis, and tracking bushfire recovery winners at 2022 Eureka Prizes – https://theconversation.com/mapping-food-supply-chains-nanotech-cancer-diagnosis-and-tracking-bushfire-recovery-winners-at-2022-eureka-prizes-189540

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Felicity Deane, Associate Professor, Queensland University of Technology

Businesses and philanthropic organisations are looking to invest in projects to protect and restore nature. We need to make this easier.

Which major political party’s minister said this? If you guessed Labor, correct – it was environment minister Tanya Plibersek last week. But the phrase is strikingly similar to one made by the Coalition’s David Littleproud.

In fact, Labor’s proposed biodiversity market borrows heavily from the previous government’s approach. In brief, landholders would be able to buy and sell biodiversity certificates. A farmer seeking to clear land could buy a certificate created by another farmer who has restored native vegetation elsewhere.

The federal government should tread very carefully here. New South Wales’ environmental offset scheme has been slammed for failing to do what it was meant to do, and with the major problems in Australia’s carbon offset program.

If not designed well, schemes like this can very easily be gamed and fail to actually achieve their goals.

Passing the baton

In February this year, the Morrison government introduced a bill aimed at creating a market for farmers to boost biodiversity on their land. It was heralded as a world first – but that is not quite true.

While both the Coalition and Labor governments want to claim credit for the invention of the scheme, similar biodiversity schemes have been introduced in other countries. The United Kingdom and Canada have matched market-based approaches with policies aimed at ensuring a biodiversity net gain. That is, any biodiversity loss through development must be offset with certificates that represent an even greater biodiversity gain. That is the theory at least.

Read more:
The Morrison government wants farmers to profit from looking after the land – but will anyone want to pay?

The Coalition’s proposed market was designed to reward landholders on farmland with a tradeable certificate when they agreed to undertake projects to protect and enhance native species. These certificates can be sold to a third party, who may use them to compensate for biodiversity loss through development or to support their sustainability goals.

Just six months later, Labor announced a seemingly very similar proposal, though details are currently sparse. We do know Labor’s version is intended to eventually be funded largely by the corporate sector.

This approach could help – but only if planned properly

One key difference is the scale. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese made it clear the market would be open to all land managers, whether farmers, conservationists looking to re-wild land, or Indigenous land managers.

Although the government suggests the scheme would operate in a similar way to existing carbon credit legislation, the rhetoric indicates certificates may not only compensate for projects which cause biodiversity loss, but allow corporations to meet their environmental, social and governance goals. This is potentially legitimate, but could also be used for greenwashing.

Read more:
We can’t stabilise the climate without carbon offsets – so how do we make them work?

The problem is, offsets don’t always work. In the environment sector, offsets are seen as a measure of last resort, which can – depending on the specific transaction – actually lead to an overall loss of species or habitat.

The government must learn from the integrity questions around Australia’s carbon credit scheme.

For a biodiversity market to be effective, you need available land and willing participants, who expect a positive return on investment. That means the price for certificates has to be worth the cost of actually doing restoration work.

And the government must ensure the scheme is watertight, given the major integrity and transparency issues in the carbon credit scheme called out by whistleblowers and academics.

To avoid this, it is vital these biodiversity certificates represent provable biodiversity gains and that the details of these gains are known to any purchasers. Buyers will be a lot more confident if they know the certificates they are buying come from, say, a farmer restoring native vegetation along a previously cleared creek.

The government is aware of this. They are still deciding how best to measure and verify biodiversity benefits. This will be one of the greatest challenges of introducing this scheme.

A biodiversity market cannot stop degradation by itself

Sceptical commentators claim environmental markets are a false solution to a serious ecological emergency. This is true, if we rely on the market approach in isolation.

A biodiversity market is not a silver bullet to our many serious and overlapping environmental problems. Improving the outlook for our many ailing species and ecosystems will require work on many fronts, such as funding protected areas, working to bring back threatened species, tackling land clearing, working on carbon banking and accelerating climate action.

To give the scheme teeth, Australia should look to the UK and Canadian approach of requiring a net environmental gain on a national level.

Many Australian states already require no net loss of biodiversity from developments and policies. Even so, these policies have not always stopped large scale land clearing due to exemptions. Similarly, the loss of one habitat is not always compensated by gain of another habitat. Labor must tighten up these loopholes.

We must see this biodiversity market scheme clearly. It is only one method of improving environmental outcomes in this country. We’ll need many more.

Read more:
‘Environmental accounting’ could revolutionise nature conservation, but Australia has squandered its potential

.

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

– ref. Labor’s biodiversity market scheme needs to be planned well – or it could lead to greenwashing – https://theconversation.com/labors-biodiversity-market-scheme-needs-to-be-planned-well-or-it-could-lead-to-greenwashing-189557

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gemma Paech, Conjoint Senior Lecturer, School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Newcastle

The latest TikTok trend has us listening to brown noise. According to TikTok, this has multiple benefits including helping you relax and quickly fall into a deep asleep.

Getting insufficient sleep, and insomnia are common. So it’s no wonder many people are looking for ways to improve their sleep.

But can brown noise help? If so, how? And what is brown noise anyway?

What is brown noise? Is it like white noise?

Brown noise, the better-known white noise, and even pink noise are examples of sonic hues. These are “constant” noises with minimal sound variation – highs, lows and changing speeds – compared with sounds such as music or someone reading aloud.

What distinguishes brown noise from white or pink is the pitch (or frequency).

White noise describes sound spread evenly across frequencies. It includes low, mid-range and high frequencies, and sounds like radio static.

Pink noise has more low- and less high-frequency sound. It is lower and deeper than white noise, similar to steady rainfall.

Brown noise contains lower frequencies than both white and pink noise. It sounds deeper, similar to a rushing river or rough surf.

Why does noise help some people sleep?

Some people are more sensitive to external stimuli than others. That includes human touch (such as hugs), strong smells, caffeine, bright lights, or noise.

So one person can find a sound soothing or relaxing while another finds it distracting and annoying.

Several theories may explain why some people perceive benefits from sonic hues.

1. Distraction and relaxation

Noise can redirect and distract you from excessive overthinking or worrying. Some research shows listening to music helps people to mentally relax, which may help sleep. However, if your thoughts are worrisome or strong, noise alone may not be enough to distract your busy mind.

2. Sound masking

Our brain continues to process external sounds when we sleep and loud noise can wake us. But masking, through constant background noise, “drowns out” isolated loud noise. In a quiet country town, the same car alarm or dog barking will sound much louder and may be more likely to wake us, than in a busy city centre.

3. Classical conditioning

Classical conditioning is a way of learning and can explain how we respond to noise during sleep. If noise is relaxing, then pairing noise with sleep may improve the person’s ability to fall and remain asleep. In this way, noise is a reinforced stimulus for good sleep. If noise is annoying then it will hinder sleep and be a reinforcing stimulus for interrupted sleep.

4. Auditory stimulation

Auditory stimulation is not specific to pink, white or brown noise. This involves low-frequency tones being played in an attempt to “boost” certain sleep stages (for instance, “deep” sleep), perhaps improving sleep quality.

Read more:
What the nap apps can really tell you about your sleep

So, is TikTok right? Does brown noise work?

Researchers have not specifically examined the impact of brown noise on sleep. However, there is some limited science about the impact of white or pink noise.

Some studies suggest white and pink noise helps us fall asleep quicker and improves sleep quality, but the quality of science is low.

Auditory stimulation may improve memory in young healthy people. Auditory stimulation using pink noise may increase slow-wave sleep (deep sleep) in older people.

Few studies have directly examined how improved sleep using noise benefits daytime mood and functioning. Ultimately, these are the benefits most of us seek from a good night’s sleep.

Read more:
Is it possible to catch up on sleep? We asked five experts

When to get your sleep problems checked out

If you have persistent difficulty falling or remaining asleep, are waking too early, and are feeling unrefreshed during the day, your problems should be checked by a medical professional. Your GP can diagnose, provide treatment options and refer you for treatment if needed.

Relaxation and noise may improve your sleep. However, evidence-based techniques, such as cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia, delivered by a trained health expert, is generally required to address the cause of your sleep issues.

This therapy usually takes place with a psychologist, over four to five sessions. It involves addressing thoughts and behaviours around sleep, looks at why sleep problems may have developed, and how to improve them.

Treating sleep problems appropriately with evidence-based treatments and before they develop into a chronic issue – not relying on recommendations on TikTok – will ultimately lead to better sleep in the long term.

If you’re worried about your sleep, here are some great online resources and fact sheets from the Sleep Health Foundation.

Gemma Paech is a board member of the Sleep Health Foundation.

Gorica Micic 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. What is brown noise? Can this latest TikTok trend really help you sleep? – https://theconversation.com/what-is-brown-noise-can-this-latest-tiktok-trend-really-help-you-sleep-188528

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

Few world leaders have cut a more consequential but ultimately tragic figure than Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, whose death at the age of 91 has been announced by Russian state media.

In a way it was fitting that as the last leader of the USSR, Gorbachev was probably its only truly humane one. And it’s equally sobering that Gorbachev has passed away at a time when political repression in his native Russia has become stifling once more, and the spectre of conflict in Europe which long overshadowed the region during the Cold War has become reality.

These were outcomes Gorbachev strived to avert. He was a man who became associated with opening up Soviet society, encouraging hope and debate rather than stifling it. He sought to revitalise the USSR, foreseeing a coming century of peace in which the Soviet Union joined a “Common European Home”.

Read more:
This December is the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Soviet Union – how does an empire collapse?

Gorbachev’s achievements

Gorbachev’s accomplishments were numerous. They included the negotiation of arms reduction treaties with the United States during a number of summits with US President Ronald Reagan. His suggestion to Reagan in Reykjavik that the US and USSR should eliminate nuclear weapons blindsided a US foreign policy establishment that initially saw Gorbachev as little more than a younger version of the gerontocrats he had succeeded.

After initially vacillating, he admitted the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, accepting that doing so would weaken him both at home and abroad. In 1988 he unilaterally drew down Warsaw Pact forces in Europe without waiting for a reciprocal agreement with NATO nations.

Earlier in his tenure he had developed a personal rapport with Margaret Thatcher, who famously told the BBC he was a man the West could do business with. He withdrew Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1988-9, and admitted their presence was a violation of international law.

He refused to intervene in many of the spontaneous demonstrations seeking to overthrow entrenched communist leaders across the Warsaw Pact, pressuring them not to use force against their own citizens.

And perhaps most notably, he was the chief architect of a grand plan to revitalise the Soviet Union’s economy (through “perestroika”, or restructuring), its society (via “glasnost”, meaning openness), and its politics (“demokratizatsiya”, or democratisation).

Gorbachev’s rise

There were few clues during Gorbachev’s unremarkable rise through the ranks of the “nomenklatura” system of Soviet elites that he would come to champion such a radical program. Born in 1931 as the son of peasant farmers in Stavropol, a region cataclysmically impacted by forced collectivisation of agriculture, Gorbachev followed an established path to influence in Soviet politics.

He joined the Komsomol, the youth league of the Communist Party, and was accepted to study law at Moscow State University. After becoming First Secretary of Stavropol, and then the province’s party chief, he began cultivating an image as a moderate reformer, offering bonuses and private plots of land to farmers who exceeded crop production norms.

Gorbachev’s political career could have ended there. But like many successful political elites, he benefited from networks of patronage, with the Communist Party’s main ideologue Mikhail Suslov and the KGB head Yuri Andropov both seeing him as a valuable fresh face in an increasingly sclerotic Soviet leadership.

Casting himself as a vigorous opponent of corruption, Gorbachev was promoted to the Party’s Central Committee, and then to the Politburo, the main policymaking body of the USSR. When the Communist Party General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev died in 1982, Andropov took the reins and gave Gorbachev increasing control over the economy. He was effectively the second most powerful figure in Soviet politics until he eventually took over as General Secretary in 1985, following the deaths of Andropov a year earlier, and then the ailing General Secretary Konstantin Chernenko.

Although Gorbachev was venerated in the West as the man who ended the Cold War, he became almost equally reviled at home as a foolish leader who brought about something he didn’t even intend: the collapse of the USSR.

And while he will be most remembered in Europe and the US as one of history’s great peacemakers, Russians saw an entirely different face to Gorbachev, as the personification of instability and decline.

By the time the East European communist dominoes fell in 1989, culminating in the tearing down of the Berlin Wall in November and the defection of a large chunk of East Berlin’s workforce to the West virtually overnight, the USSR had lost its empire. It was also in the process of losing its unifying national idea.

The chief reason for this was that Gorbachev’s social reforms were far too successful, while his economic reforms were an abject failure. Perestroika served only to reveal how deeply inefficient and corrupt the Soviet command economy had become. Beginning as a program of economic acceleration, and ultimately morphing into a 500-day plan to shift the Soviet economy from the plan to the market, Gorbachev relied on a new cadre of younger technocrats to push through his reforms while many of the old guard remained in top positions.

Campaigns against alcoholism saw him publicly ridiculed as the “Mineral Water Secretary”, and his wife Raisa’s expensive tastes in Western clothing became an object of popular anger. As the gap between economic performance and the people’s ability to criticise it widened, Gorbachev blinked too late. In 1990, he intervened to put down civil unrest in Baku, and blockaded Lithuania, which had voted for independence.

Read more:
Writing history: 30 years on, a former Moscow correspondent reflects on the end of the USSR

While Gorbachev struggled to hold the USSR together, the old Soviet guard launched a hard-line coup in August 1991, placing Gorbachev under house arrest at his villa in the Black Sea resort town of Foros. Boris Yeltsin, the leader of the Russian Federation, became the face of the resistance, emulating Lenin by climbing onto a tank and demanding Gorbachev’s release as well as free and fair elections. With the Russian army refusing to fire on the crowd of demonstrators, the coup collapsed.

Gorbachev returned to Moscow but as a diminished figure, resigning as General Secretary of the USSR and eventually its President after the constituent parts of the USSR negotiated the end to the Union Treaty and the beginning of their own sovereign statehood. As President of Russia, the main component of the Soviet Union, Yeltsin inherited the USSR’s seat on the UN Security Council and eventually the entirety of its nuclear arsenal.

After losing power, Gorbachev initially ran in Russian presidential elections (never attracting more than a tiny fraction of the vote), wrote books and memoirs, and later as he gradually withdrew from public life came to express his regrets about how history had played out. Gorbachev initially praised Putin’s ability to unite Russia, but as the Russian journalist Alexei Venediktov revealed in 2022, he became bitterly disappointed that Putin had destroyed everything he had worked to create.

Ultimately, the tragedy of Gorbachev was his misplaced faith in Soviet economics, and how badly he mistook the desire of the people of the USSR for national self-determination for a willingness to revitalise the Soviet idea.

Yet his enduring belief in enlightened progress and a preparedness to take risks to achieve it stand in stark contrast to the caricature Russia resembles today, which celebrates what divides rather than what might unite us.

Sadly Gorbachev’s humanism, flawed though it was, has no place in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which has turned its back on modernity, cultivating a culture of victimhood and glorifying Russian chauvinism in the cynical pursuit of personal power.

Like other tragic reformers in history, then, Gorbachev’s chief legacy is to remind us about what might have been, rather than what subsequently transpired.

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

– ref. ‘A consequential but ultimately tragic figure’: last leader of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev dies aged 91 – https://theconversation.com/a-consequential-but-ultimately-tragic-figure-last-leader-of-the-ussr-mikhail-gorbachev-dies-aged-91-189676

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sian Mitchell, Lecturer, Film, Television and Animation, Deakin University

Review: A Beginner’s Guide to Grief, directed by Renée Mao

We all experience grief in different ways. It is a powerful force that can affect our daily lives, making the simplest task feel difficult, at best, or entirely insurmountable at worst.

Grief is messy, surprising, revealing and honest at different times and all at once.

This is what lies at the heart of the SBS comedy A Beginner’s Guide to Grief.

Written by its star, Anna Lindner, and directed by Renée Mao, the six 12-minute episodes follow Harriet “Harry” Wylde as she navigates her way through the five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance also provide the first five episode titles) after losing both her parents to cancer within a week – first her mum and then her dad on the day of her mum’s funeral.

Aunty Barb (Georgina Naidu) is the epitome of “putting on a brave face” as she attempts to offer Harry solace in the knowledge that at least her dad is “now in the arms of our Lord and Saviour”.

Harry’s very Christian Uncle Trev (Rory Walker) and creepy cousin Isaiah (Carlo Ritchie) take over her dad’s funeral preparations with the implication that men can deal with these kinds of emotional situations better.

The most interesting relationship in the series is between Harry and her foster-sister Daisy (Cassandra Sorrell), a pyromaniac who has spent time in prison after lighting a car on fire when she was young.

Their relationship is far from perfect, but Daisy is a welcome relief from the rest of the family’s suffocating presence.

Read more:
Iggy & Ace: a zany Aussie comedy about two gay best friends — and alcohol abuse

Contemporary traumedies

A Beginner’s Guide to Grief joins recent series like Netflix’s Never Have I Ever (2020-) and After Life (2019-2022) that centre on grieving characters who have lost loved ones and are left behind to cope in the aftermath.

These shows have been labelled “traumedies”: narratives that explore feelings of loss and pain presented through a comedic lens.

Traumedies can offer audiences an opportunity for catharsis, processing our feelings of loss and grief – particularly at a time of so much social and cultural upheaval.

Like these international examples, A Beginner’s Guide to Grief invites us to have frank conversations about and acknowledge the impacts of death, dying and grieving openly – rather than bottling those feelings away to maintain an image of strength.

It is through the series’ funniest thread, a self-help audio tape on dealing with grief that Harry listens to each episode, we truly feel permission to laugh at tragedy.

The tape’s grief therapist, brilliantly voiced by Ted Lasso’s Brett Goldstein, provides a bizarre distraction for Harry – and us – as each stage of grief is described in more and more ridiculous ways. Grief, the tape tells us, is:

an overwhelming emotion not unlike […] sitting down to your favourite breakfast cereal but then pouring its milky sweet contents over your lap, smashing the porcelain bowl with nothing but your forehead, and slowly swallowing shard after jagged shard of the broken remains until you realise you are indeed bleeding from your stomach.

A visceral yet poetic description.

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

Grief is a mixed bag

The sixth and final episode, The Next Chapter, initially feels unnecessary. We have moved through the five stages of grief, after all. But Lindner is careful to acknowledge grief is not cured once you’ve reached “acceptance”.

The process of grieving is complex and can’t be miraculously solved by the end of a series.

Life must go on for Harry, but she still has some healing to do.

Throughout the series, flashbacks are interwoven with the present-day, depicting scenes of happier times with her parents next to ones showing the realities and ravages of cancer.

The show is semi-autobiographical. Lindner’s father died from cancer, and her mother was also diagnosed with the disease. She brings a deep perspective on her own grief. “I want people to know that grief and joy don’t just co-exist, but they belong together,” she has said.

A Beginner’s Guide to Grief does not offer a particularly unique perspective on grief, but it is a worthy local entry into the traumedy genre and an excellent example of contemporary Australian short form storytelling.

A Beginner’s Guide to Grief premieres on SBS On Demand on September 4.

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

– ref. A Beginner’s Guide to Grief: joy and sadness belong together in this new Australian ‘traumedy’ – https://theconversation.com/a-beginners-guide-to-grief-joy-and-sadness-belong-together-in-this-new-australian-traumedy-188818

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Byron Lamont, Distinguished Professor Emeritus in Plant Ecology, Curtin University

A major group of flowering plants that are still around today, emerged 150 million years earlier than previously thought, according to a new study published today in Trends in Plant Science. This means flowering plants were around some 50 million years before the dinosaurs.

The plants in question are known as the buckthorn family or Rhamnaceae, a group of trees, shrubs and vines found worldwide. The finding comes from subjecting data on 100-million-year old flowers to powerful molecular clock techniques – as a result, we now know Rhamnaceae arose more than 250 million years ago.

A widespread family

Today, the buckthorn family of shrubs is widespread throughout Africa, Australia, North and South America, Asia and Europe. The important fruit jujube or Chinese date belongs to the Rhamnaceae; other species are used in ornamental horticulture, as sources of medicine, timber and dyes, and to add nitrogen to the soil.

Flowering shoots of the shrub Phylica, now confined to South Africa, have recently been found in amber from Myanmar that is more than 100 million years old.

Together with Tianhua He, a molecular geneticist at Murdoch University, we combined skills to show these new fossils of Phylica could be used to trace the Rhamnaceae family (to which Phylica belongs) back to its origin almost 260 million years ago.

We did this by comparing the DNA of living plants of Phylica against the rate of DNA change over the past 120 million years, to set the molecular clock for the rest of the family.

Older than we could have imagined

It was previously believed that Phylica evolved about 20 million years ago and Rhamnaceae about 100 million years ago, so these new dates are much older than botanists could possibly have imagined. Since Rhamnaceae is not even considered an old member of the flowering plants, this means flowering plants arose more than 300 million years ago – some 50 million years before the rise of the dinosaurs.

But how did Phylica get from the Cape of South Africa to Myanmar? Our data on the history of the plant’s evolution show the most likely path is that Phylica migrated to Madagascar, then to the far north of India (most of which is under the Himalayas now), all of which were joined 120 million years ago.

India then separated and drifted north until it collided with Asia. The far northeast section, known as the Burma tectonic plate, became Myanmar about 60 million years ago. Sap, possibly released by fire-injured conifers, flowed over the Phylica flowers and preserved them intact as amber while India was still attached to Madagascar.

Read more:
How plate tectonics, mountains and deep-sea sediments have maintained Earth’s ‘Goldilocks’ climate

Forged in fires

In fact, the vegetation in which Rhamnaceae evolved was probably subjected to regular fires. The first clue was the charcoal researchers have found together with the Phylica fossils in the amber.

The second is that today, almost all living species in the Phylica subfamily have hard seeds that require fire to stimulate them to germinate.

I assessed the fire-related traits of as many living species as possible, then He traced them onto the evolutionary tree he had created, using a technique called ancestral trait assignment. This showed there was a strong possibility the earliest Rhamnaceae ancestor was fire-prone and produced hard seeds.

We have extensively studied the evolutionary fire history of banksias, which go back 65 million years, along with proteas, pines, wire rushes and the kangaroo paw family.

Our new results make the buckthorn family of plants by far the oldest to show fire-related traits of all the plants we have studied over the past 12 years.

Read more:
Climate change is testing the resilience of native plants to fire, from ash forests to gymea lilies

Dr Tianhua He was a co-author on the published study.

– ref. A new discovery shows major flowering plants are 150 million years older than previously thought – https://theconversation.com/a-new-discovery-shows-major-flowering-plants-are-150-million-years-older-than-previously-thought-189678

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew King, Senior Lecturer in Climate Science, The University of Melbourne

Extreme floods are devastating Pakistan, caused by a combination of heavy monsoon rains and melting glaciers. While Pakistan is no stranger to deadly floods, this event is especially shocking with more than 1,100 people dead so far and many millions more affected.

Pakistan’s climate chief has said one-third of the country is underwater – an area larger than the state of Victoria.

This Northern Hemisphere summer has seen extreme weather event after extreme weather event, from record-breaking drought in Western Europe, the United States and China, to flooding in Japan and South Korea.

This begs the question of the extent climate change is to blame. And, if so, is this what we should expect from now on?

A summer of extremes

The flooding in Pakistan is the latest in a sequence of exceptional disasters in the Northern Hemisphere.

Western Europe and central and eastern China have experienced record-breaking heatwaves and droughts leading to water restrictions. These heatwaves and droughts have also caused crop shortages, which are adding to the rising costs of food around the world.

China was plunged into an energy security crisis. And Italy’s longest river is flowing at one tenth of its usual rate. These droughts and their significant impacts are forecast to continue for the foreseeable future.

Severe downpours have caused floods in places ranging from Dallas in the United States to Seoul in South Korea, which experienced its heaviest torrential rain in a century.

Record-breaking heat extremes have also been recorded in Japan, the central US and in the UK, where temperatures exceeded 40℃ for the first time.

It has also only been a few months since we saw temperatures reach 50℃ ahead of the monsoon rains in northern India and Pakistan.

Putting it into perspective

While it’s true that several of this summer’s extreme events have been exceptional, we normally see more high-impact extreme weather events in Northern Hemisphere summer than any other time. This is because extreme heat, very heavy downpours, and drought are more likely at the warmest time of year.

Two-thirds of the planet’s land and more than 85% of the world’s population are in the Northern Hemisphere. This means there are more people to be affected by extreme weather than in the Southern Hemisphere, making the Northern Hemisphere summer the prime time for disasters to have severe impacts.

Additionally, extreme weather events can occur at the same time over different places, because of large-scale atmospheric waves called “Rossby waves”, which are a naturally occurring phenomenon, like La Niña and El Niño.

Back in 2010, western Russia experienced severe heat and wildfires while Pakistan had some of their worst floods to date. These events were connected by a Rossby wave causing a high pressure pattern to get stuck over western Russia and low pressure to persist over Pakistan.

Rossby waves can also result in heatwaves occurring at the same time, thousands of kilometres apart. Earlier this Northern Hemisphere summer, we saw simultaneous heatwaves strike the western US, western Europe and China.

Rossby waves may well have contributed to simultaneous disasters this summer, but it’s too soon to say for sure.

Read more:
‘Matter of national destiny’: China’s energy crisis sees the world’s top emitter investing in more coal

Climate change and the never-ending extremes

With so many extreme weather events causing mass deaths and large economic and environmental problems, it’s worth considering whether climate change may be making these events worse.

Human-caused climate change has warmed the planet by about 1.2℃ to date and this has caused some types of extreme weather to become more frequent and more intense,
particularly extreme heatwaves and record-high temperatures.

Every heatwave in today’s climate has the fingerprint of climate change resulting from our greenhouse gas emissions. Indeed, rapid analyses have already demonstrated that the human effect on the climate greatly increased the likelihood of the extreme heat in India and Pakistan in May, and the record high UK temperatures in July.

Research also shows climate change is increasing the occurrence of simultaneous heatwaves in the Northern Hemisphere, mainly due to long-term warming.

It’s less clear whether the Rossby wave pattern that causes simultaneous heatwaves in different places is becoming more frequent.

Climate change is also shifting rainfall patterns resulting in worsening drought in some areas, such as in much of Western Europe.

And severe downpours and extreme short-duration heavy rain, such as that seen in Seoul and Dallas in recent weeks, are being intensified by climate change. This is because global warming results in the air being able to hold more moisture – for every 1℃ of warming, the atmosphere can hold 7% more moisture.

Indeed, the heavy rains in Pakistan follow an observed trend towards increasing extreme daily rainfall totals. This area of the world is projected to see a continued intensification of daily and multi-day extreme rain events over summer, as the planet warms.

Read more:
The world endured 2 extra heatwave days per decade since 1950 – but the worst is yet to come

Worse extremes to come

We can expect more extreme weather events in the coming years as global greenhouse gas emissions continue at near-record rates.

Scientists have been predicting worsening extreme weather events – particularly heatwaves – for decades. Now, we are seeing this happen before our eyes.

Some heat extremes in recent years have been far beyond what we thought would happen after just over 1℃ of global warming, such as western North America’s record heat of last summer. But it’s hard to tell if our projections are under-forecasting extreme heat.

In any case, the world must prepare for further possible record-shattering high temperatures in the months, years and decades to come. We need to rapidly decarbonise to limit the damage caused by future extreme events.

Read more:
The UK just hit 40℃ for the first time. It’s a stark reminder of the deadly heat awaiting Australia

Andrew King receives funding from the National Environmental Science Program.

– ref. A climate scientist on the planet’s simultaneous disasters, from Pakistan’s horror floods to Europe’s record drought – https://theconversation.com/a-climate-scientist-on-the-planets-simultaneous-disasters-from-pakistans-horror-floods-to-europes-record-drought-189626

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Lee, Associate Professor in Property and Real Estate, Deakin University

An interest-only home loan, as the name suggests, is where you only pay the interest on a loan and not the principal (the original amount you borrowed).

While authorities such as the Reserve Bank often see them as risky, interest-only loans can be helpful in some circumstances.

If you’re considering an interest-only loan, here’s what you need to know.

Read more:
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How long do they go for?

These loans are typically last for five years at most, before reverting back to principal and interest (where you have to pay back, through regular payments, both interest and the initial sum you borrowed).

You could potentially apply for another interest-only loan after your first one winds up, perhaps by refinancing (where you take a new mortgage to repay an existing loan). But you might not get it – and you’d still have to pay off the principal eventually.

What are the upsides of an interest-only loan?

An interest-only loan means you’ll have more cash available to cover other costs, or invest elsewhere.

You can use a mortgage calculator to work out how much extra cash you’d have if you switched from a principal and interest loan to an interest-only loan. It’s typically hundreds of dollars per week.

This may get you a bit more wriggle room for daily expenses. Or, some people use the extra cash to invest in other things – such as shares – in the hope they can make more money overall and pick up some tax benefits along the way. That’s why interest-only loans are often popular among investors. Of course, this strategy comes with risk.

An interest-only loan may also have a redraw facility, allowing you to add extra payments into the loan (above and beyond the interest) if you want, and withdraw money later when you need cash. This can allow people to avoid a personal loan, which usually has a much higher interest rate.

Regular principal and interest loans may also have a redraw facility but the regular payments of principal are unavailable for redraw. That means less flexibility for the borrower.

What are the downsides?

The interest rates on interest-only loans are generally higher than principal and interest loans.

For example, the RBA July 2022 indicator rate for owner-occupier interest-only rates is 6.31%.

But the equivalent variable rate for principal and interest loans is 5.77% (the indicator rate is just a guide; the actual difference varies from bank to bank).

Interest-only loans can cost you a lot more over time than a regular principal and interest loan.

This means a borrower needs to manage their finances well to ensure they can cover the interest payments now and still have enough to pay down the principal eventually. So you’ll need a plan for how you’re going to do that when the interest-only loan ends.

There is also a risk of a shock – such as job loss, personal crisis or housing crash – causing the borrower to default on the loan altogether.

If the borrower defaults on an interest-only loan, they may lose the house and the bank is left with a debt that was not substantially repaid (because the borrower had not yet made a dent in the principal). It’s a lose-lose situation.

Are interest-only loans common?

Interest-only loans represent 11.3% of all home loans in Australia.

This figure has been trending down over the past five years, due in part to tighter lending restrictions and the fact low interest rates have made principal and interest loans relatively cheap recently.

What does the research say?

One Dutch study found “households that are more risk-averse and less literate are significantly less likely to choose an interest-only mortgage”. This partly due to lower initial repayments and wealthy households preferring the financial flexibility.

Interest-only borrowing has also been found to fuel housing speculation and reduce housing affordability.

A US study found borrowers also tend to default more.

A Danish study found that once the interest-only lower repayment period is over and the loan reverts to principal and interest, those who didn’t make principal repayments suffered a large drop in disposable income.

Financial flexibility comes with a catch

With rates rising, interest-only loans may sound like an appealing way to have more cash available to cover other costs in life.

But just remember financial flexibility comes with a catch. An interest-only loan could be more expensive in the long run.

For some people, that cost will be worth it if it allows them to hold onto the house during a brief tough period or make more money investing elsewhere. But it’s a risk.

And when the interest-only loan ends, you’re still stuck with the task of paying off the money you borrowed from the bank in the first place (with interest).

Read more:
Should I pay off the mortgage ASAP or top up my superannuation? 4 questions to ask yourself

Adrian Lee 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. I’m considering an interest-only home loan. What do I need to know? – https://theconversation.com/im-considering-an-interest-only-home-loan-what-do-i-need-to-know-188817

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

Many parents will understand the frustration of coming home from work to find their teens slumped on the couch with their eyes glued to their phones or the TV.

This is not unusual, and dozens of studies have shown physical activity levels decline during the teenage years. In Australia, less than 10% of older adolescents are getting enough physical activity.

Adolescence is also a time when there is a spike in mental health problems. It is a key period of human development characterised by rapid psychological and biological changes due to the onset of puberty and associated hormones.

During this time young people are developing a sense of identity and independence as they transition into adulthood and establish health-related behaviours. Introducing your teen to high-intensity interval training (HIIT) is one way to get them moving and feeling better.

Read more:
Don’t have time to exercise? Here’s a regimen everyone can squeeze in

What is high-intensity interval training?

High-intensity interval training is a time-efficient form of exercise that involves relatively short yet intense bouts of activity, combined with rest or low intensity activity.

The intensity of the exercise should be around seven to nine out of ten on a scale of perceived exertion.

What are the benefits?

In our recent study, we found two to three high-intensity interval training sessions per week, each lasting about eight minutes, improved students’ aerobic and muscular fitness over the six-month study period. The exercises included things like shuttle runs (running back and forth between two lines) and push-ups.

After the program, students who participated completed on average, four more laps on the shuttle run test, and had small increases in the number of push-ups completed. They also had reductions in the stress hormone cortisol, which we measured in their hair.

There is also emerging evidence that participating in high-intensity interval training can have short- and longer-term benefits for young people’s mental health and cognitive function.

We also conducted a review of studies on high intensity interval training and found participating in a single HIIT session can improve how young people feel.

There is emerging evidence participation in HIIT can improve children’s cognitive function. In this New Zealand study, children participated in video-based HIIT workouts five times a week over a six week period. Compared to a control group, the research team found significant improvements in cognitive control and working memory among children who participated in the HIIT sessions.

Read more:
HIIT workouts: just 15 minutes of intense activity can improve heart health

How to get started and make it enjoyable

1) Start simple: a good starting point is to do 30 seconds of exercise followed by 30 seconds of rest, repeated eight times. We have found this to be effective and enjoyable for teens in a number of studies

2) incorporate variety: we recommend teens complete a variety of aerobic activities (such as shuttle runs, running on the spot, or burpees), and resistance exercises (such as push-ups, squats, or lunges) designed to increase heart rate. And while high-intensity interval training can be done in the living room, changing the exercise setting can also help satisfy your teen’s need for variety. For example, doing a session on the stairs at the beach or park might be more motivating than doing the same session in the backyard

3) modify intensity: as teens improve their fitness, they can increase the duration of the work interval, decrease the rest interval, or increase the total number of intervals completed within a session to ensure they’re getting a good workout

4) make it enjoyable: playing music and exercising with friends and family are strategies that can make high-intensity interval training more enjoyable. Although most people do not feel great in the middle of an intense exercise interval, there is evidence they will feel good about 20 minutes after completing exercise. We’ve found participating in high-intensity interval training increases adolescents’ mood and vitality (energy and alertness). Reminding teens to think about how they’re feeling after participating in a training session helps them experience the psychological benefits

5) use technology: wearable technologies (such as activity trackers and heart rate monitors) can help increase engagement during exercise, as they can provide you with real time heart rate data to see how hard you’re working. While these can be expensive, lower-cost options are available. If you don’t want to design your own sessions, there are thousands of fitness apps and online training videos to choose from.

Participate in a variety of physical activities

High-intensity interval training is a great way to get teens moving and interested in physical activity, but it shouldn’t be the only type of physical activity they undertake. Rather, it should be part of your teen’s physical activity smorgasbord which includes:

• active transport (walking and cycling)

• team and individual sports, such as swimming, football, netball, basketball

• resistance training such as free weights, body weight exercises or exercises using elastic resistance bands to improve muscular fitness

• other forms of recreational activity, such as dancing, surfing, skiing, and mountain biking.

If we want our teens to be active now and into the future, we need to provide them with the motivation, confidence and knowledge to engage in a wide variety of physical activities.

David Lubans receives funding from the Australian Research Council, National Health and Medical Research Council, Medical Research Future Fund and the New South Wales Department of Education.

Angus Leahy receives funding from the Medical Research Future Fund and New South Wales Department of Education.

– ref. Can’t get your teen off the couch? High-intensity interval training might help – https://theconversation.com/cant-get-your-teen-off-the-couch-high-intensity-interval-training-might-help-185033

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Benjamin Kaufman, PhD Candidate, Cities Research Institute, Griffith University

Earlier this month, New Zealand released a new plan for sustainable public transport to start shunting transport emissions from currently 39% of total domestic carbon dioxide production towards net zero.

Transport minister Michael Wood announced the plan would:

support the provision of ‘on-demand’ public transport services […] deliver routes and services that reflect community needs and incentivise the decarbonisation of the fleet.

However, what is missing is a roadmap to achieving these sustainability goals. Decarbonisation of the public transport fleet is already happening in parts of New Zealand and examples of current local best practice can help us understand what can be deployed at a national scale and where it is likely to have the most impact.

In October last year, Auckland Transport (AT) removed a low-performing diesel bus route operating in the suburbs of South Auckland. In its place, they launched AT Local, a fully electric on-demand public transit service powered by a fleet of small, electric vehicles and routed by technology from Liftango.

This cut AT’s annual carbon dioxide emissions by about 100,000kg. Our analysis suggests that appropriate nationwide deployment of on-demand services such as AT Local will help New Zealand reach net-zero targets.

What is on-demand public transit?

Imagine Uber buses: small vehicles operating within a zone and providing trips to and from the destinations you want to go to, when you want to. No more schedules, no more fixed routes. Instead of using physical bus stops, they use virtual stops placed throughout a service area. Drivers are guided by an algorithm that optimises routing for pick-ups and drop-offs.

On-demand services are typically supported by a user app, a driver app and a call centre. Users request rides which are communicated to drivers while trips sometimes pick up other passengers along the way to their destinations. The best part? Unlike private ride shares, they usually cost around the same fare as a traditional bus – and often integrate payments and transfers between services.

Read more:
1 million rides and counting: on-demand services bring public transport to the suburbs

On-demand is unique in its ability to provide a public service that can rival car ownership in terms of flexibility and convenience. It can ultimately improve the reach, frequency and quality of public transport and also helps reduce travel costs for individuals as petrol prices increase, making travel more affordable for low-income New Zealanders.

Each service covers a zone rather than a linear route. This means anyone living in that area now has access to public transit. For those who don’t live close to bus stops, this might be the first time they can use public transit for their daily travels.

In Auckland, our analysis shows AT Local covered 38% more people compared to the previous network, providing access for an additional 6,400 residents in Papakura. The majority of AT Local riders are from the outside of the previous public transit network catchment.

During the month from July 23 to August 22, 69.8% of trips started or ended more than 400m from a bus stop (the industry standard walking distance for access to transit) and 39.7% connected riders to the train network. This shows there is a huge demand from the community for better transit options.

On-demand public transport also provides a higher quality service for riders, picking them up closer to their homes and dropping them at their destinations. For riders who have trouble walking long distances to the bus stop, this is a game changer. Some services deploy wheelchair-accessible vehicles that can be allocated to riders based on their need.

On-demand removes roadblocks to fleet decarbonisation

Electric vehicles are difficult to come by and large electric buses even more so. Without using smaller vehicles, it will be difficult for fleets to fulfil the mandate to purchase only zero-emissions public transport buses by 2025.

On-demand works well with smaller electric vehicles and requires comparatively less charging infrastructure than full-size electric buses. Smaller vehicles are becoming easier to source, making it possible to deploy new on-demand services more quickly.

Reaching emission targets will be much easier if fleets transition to small electric vehicles now rather than having to wait years until electric buses are commonplace.

Read more:
No silver lining for climate change: pain at the petrol pump will do little to get us out of our cars

Developing a nationally scalable roadmap

In order to provide sustainable on-demand public transport, two questions need to be considered:

1. Where should we replace current public transport with on-demand transit?

By first evaluating our current networks, it will become clear which bus routes are performing well and where we could improve services.

The main routes that should be explored for replacement are called feeder or coverage services – ones that meander through neighborhoods providing limited coverage at low frequencies and limited value to customers. By replacing these routes with on-demand, riders can be given more direct access to their main destinations, encouraging people to shift away from private cars.

2. Where should we provide new services that help the most people?

Historically, transit has mainly been focused on serving densely populated urban areas, leaving those in the suburbs and rural regions under or un-served. This has led to large populations of people relying on expensive and polluting cars to complete their daily travels.

On-demand changes this perspective by providing zonal coverage of these areas rather than stop-based routing, providing equal access to all residents.

Delivering on-demand services to the suburbs will bring new riders to transit, as shown in our AT Local analysis. Greenfield residential developments should also be considered for on-demand deployments to allow new home owners to adopt sustainable travel patterns as soon as they move in.

AT Local proves it is possible to rapidly reduce carbon emissions from our public transportation using technology and vehicles already available, while simultaneously increasing a mode shift towards public transport.

Benjamin Kaufman is a PhD candidate at the Griffith University Cities Research Institute and a Transport Academic Scholar funded by the Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads. He also works as a New Mobilities Specialist for Liftango. Previously, he has consulted for global microtransit and micromobility providers Via and Bird.

Ainsley Hughes is an Honorary Associate Lecturer in the Discipline of Geography at the University of Newcastle. She also works as a New Mobilities Specialist for Liftango.

– ref. Electric on-demand public transport is making a difference in Auckland – now it needs to roll out further – https://theconversation.com/electric-on-demand-public-transport-is-making-a-difference-in-auckland-now-it-needs-to-roll-out-further-189438

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Van-Hau Trieu, Senior Lecturer in Information Systems, Deakin University

Social media are increasingly blurring the lines between our personal and professional lives, leaving us at risk of posting sensitive information that could have ramifications far beyond our “friends” list.

Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin recently found this out the hard way after a video of her dancing and drinking with friends, first posted to a private Instagram account, was leaked to the press. Marin was forced to apologise, and even volunteered for a drug test, after enduring a worldwide media storm.

Other kinds of oversharing can have consequences, too. In 2020, police in Australia shared photos of arrested ex-footballer Dani Laidley in a private WhatsApp group, and the photos were then made public. Thirteen officers were suspended or transferred, with some facing charges for privacy and human rights breaches.

Many employers are introducing policies to reduce this kind of risk. Our research shows what drives much online oversharing – and we can offer some tips to keep yourself clear of social media scandal.

The personal and professional risks of oversharing

People have different preferences for boundaries between their professional and personal lives. Some prefer to keep their work relationships formal, while others treat colleagues as friends.

However, even if we choose to maintain strong boundaries between our professional and personal lives, we may still find details of our lives divulged on social media by others.

Research has reported more than half of us feel anxious about family, friends and colleagues sharing information, photos or videos we do not want to be shared publicly. Yet many of us also reveal an inappropriate amount of detail about our own lives (“oversharing”) on social media, and regret it later.

Beyond the potential for embarrassment, indiscriminate sharing on social media can have significant negative consequences for your professional life. Many employers actively use social media to research job candidates, while some employees have lost their jobs due to social media posts.

Emotions drive oversharing

Why are so many of us prone to oversharing? Our research suggests emotions are central.

When we feel strong emotions, we often use social media to communicate with and get support from friends, family and colleagues. We might share good news when we feel happy or excited, or anger and frustration might drive us to vent about our employers.

Read more:
To overshare: the long and gendered history of TMI

When emotional, it is easy for us to cross the boundary between work and social life, underestimating the consequences of social media posts that can quickly go viral.

We have five simple tips for people to avoid oversharing and creating a social media scandal for themselves or others.

1. Set clear boundaries between personal life and work

Be clear about the boundaries between your social life and work. Set rules, limits and acceptable behaviours to protect these boundaries.

Let your friends, colleagues and family know your expectations. If someone oversteps your boundaries, raise your concerns. Consider your relationship with individuals who do not respect your boundaries.

You can also establish boundaries by maintaining separate professional and social accounts on different social media platforms, and only sharing things relevant to work on your professional account.

2. Respect the boundaries of others

Be aware of and respect the boundaries of others. Don’t share photos or videos of others without their permission.

If someone doesn’t want their photo to be taken, video to be recorded or their name to be tagged, respect their wishes. Treat others on social media the same way you would like to be treated.

3. Lock down your social media accounts

Adjust your privacy settings to control who can view your profile and posts.

Most social media platforms provide features to help users protect their privacy online. Facebook’s “Privacy Checkup tool”, for example, lets you see what you’re sharing and with whom.

Also consider what information you place in your profile. If you don’t want your personal social media profile associated with your employer, do not list your employer in your profile.

4. Share consciously to avoid mistakes

Do not use social media when you feel emotional. Especially if you are feeling strong emotions like hurt, anger or excitement, give yourself time to process your feelings before posting.

Ask yourself: How many people will see this post? Would anyone be hurt? Does anyone benefit? Would I feel comfortable if my colleagues or supervisors saw this?

Assume what you share can be seen by your friends, enemies, colleagues, boss and another 5,000 people. Stop if you don’t want any of them to see what you’re thinking about posting.

5. If you do overshare, try to remove unwanted content

Oversharing and accidental posting are not uncommon. If you have posted unwanted content, remove it immediately.

If you are concerned about information about yourself on someone else’s social media, raise your concerns and ask the person who posted to remove it.

If the information has spread through multiple sources, it is a bit tricky, but it is worth trying to contact the website or service that hosts the information or image to remove the content.

If you need further assistance with removing online content, you can also try a content removal service.

Posting is forever

Be aware that nothing shared over social media is private. Even “private” messages can easily be forwarded, screenshotted, posted and shared elsewhere.

You should treat social media content like your personal brand. If you wouldn’t say it to your colleagues and managers, don’t post it online.

Social media can enrich our professional and personal lives, but ill-considered posts and oversharing can be damaging to yourself and others. Being smart on social media is something we need to get better at in our professional lives, just as much as our personal lives.

Read more:
Want to delete your social media, but can’t bring yourself to do it? Here are some ways to take that step

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. Why do people overshare online? 5 expert tips for avoiding social media scandal – https://theconversation.com/why-do-people-overshare-online-5-expert-tips-for-avoiding-social-media-scandal-189528

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joshua Black, PhD Candidate, School of History, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University

When stories about former Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s secret ministerial roles emerged, John Howard was called on by all and sundry for comment. For some, Howard represents stability, convention and commonsense liberalism, a Menzies in our own time. (It is a parallel Howard has carefully cultivated).

But as it happened, Howard was available for comment (reluctantly, it seemed) because he was out promoting his new book, A Sense of Balance, published with HarperCollins Australia. That book offers Howard a powerful platform on which to speak about contemporary politics, national identity, and the state of the modern Liberal Party.

Balancing act

The essence of the 300-page tome is visible on its dustjacket. Here, a suited and serene Howard tells us that “balance” has been a formative Australian characteristic and will “safeguard our future” if we preserve that creed.

The book itself is a strange product, ranging from pointed and incisive (if sometimes provocative) discussion in the early chapters to anecdotal meandering in the later ones.

No less than 120 pages are spent reflecting on the big issues of his own prime ministership and their relevance to the present. His chapter on the Australia-China relationship, for example, is measured and even-handed; his chapter in defence of the Iraq War is far less compelling.

Like so many other conservatives, Howard blames “identity politics”, the “guilt” industry (particularly surrounding Australia’s colonial past) and modern “cancel culture” for much social ill. But he is at least unambiguous in his condemnation of former US President Donald Trump and his brand of politics – balance does not that way lead.

Read more:
View from The Hill: The Liberals would be better off with Morrison out of parliament

The substance of the book is its firm intervention in debates about the modern Liberal Party. He frets about the rise of factionalism in the state organisations, lampooning for instance the tendency of NSW Liberals to schedule competing factional dinners after their state conferences.

He rails against branch stacking and argues the rise of partisan staff in political offices compounds these problems. (The number of political staff continued to expand between 1996 and 2007, we might note.)

Like NSW Labor Minister Rodney Cavalier’s Power Crisis, partisans will find uncomfortable truths in this book.

The trick, Howard says, it to get back to the “broad church” liberalism of the his prime ministerial years. It is “respect for the individual”, “free enterprise”, “strong families”, and the “international liberal order” that define modern liberalism, with the nation-state as its instrument of expression. Climate change need not be a dividing issue among Liberals, he suggests, if nuclear power is placed in the picture. And gender problems should not undermine merit as a “basic Liberal value”. The party cannot be conservative or liberal, he declares: it must be both.

The bigger picture

A Sense of Balance is the latest contribution to a distinct genre of Australian political writing – the Liberal memoir. Since the 1960s, senior Australian Liberals have used their memoirs, written usually in the calmer waters of post-political life, to shape their party’s sense of identity. Given the Liberals have long suffered from, in Gerard Henderson’s terms, a “messiah complex” and a deficient sense of their own history, these books do seem to matter.

Robert Menzies, the party’s inaugural leader and two-time political memoirist, has much to answer for in this respect. His first memoir, Afternoon Light (1967), contained relatively little about his underlying philosophical values and beliefs (other than fealty to the British Crown). In his second book, The Measure of the Years (1970), he defended particular policy actions (such as the Colombo Plan, federal support for universities, and the expansion of the resources sector) but had little to say about liberal ideology. Not even his publishers and correspondents could agree that Menzies was liberal or conservative.

In Menzies’ own telling, liberalism was about “the individual, his rights, and his enterprise”, but the state was helpful in avoiding “large-scale unemployment”, which liberals took seriously in the wake of war and depression in the 1930s and 1940s. Tellingly, he said that the Liberals and the Country Party (today’s Nationals) essentially shared the same philosophy, without specifying what that entailed.

In truth, “anti-socialism” was the only hard and fast principle Menzies emphasised in his memoirs. Beyond that, he argued, a leader’s ideas “will break” if they “will not bend”.

The party chose for itself the name “liberal”, he said in Afternoon Light, because it rejected “reactionary” politics in favour of “progressive” reform. Moderates in the party have repeatedly used this line to attack their conservative opponents in recent years. Howard acknowledges this with scepticism in A Sense of Balance.

Few Liberals wrote memoirs in the decades after Menzies, and when they did, it was usually driven by personal and leadership conflict (especially between John Gorton and Billy McMahon).

But at the end of the Howard years, they began publishing again in earnest. Former treasurer Peter Costello and shadow minister Tony Abbott quickly rushed out books with Melbourne University Publishing. The former (writing with his father-in-law Peter Coleman) set out an agenda of progressive “unfinished business”, while the latter defended but also moderated his brand of social conservatism in the form of Battlelines (2009).

The rush to print

But it was Howard and his prime ministerial predecessor, Malcolm Fraser, who dominated these literary contests. Fraser co-authored a large memoir with independent journalist Margaret Simons, launched by MUP on March 4 2010. They argued that liberalism required humanitarian compassion, respect for the rule of law, and a commitment to promoting individual liberty. Fraser and Simons used their book tour to criticise Australia’s hardline stance on asylum seekers, their fingers pointed firmly at Howard. Human rights activists and cultural influencers celebrated the book, but it was criticised for several years by The Australian.

Howard published a political autobiography, Lazarus Rising, seven months later. Howard identified himself with Menzies’ “forgotten people” – the wage-earners and professionals of the modern middle-class – and stressed the importance of the party’s “broad church” encompassing many philosophies.

The book said much about “freedom” and “fairness”, but was unapologetic about his personal brand of “economic liberalism” and “social conservatism”. Howard promoted the book everywhere from the ABC to 2GB Radio, and was lauded as a “class act” when a protester threw shoes at him and his book on Q&A.

When Malcolm Turnbull published his memoir A Bigger Picture in April 2020, he offered a classic “moderate” liberal through-line in the tradition of Fraser. Turnbull saw himself as a “true” liberal, independent and rational in thought, compassionate where possible, and committed above all to the rule of law. A Bigger Picture was shunned by the Party, but earned Turnbull significant applause at (virtual) writers festivals.

Read more:
Julia Banks’ new book is part of a 50-year tradition of female MPs using memoirs to fight for equality

Return to the ‘broad church’

A Sense of Balance is Howard’s third contribution to the Liberal canon, having published a book about The Menzies Era in 2014. This latest effort, though well timed, trots out the same anecdotes a little too often. Howard’s discourse on the unrepresentativeness of the modern parties is compelling, though qualified by a relatively thin offering of suggested reforms to solve the issue.

Above all, the book is about restating the case for a “broad church” form of liberalism in which moderates and conservatives each have some purchase. For the progressive reader, Howard’s cultural politics remain exasperating. But for those whose task it is to chart a course for the Liberal Party, there are meaningful prompts in this book.

This research is supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship.

– ref. John Howard calls for ‘a sense of balance’, but can he help the Liberal Party find it? – https://theconversation.com/john-howard-calls-for-a-sense-of-balance-but-can-he-help-the-liberal-party-find-it-189059

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christopher Turbill, Senior Lecturer in Animal Ecology, Western Sydney University

Am I not pretty enough? This article is part of The Conversation’s series introducing you to unloved Australian animals that need our help.

Golden-tipped bats are peculiar creatures. By night, they hunt the understorey for orb-weaving spiders, plucking them carefully from their sticky webs. By day, they roost in excavated basements at the bottom of nests made by two rainforest birds.

Unfortunately, while their rainforest nests usually keep them safe from fire, our new research found that’s no longer guaranteed. Rainforests grow in areas normally unburnt by fires. But ahead of the 2019/2020 Black Summer of fire, many of these areas had dried out, setting the stage for fires of unprecedented size and intensity. As a result, large areas of rainforest along the coasts of south-eastern Australia were badly burnt.

Our study confirms expert predictions that rainforest-dependent golden-tipped bats would be hard hit. We found the fires caused a large reduction in suitable habitat.

Why is this rainforest bat so special?

Like birds, Australia’s many bat species come in many different shapes and sizes. Some fly fast in open air while others fly slowly with great agility amongst cluttered vegetation. The delicate golden-tipped bat is a “clutter specialist”, hunting in the understorey and plucking its favourite orb-weaver spiders from their webs without getting caught. Its wings are optimised for slow, careful flight.

Amazingly, golden-tipped bats roost in chambers they dig out underneath the elaborate suspended nests of two birds, the yellow-throated scrubwren and brown gerygone. These birds make their nests in patches of moist vegetation, which infiltrates the dryer eucalypt forests along a network of gully lines, up and down Australia’s east coast.

Read more:
5 remarkable stories of flora and fauna in the aftermath of Australia’s horror bushfire season

The birds have the top bunk, and the tiny bats – all six grams of them – make room in the basement. The woolly, golden-coloured fur of the roosting bats matches their mossy bird-built homes.

These daytime rainforest refuges give these bats access to wet and dry forests, allowing them to forage more widely at night.

Why are fires such bad news in rainforests?

Animals in fire-prone eucalypt forests have evolved mechanisms to cope with bushfires. But rainforest plants and animals have not had to learn these tricks. In rainforests, fire is a rare and destructive event.

Fire events classified as extreme occur infrequently (by definition) and we rarely have an opportunity to measure their impacts on forest wildlife. Climate change has been linked to increasingly dangerous fire weather conditions and more frequent extreme-level megafires in south-eastern Australia.

To find out what this means, our study measured the impact of the 2019/20 megafires on this bat.

What did we do?

A year after the fires, we set harp traps in rainforest sites ranging from badly burnt to entirely unburnt. Our goal was to understand if golden-tipped bats occurred at each site and to use these data to model the effects of the fire on habitat for this species.

The result? At sites where high intensity fire had raged, we found modelled occupancy fell sharply from 90% to 20%. Even a year later, badly burnt rainforest was no longer used by this species.

At burnt sites there were also few scrubwrens and gerygones, and almost none of their nests. On the plus side, in unburnt rainforest, we captured 66 golden-tipped bats, showing this elusive and poorly studied species persists in reasonable numbers.

We attached tiny radio-transmitters to our captured bats to see how they moved and roosted in fire-affected habitat. Tracking bats across steep gullies of thick bush was hard work, as they moved almost daily to new roosts.

The bats chose their roosts in unburnt patches, which wasn’t surprising given that their preferred bird nests were readily consumed by fire. Their avoidance of burnt areas could suggest movements will be limited across fire-affected landscapes.

Our study also tested whether a humble mop head could act as a stop-gap roost for these bats until the scrubwrens and gerygones could return and build new nests.

Why mops? Because these bats have previously been found roosting in an old mop head.

So far, we haven’t recorded them making use of the mops but we will continue to monitor them over the coming breeding season.

What happens if extreme fires become common?

In many dry eucalypt forests, corridors of rainforest following gullies and creeks offer vital food and shelter for wildlife like the golden-tipped bat, significantly increasing local biodiversity.

Climate change poses a threat to rainforest-dependent wildlife in south-eastern Australia, by drying out soils, intensifying drought and increasing severe fire weather. Combined, these make it possible for unburnt rainforest to go up in flames.

Animals that rely on rainforests are not adapted to cope with fire. Increases in frequency of extreme fire events as the world warms will cause major disruption to the forests of south-eastern Australia.

Read more:
A staggering 1.8 million hectares burned in ‘high-severity’ fires during Australia’s Black Summer

Christopher Turbill received funding for this project from Australian Government’s Wildlife and Habitat Bushfire Recovery Program, and receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment, and the Department of Planning and Environment.

– ref. This spider-eating, nest-sharing bat was once safe from fire – until the Black Summer burnt its rainforests – https://theconversation.com/this-spider-eating-nest-sharing-bat-was-once-safe-from-fire-until-the-black-summer-burnt-its-rainforests-187464

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anthony Welch, Professor of Education, University of Sydney

Australia is facing an “unprecedented” teacher shortage. The federal government projects a shortfall of more than 4,000 high school teachers by 2025, but shortages are being felt across the board, especially in rural and remote schools, and in maths and science.

One of the possible solutions being touted by politicians is bringing in more teachers from overseas. This has happened before: in response to teacher shortages in Australia in the 1970s, teachers were brought in from the United Kingdom, United States and Canada.

Education Minister Jason Clare has asked Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil to fast-track visas for those with teaching qualifications. As he said earlier this month:

One of the things that we’ve got to do is prioritise visas for teachers from overseas who want to come and work here.

New South Wales Education Minister Sarah Mitchell has even proposed fast-tracking citizenship for teachers. But how realistic is this strategy when similar countries have their own teacher shortages?

How does it work?

Teachers from New Zealand have automatic recognition of their qualifications. But those from other countries need to meet conditions imposed by state teacher registration boards, or similar bodies.

For urgent cases, employers can apply for limited registration, for individuals who do not (yet) meet such requirements. The Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership also provides skills assessment for overseas trained teachers, and it is also possible to do a bridging course.

Teachers want to quit in the UK

The signs from overseas, where COVID made pre-existing shortages worse, are not encouraging.

In England, a recent survey revealed 70% of teachers had considered resigning, with poor pay cited as a key factor by more than half of respondents. Another survey showed almost 50% of head teachers or principals planned to resign after the COVID pandemic, citing crushing workloads, poor pay and difficulties recruiting staff.

Lack of staff has already lead the UK to combine classes and it is now looking to recruit foreign teachers, including from Australia.

Extreme measures in the US

The US is following a similar trend: widespread teacher shortages compounded by the COVID pandemic. A pre-pandemic survey in 2018 estimated the shortage at 112,000, particularly in maths, science and special education.

A 2021 survey has since revealed 75% of school principals and districts were having trouble finding enough substitute staff to cover teacher absences.

Read more:
The most recent efforts to combat teacher shortages don’t address the real problems

States are having to resort to extreme measures to fill teaching positions during the pandemic. One school district in Texas asked parents to work as substitutes to fill the shortage. Some Texan schools have also moved to a four-day week.

Meanwhile, New Mexico has used National Guard members and state employees as volunteer substitute teachers to cover COVID shortages. Arizona now allows people without a college degree to begin teaching (as long as they’re enrolled in a degree).

Several states are already working with job agencies to find qualified foreign teachers.

Retired teachers back in Canadian classrooms

Canada is also suffering from a significant teacher shortage, especially in special needs, early childhood and at the upper secondary level.

High levels of teacher attrition (as much as 40% in the first five years of service in some provinces) is blamed.

The pool of substitute teachers has also shrunk. In Quebec, British Columbia and Ontario, school boards are contacting retired teachers and instructors without certification to fill gaps. Saskatchewan and Ontario are offering final year education students temporary permits as substitute teachers.

Manitoba has introduced a “condensed training program” of 30 hours, that promises to teach basic classroom skills to those with a limited teaching permit.

Canada is also searching internationally. Somewhat like the priority accorded to skilled workers in Australia’s migration scheme, Canada’s Federal Skilled Worker program allocates substantial points to those with foreign education credentials, including teachers.

Migration unlikely to work

So, if migration is seen as a solution to Australia’s teaching shortage, the question needs to be asked: where are they going to come from?

Read more:
It’s great education ministers agree the teacher shortage is a problem, but their new plan ignores the root causes

Although poor pay in the UK and some states in the US might make Australia seem attractive, current teacher shortages in England, the US and Canada make it unlikely that many will be found there.

While it is possible teachers can be found in other countries, such as India, Malaysia and Singapore, they are unlikely to be found in significant numbers, partly due to lengthy registration procedures and some discrimination when seeking employment.

A more likely scenario is of intensifying international competition for a shrinking pool of qualified teachers around the world.

Anthony Welch 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. Teacher shortages are a global problem – ‘prioritising’ Australian visas won’t solve ours – https://theconversation.com/teacher-shortages-are-a-global-problem-prioritising-australian-visas-wont-solve-ours-189468

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Erin Harrington, Senior Lecturer in English and Cultural Studies, University of Canterbury

The premiere episode of Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon, The Heirs of the Dragon, establishes its central themes of gender and power in a bloody fashion. Its shocking depiction of a fatal cesarean birth is notable for its brutality – but also for how it reflects on histories of pregnant representation and reproductive politics.

The series dramatises a civil war in which factions of the Targaryen family fight for the Iron Throne of Westeros. As we start, young Princess Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) has been overlooked by her father, King Viserys (Paddy Consedine). He desires a male heir, even as queen consort Aemma (Sian Brooke) suffers through stillbirths and miscarriages.

We quickly see how women are at the mercy of men’s decisions. “Here you are surrounded by attendants all focused on the babe – someone must attend to you”, says Rhaenyra to her heavily pregnant mother. “This discomfort is how we serve the realm”, Aemma replies; “The childbed is our battlefield”.

The king calls a tournament to celebrate the impending birth of what he hopes will be a male heir. Violent, rhythmic scenes showing knights jousting and bludgeoning each other to a bloody pulp are crosscut with upsetting images of Aemma’s labour.

Brutality and betrayal

Showrunner Miguel Sapochnik, speaking with the Los Angeles Times, notes that as with Game of Thrones’ battles, each birth on this show will explore a theme. This theme was “torture”.

The baby is breech, and the labour difficult. A male doctor tells the king that fathers must make impossible choices. Viserys quietly approves a plan to cut the baby out, in the hope that it is a boy.

It is a terrible betrayal: he holds Aemma’s hand while she is restrained and sliced open. She bleeds to death – and her newborn son only lives a short while. It is a shocking depiction of the world’s priorities.

Read more:
Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon confirms there will be no sexual violence on screen. Here’s why that’s important

Pregnancy in visual culture

Beyond its brutality, the scene illustrates vividly changes to the visibility of pregnancy in visual culture.

Throughout most of the 20th century, pregnancy and birth were largely invisible in visual media. Pregnancy was deemed private and domestic, even vulgar. Notably, scenes of childbirth were banned and pregnancy deemed taboo in Hollywood films from 1927-68, thanks to various censorship regimes. Later, pregnant actors in television series would be written out, or have their bodies hidden through costuming or editing.

Now, images of pregnancy and childbirth are significantly more visible and varied. A watershed moment came in 1991 when Annie Leibovitz’s impactful (and controversial) portrait of Demi Moore – naked, beatific, and 7 months pregnant – graced the front cover of Vanity Fair. It challenged the notion that pregnant bodies should be hidden.

More recently, British series such as historical drama Call the Midwife and the docu-drama One Born Every Minute, and American film Tully, have foregrounded female-led emotional and realistic representations of pregnancy and birth.

Pregnancies are more likely to be written in, not out, of television series. We have also seen the slow rise of sexy maternity fashion that shows off one’s “baby bump”, recently exemplified by singer and entrepreneur Rihanna’s boundary-pushing outfits. The overt images of Aemma’s pregnant body sit within this cultural shift.

Read more:
Madness, miscarriages and incest: as in House of the Dragon, real-life royal families have seen it all throughout history

Monstrous births and bodily autonomy

But this scene’s graphic nature is unusual in mainstream media. Instead, it resonates with the long history of monstrous births in science fiction and horror.

These genres offer a subversive language with which to explore reproductive anxieties openly. The paranoia and gaslighting in Rosemary’s Baby (1968), the chest-bursting scene in Alien (1979), the gruesome forced caesarean in A’ l’Interieur (2007), and the maternal dread in Mother! (2017) all illustrate fears about embodiment, maternity and personhood.

The content and tone of this scene, and its place as an inciting incident within the series’ narrative, also reflects contemporary issues regarding women’s bodily autonomy. These speak to widespread cultural tensions about the competing rights of the adult and the unborn.

This is an issue everywhere, but currently has particular political resonance in the United States in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade. This has quickly opened the doors to oppressive bans on abortion in some US states, even in cases where a pregnancy endangers the life of the mother.

At its most conservative and adversarial, this positions female reproductive bodies as little more than vessels. This misogynistic position suggests that an unborn person has more of a right to life than an adult subject, and that a woman does not have the right to make choices about her own life and body. It is dehumanising.

House of the Dragon dramatises this dynamic in the context of a deeply patriarchal system that is in ways not that far removed form our own. A war of succession is prompted because a society can’t countenance the idea of a woman taking the throne.

In a show that is interested in exploring the dynamics of gender and power through the lens of medieval fantasy, the conflict is not just that of ambitious uncle against powerful niece, but whether a woman has a right to be more than a womb.

Erin Harrington 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. Torturous births in House of the Dragon dramatise the question of whether women deserve to be more than just a womb – https://theconversation.com/torturous-births-in-house-of-the-dragon-dramatise-the-question-of-whether-women-deserve-to-be-more-than-just-a-womb-189529

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Barrett, Associate Professor in Commercial Law and Taxation, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

Tax has again become an election issue, more than 12 months before voters go to the polls. Part of the current debate centres around tax brackets and whether the current cut-off points are fair.

New Zealand’s income tax system uses progressive rates. Higher slices of income are taxed at higher rates. Every dollar earned up to NZ$14,000 is taxed at 10.5%. Income above that level is progressively taxed higher until the final tax rate of 39% applies to every dollar earned over $180,000.

“Fiscal drag”, sometimes known as “bracket creep”, occurs when an increase in a taxpayer’s income takes their highest slice of income into a higher tax bracket without an increase in real income. This often happens when wages rise to compensate for inflation but tax bands are not adjusted.

The return of inflation

Addressing fiscal drag was an important policy focus in the last decades of the 20th century as countries tried to manage persistent inflation. But since 2000, most economically developed countries have experienced no or low inflation, putting fiscal drag on the back burner.

The COVID pandemic, however, led to supply chain interruptions and labour shortages. As a consequence, many countries are experiencing rates of inflation not seen for decades.

Arguments for linking income tax brackets to rising costs of living, also known as index linking, didn’t disappear in the era of low or no inflation but have recently been revived, including by the National Party.

While fiscal drag could be considered tax increase by stealth, when the Tax Working Group delivered its final report in 2019 the authors noted that “whether fiscal drag is of sufficient concern is a value judgement”.

Responding to fiscal fiscal drag

While the decision to address fiscal drag may be a value judgement, it’s worth understanding what it is and why successive governments have not fixed what intuitively appears to be an unfairness in the tax system.

Governments have long relied on inflation to reduce the real value of government debt. This allows them to take advantage of fiscal drag in times of economic rebuilding – notably when debt is high in comparison with gross domestic product, as they are now in many countries (though not currently in New Zealand).

However, if a government considers fiscal drag to be of sufficient concern, the most direct ways of overcoming the problem are to have a flat rate of income tax or to link tax brackets to an inflation measure, such as a consumer price index.

Read more:
Inflation is 2022’s boogeyman. How can we address rising living costs, while helping bring it down?

A flat rate of income tax would skew the overall tax system away from the usual expectation of ability to pay, with the wealthy benefiting the most. But index linking is, in effect, a tax cut that reduces a government’s capacity to provide public services.

The National-led government of John Key considered changing tax bands but recognised this would affect the funding of public services. In effect, they opted for fiscal drag. At the same time, Key’s government increased the rate of GST. If consumers keep spending during periods of rising inflation, the government’s GST take will also increase.

Current revenue minister David Parker has a different approach. He opposes readjustment of tax brackets in favour of identifying untaxed income, although it’s not obvious these are mutually exclusive.

Focusing on the middle

Different taxpayers are affected differently by tax increases, including fiscal drag. While many people will focus on their marginal tax rate – the tax rate paid on every extra dollar they earn – the focus should lie with average tax paid.

Let’s take the example of Anna who earns an income of $48,000. Her salary puts her right at the upper limit of the $14,000–$48,000 tax bracket. Her marginal tax rate is 17.5% but her average tax rate is 15.46%. If she receives a 5% salary increase, her marginal tax rate will rise to 30% and her average rate will be 16.15%.

Compare this with Bella who earns an income of $65,000 – placing her under the upper limit of $70,000 for the 30% tax bracket. Her marginal rate is also 30% but her average rate is 20.76%. So, crossing a bracket threshold and having more of your income taxed in a higher band increases your average tax rate. Fiscal drag affects both.

Read more:
With their conservative promises, Labour and National lock in existing unfairness in New Zealand’s tax system

Employees have little scope for reducing their taxable income and so may be affected more than some other earners. Research into tax bunching around so-called “kink points” (income levels just below a higher tax rate) indicates that non-employees – business people and contractors – are able to manipulate their incomes to ensure they fall below a higher tax bracket.

A tradie, for example, may inflate their expenses. A company director may retain funds within the company which is taxed at a flat rate of 28%.

From a policy perspective, therefore, it’s important to understand who is most affected by fiscal drag. Such an understanding might lead to increases in lower tax bands but not higher ones.

Drag less noticeable than a tax increase

Why do many employees not seem to care about fiscal drag? Perhaps it’s because, psychologically, it doesn’t feel the same as an overt tax increase. Even if the real value of your pay decreases, the amount you take home is stable.

Conversely, index linking may not feel like a tax cut. People understand that prices are rising but they may not necessarily link inflation to their tax levels.

We may hope for full transparency on the part of government, but some obscurity is inherent in the tax system. As Louis XIV’s finance minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert once observed, “the art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing.”

That hissing may grow louder as taxpayers increasingly experience fiscal drag.

Jonathan Barrett 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. Feeling that fiscal drag? Why you could be worse off even if your pay has gone up – https://theconversation.com/feeling-that-fiscal-drag-why-you-could-be-worse-off-even-if-your-pay-has-gone-up-188287

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

For Treasurer Jim Chalmers, this week’s jobs and skills summit is the prelude to what will be his main game, the October budget.

The summit, to be held in Canberra on Thursday and Friday, still has many moving parts, notably in the intense debate we’re hearing about what changes should be made to the wages system. But Chalmers can already welcome “a broad appetite” for raising permanent migration from the present cap of 160,000.

“We’ve got these skills and labour shortages running rampant through our economy,” he says. “So we need to move on this front, as well as other fronts simultaneously – not as a substitute for doing something meaningful on skills and training, but in addition to doing that”.

He accepts that boosting immigration will impose pressures, notably on housing. “That’s why I’ve been speaking a lot in the last week or so about housing, trying to work with the super funds and other big investors to see where we can incentivise some more investment in housing.”

On skills and training, Anthony Albanese will speak to premiers on Wednesday about “some of the things we might be able to advance”.

Ahead of the summit, Chalmers has been pleasantly surprised he’s had to do less beating back demands than he’d expected. “I thought that there was a risk that I’d just be sent a whole bunch of invoices for big, expensive policy ideas and asked to sort it out.” But people had recognised the constraints of the debt situation and that everything couldn’t be funded.

So for him, “there’s been less of the saying no, and there’s been more facilitating really productive conversations.”

Looking to the budget, Chalmers says it will be “very workmanlike” and not a great surprise packet. “I think it will be a budget where people know what’s coming.”

Despite calls for the government’s childcare package to be brought forward, Chalmers says the start date will remain at July next year. Acceleration was ruled out because of expense and possible operational difficulties.

He has an “open mind” on allowing older people to work more without losing their pension but “we would need to make sure that the costs would be worth it”.

“A theme of the budget will be around resilience – at a personal level, the community level, and at the national level,” Chalmers says.

A decade of conflict and “warped priorities” has made the Australian economy and its people more vulnerable to international shocks and health shocks, he says. “So my job, as I see it, and our job as a government is to take a community and an economy and a budget which is more vulnerable than it should be and to make it more resilient.

“And that’s why implementing our commitments, providing cost of living relief, trying to get value for money in the budget, dealing with the issues in the labour market [are] all so important.”

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. Treasurer Chalmers on boosting migration and a ‘resilience’ budget – https://theconversation.com/treasurer-chalmers-on-boosting-migration-and-a-resilience-budget-189632

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

In December 2018, former professional rugby league player and high school teacher Chris Dawson, then aged 70, was arrested and charged with murdering his wife Lynette almost forty years previously.

Today, in the Supreme Court of New South Wales, Justice Ian Harrison declared: “I am satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the only rational inference (is that) Lynette Dawson died on or about 8 January 1982 as a result of a conscious or voluntary act committed by Christopher Dawson”.

Thus he found Dawson guilty of her murder. Dawson has now had his bail revoked and has been remanded in custody pending sentence.

How did we get here?

Beyond reasonable doubt

Lynette Dawson had gone missing from her home at Bayview in Sydney’s northern beaches between January 8 and 9, 1982. Soon thereafter Chris Dawson reported the disappearance to police.

He thereafter moved his teenage lover, referred to in the trial as “JC”, into his home. They later married.

After an acrimonious divorce, JC went to police and said she believed her former husband had murdered Lynette. A police investigation began, and JC was to become a key witness against him.

Justice Harrison presided over the trial without the benefit of a jury because of a perception that the publicity in the lead up to Dawson being charged was so prejudicial that a jury could not have been able to exercise their fact-finding without bias.

The prosecution case was that Dawson murdered Lynette so he could have an “unfettered” relationship with JC whom he had met when she was a year 11 student.

Dawson’s defence counsel, Pauline David, argued, to the contrary, that there was no weapon, and nor was there any forensic or scientific evidence of any murder. She questioned how the accused could have killed his wife and carried her body out to his car when the car was parked outside.

Defence arguments are always designed to raise doubts. In this case they failed. Justice Harrison said he was persuaded beyond reasonable doubt that the prosecution had made out their case.

Dawson has always maintained he was not involved with Lynette’s disappearance. Her body has never been found.

The Teacher’s Pet

What makes this case so interesting is that a journalist with The Australian, Hedley Thomas, had engaged in his own fact-finding exercise.

He was scathing of the police investigation. He published a podcast, The Teacher’s Pet, which was broadcast between May and December 2018. It reached an estimated audience of 60 million listeners in which Thomas presented evidence that he maintained pointed clearly to Dawson’s guilt.

The podcast was taken offline in 2019 to avoid prejudicing the trial and influencing potential prosecution witnesses.

Notwithstanding, Dawson’s defence team attempted, unsuccessfully as it turned out, to get a permanent “stay of proceedings” (meaning the prosecution is halted in its tracks) on the basis that the podcast was so prejudicial that their client would not be able to get a fair trial.

Indeed, Thomas had been criticised for his extrajudicial enthusiasm, but Justice Elizabeth Fullerton, who heard the application to stay proceedings, was unmoved by the defence team’s pleading.

There are two other extraordinary features of this case. The first is that unedited conversations that Thomas had recorded were used as evidence in the trial, notwithstanding that the persons who were being interviewed would not have received the usual formal warnings concerning the use to which those interviews may later have been put.

Second, the trial judge heard that former NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller had directed senior investigating police to join Thomas for lunch at a Surry Hills restaurant before Dawson was charged. While such a conversation is not damning of a prosecution case, it can be frowned upon for police to engage in familial interviews with persons who have had no direct evidence of the matters at hand and who have formed their own conclusions concerning guilt and innocence.

It’s not uncommon for a journalist to go into bat for a person whom he or she thinks has been wrongly convicted. One of the more celebrated cases involved the conviction of Edward Splatt for the murder in Adelaide of Rosa Simper in 1977. The fearless case mounted by Stewart Cockburn in publishing a series of articles in May 1981 led to a Royal Commission and, finally, Splatt’s exoneration after he had spent more than six years behind bars.

But it’s highly unusual for a journalist to pursue someone he thinks has been involved in foul play, and to do so by publishing a popular podcast that presents a particular view of the facts in dispute. As he and his editors knew, the podcast would stray perilously close to being so prejudicial as to prevent the trial ever proceeding.

That being said, the trial verdict is one that will give Hedley Thomas enormous gratification, and is a clear victory for dogged investigative journalism.

But watch this space – Dawson’s lawyers have flagged an appeal.

Rick Sarre is affiliated with the SA Labor Party and the SA Council for Civil Liberties.

– ref. ‘A clear victory for dogged investigative journalism’: Chris Dawson found guilty of murdering wife Lynette in 1982 – https://theconversation.com/a-clear-victory-for-dogged-investigative-journalism-chris-dawson-found-guilty-of-murdering-wife-lynette-in-1982-189625

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ana Estefanía Carballo, Honorary Research Fellow in Mining and Society, School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, The University of Melbourne

Chile may soon be the second country in the world to grant constitutional rights to nature, under astoundingly progressive reforms proposed by the government. If approved in the national referendum on 4 September, the new constitution would deliver profound changes to the country.

It’s no surprise that 50 of the 387 constitutional provisions concern the environment. Like Australia, Chile is facing mounting environmental pressures. This includes an escalating water crisis made significantly more challenging by the mining industry, long seen as a key pillar of the economy.

The proposed constitution seeks to rapidly pivot Chile toward ecological democracy, one that can transition an economy long dependent on mineral extraction toward cleaner, less resource-intensive, and more socially just forms of living – _buen vivir_.

While the votes aren’t yet in, there are valuable lessons in this process for Australia and other countries grappling with similar concerns.

An era of change

This era of constitutional change began in 2019, when over one million Chileans took to the streets to voice their discontent over economic and social conditions in the country.

Initially unstructured and spontaneous, the protests were sparked by an increase in public transport costs, but quickly coalesced into a widespread constitutional crisis.

This crisis was an outcry against the deeply entrenched socio-economic inequalities seen as rooted in and perpetuated by the country’s legal framework. This is a legacy of the Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990), which saw soaring wealth inequalities and power concentrated in the hands of business elites and private corporations.

Read more:
Chile’s political crisis is another brutal legacy of long-dead dictator Pinochet

In the face of both social and ecological breakdown, further intensified by the arrival of COVID-19, over 80% of Chileans voted in favour of re-writing the constitution in 2020.

In May 2021, a constitutional convention was elected, formed by 155 representatives from across the country. Notably, 50% of them were women, and it was led by Mapuche linguist and Indigenous rights activist Elisa Loncón.

In July 2022, the convention delivered the much-anticipated draft constitution, which was immediately heralded by supporters as an “ecological constitution”.

What are the reforms?

Over the last decade, both Ecuador and Bolivia have been at the global forefront of advocating for the “rights of nature” or “the rights of Mother Earth”. These rights have made it possible to bring cases on behalf of ecosystems into courts, and to challenge the extractive imperatives of state ministries.

The proposed changes to Chile’s constitution build on these experiments, but take them considerably further.

Not only would Chile become the second nation after Ecuador to grant nature constitutional rights, they would also create an “ombudsman for nature” tasked with monitoring and enforcing them. According to the draft text, it would be the duty of the “state and society to protect and respect these rights”.

Citizens would also be empowered to bring environmental lawsuits, even before an environmental impact assessment has been approved. The monitoring of these rights would extend all the way down to the local level, decentralising environmental regulatory authority that has historically been concentrated in the capital of Santiago.

But perhaps even more significant are the proposals aiming to reverse another legacy of the Pinochet dictatorship: Chile’s decades-long privatisation of water.

Chile is in an unprecedented water crisis, with over half of its 19 million people living in areas of severe water scarcity. Communities have fought numerous legal battles against extractive companies over a water allocation system that’s strongly biased toward industry.

Read more:
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Articles in the proposed constitution concerning water rights, the human rights of water, and the protection of glaciers and wetlands significantly roll back these trends. They declare that water is not a commodity but, instead, incomerciable or “unsellable”.

Overturning this decades-long controversial market mechanism is the direct result of involving social and Indigenous movements in the constitutional process. It reflects and affirms their often-repeated recognition that Agua es vida, or “water is life”.

Beyond enshrining water protection measures, the draft constitution represents a renewed effort to bolster Chile’s natural resources governance, a move with significant impacts on the mining industry. It specifies that exploration and exploitation of mineral resources should ensure environmental protection and the interest of future generations.

There are also requirements to ensure sustainable management of land sites after a mine has closed, and for the promotion of value chain linkages (where mineral processing occurs in the country and benefits its people).

Read more:
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Such considerations are particularly crucial for the global transition towards renewable energy, which poses high demands on Chile’s copper and lithium industry, minerals used for energy storage.

The global rush for these minerals is increasing governance challenges and putting pressure on communities already under environmental and water stress. Strong legal support for a more equitable, fair and sustainable governance framework is imperative.

Lessons for the world

Many questions remain about how these reforms would be put into practice. Nevertheless, they represent the culmination of dialogue between sectors that have historically been excluded from political power.

Australia has much to learn from this process. Most important, perhaps, is that despite the resistance of pro-market sectors, including the mining industry, sweeping and rapid transformations are indeed imaginable in the climate crisis. Other worlds are possible. Other forms of democratic practices are possible.

Addressing climate change while ensuring a sustainable energy transition with inter-generational and inter-cultural equity means prioritising the voices of those who have been systematically excluded – particularly Indigenous communities. Australia would do well to heed this lesson.

And the lessons aren’t just for Australia. While many countries have reluctantly acknowledged the climate emergency that continues to engulf us, Chile is nearly alone globally in acting with the sense of urgency required. What it has already achieved is historic.

From an outcry in the streets to the election of an outstandingly diverse constitutional convention, Chile has crafted one of the most progressive and environmentally conscious legal texts on the planet. Chile’s experience demonstrates that bold, just, and democratic action is not only possible, but necessary.

Read more:
Chile abolishes its dictatorship-era constitution in groundbreaking vote for a more inclusive democracy

Ana Estefanía Carballo is a Research and Programme Manager, Accountable Mining, Transparency International Australia.

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

– ref. ‘One of the most progressive and environmentally conscious legal texts on the planet’: Chile’s proposed constitution and its lessons for Australia – https://theconversation.com/one-of-the-most-progressive-and-environmentally-conscious-legal-texts-on-the-planet-chiles-proposed-constitution-and-its-lessons-for-australia-189389

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Deborah Gleeson, Associate Professor in Public Health, La Trobe University

Inequitable access to COVID-19 vaccines has turned out to be the catastrophic moral failure the World Health Organization’s director-general warned about at the beginning of 2021.

International efforts to equitably distribute COVID-19 vaccine doses failed miserably during 2020-2021, when wealthy countries bought up the bulk of the global supply, leaving insufficient doses for countries that couldn’t afford to buy vaccines on the private market. This resulted in hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths in low-income countries.

Unsettling (and familiar) trends emerge

Even today, with more than 12.5 billion doses now administered around the world, only around one in five people in low income countries have yet received a dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. And because the underlying problems of equitable distribution of previous vaccines haven’t been solved, inequitable access to monkeypox vaccines is set to be the next global disgrace.

Already we’re seeing the same patterns emerge: vaccine nationalism, as wealthy countries hoard the limited doses available, and exclusive rights to make medical products that are carefully protected by pharmaceutical companies in the West, while poor countries go without access to both the existing supply or the means to make their own.

Read more:
Monkeypox in Australia: should you be worried? And who can get the vaccine?

If we don’t reverse these trends, it will be very difficult to bring the monkeypox epidemic under control globally, and poor countries will once again bear the brunt of the health and economic effects.

Monkeypox or MPX: a public health emergency that calls for global solidarity

Monkeypox does not present the same level of threat as COVID-19, but it is still a major public health problem, with more than 44,000 cases reported in at least 99 countries since the beginning of 2022.

So far, most cases in 2022 have been in men who have sex with men, but anyone can get monkeypox. Some population groups, including young children, pregnant women and those with compromised immune systems are at greater risk of severe disease.

To reduce the risk of stigma associated with the term monkeypox, the World Health Organization is planning to change its name. A new name has not yet been announced, but many community organisations have started using MPX or similar terms.

Read more:
We need to talk about monkeypox without shame and blame

The 2022 outbreak is the first time there has been sustained transmission of MPX outside of Africa. The seriousness of the situation is reflected in the WHO’s decision to declare it a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) on July 23.

The global pattern of MPX cases and deaths

During the 2022 outbreak, the overwhelming majority of MPX cases have been reported in the Americas and Europe, accounting for over 62% and almost 37% of cases respectively in the last four weeks. Almost 89% of cases have been reported in the United States, Spain, Brazil, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Peru, Canada, the Netherlands and Portugal. Currently, new infections appear to be declining in Europe, but continuing to rise quickly in the United States.

Human cases of MPX have been reported in central and west Africa since 1970, but in 2022, there have been only 350 confirmed cases in these regions reported to WHO, representing 1% of global cases. However, Africa is over-represented when it comes to deaths. Six of the 13 deaths reported to WHO in the current outbreak (46%) have occurred in West and Central Africa.

During the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, thousands of MPX cases and hundreds of deaths occurred in Africa, according to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC). But this situation drew little international attention, and the continent had no access to vaccines.

Vaccines for MPX are in short supply

Fortunately, there are several smallpox vaccines that can be used to prevent MPX.

The preferred vaccine is Modified Vaccinia Ankara – Bavarian Nordic (MVA-BN), a third-generation vaccine that has fewer side effects than older vaccines and can be safely administered to immunocompromised people and pregnant women. Two doses are needed to provide sufficient protection.

One company in Denmark, Bavarian Nordic, is the only supplier of MVA-BN. Its factory has reportedly been closed for months due to a planned expansion, and is not expected to be able to produce new doses until 2023.

According to the WHO, there are approximately 16 million existing doses of MVA-BN. Most of these are in bulk form rather than ready for use.

It’s currently unclear exactly how many doses will be needed to bring the outbreak under control, but 16 million doses may not be enough, especially if they are unequally distributed rather than available to the most high-risk groups in each country.

Wealthy countries are hoarding existing vaccine supplies

Most of the 16 million or so vaccine doses are either owned by or contracted to the United States, which funded some aspects of the vaccine’s development. Millions of doses made from the bulk vaccine will be “filled and finished” at facilities owned by the US government or by US-based companies.

Other wealthy countries have raced to secure doses from the remaining supply. The European Commission announced it had secured approximately 109 million doses from Bavarian Nordic in June 2022 and a further 54,000 doses in July.

The UK has also secured more than 100,000 doses, and Canada has also reportedly signed a multi-million dollar contract for a supply of the vaccine.

On August 4, Health Minister Mark Butler announced that Australia had ordered 450,000 Jynneos doses, of which 22,000 would arrive the same week and the remainder over 2022-2023.

While WHO has asked countries that have doses to share them, there is no sign this is happening to date.

It seems no African country has yet received a single dose. While the Africa CDC is attempting to negotiate access to the vaccine, news reports suggest there are no doses left to purchase from the private sector.

Bavarian Nordic recently announced it had entered an agreement with the Pan American Health Organization to provide access to the MVA-BN vaccine for Latin America and the Caribbean. Details of this agreement, including the number of doses and the recipient countries, are not yet publicly available.

Exclusive rights prevent more widespread manufacturing of vaccines

Currently, Bavarian Nordic essentially controls the global supply of a vaccine desperately needed by at least 99 countries. While it can’t make the vaccine itself right now due to its factory redevelopment, it can still prevent others from manufacturing the vaccine because of intellectual property rights underpinned by the World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS).

These intellectual property rights include, among others, patent protection and trade secrets protection. Patent protection provides at least 20 years of exclusivity, during which no one else can make or sell the product without permission from the patent-holder. While TRIPS does allow for exceptions to patent protection in certain circumstances, trade secrets protection presents a formidable barrier to wider manufacturing of vaccines.

Attempts to negotiate a temporary waiver of TRIPS rules for COVID-19 vaccines did not produce a meaningful outcome, and a waiver limited to COVID-19 would not have helped to make vaccines available for other diseases like MPX.

As a global community, we need to do better

If the same mistakes are made in the global response to MPX as were made with COVID-19, it is unlikely the outbreak will be quickly controlled. The virus could become established in animal reservoirs and become endemic in many more countries.

The burden of suffering and death will fall most heavily on the countries that are least able to access the tools to prevent and manage it. We must do all we can to ensure that doesn’t happen.

Deborah Gleeson has received funding in the past from the Australian Research Council. She has received funding from various national and international non-government organisations to attend speaking engagements related to trade agreements and health. She has represented the Public Health Association of Australia on matters related to trade agreements and public health

– ref. Monkeypox – the next global vaccine equity failure? – https://theconversation.com/monkeypox-the-next-global-vaccine-equity-failure-189045

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Catherine Bennett, Chair in Epidemiology, Deakin University

New South Wales Premier Dominic Perrottet is driving a push to reduce isolation requirements for people who test positive for COVID from seven to five days. It’s slated for discussion at tomorrow’s National Cabinet meeting, with Perrottet urging a consistent approach across all states and territories.

Others, including Health Services Union president Gerard Hayes, have called for the isolation requirement to be scrapped altogether, and instead, urging people to stay at home if they’re infectious.

So what will states be weighing up? Here’s what the available evidence says.

How many infectious people are in isolation?

Not everyone tests for infection, even if they suspect they might have COVID. Many people won’t know to test if they have mild or no symptoms and are unaware they’ve been exposed.

Our latest serosurvey data, which tests for antibodies in blood donations, suggests around one quarter of the population has had a COVID infection in the three months up to June. That equates to about 6.8 million people.

But only 2.7 million infections were reported in that time period. And these will include cases where the same people had multiple infections. Therefore, it’s likely four to five million infections went untested or unreported.

Read more:
Can we really rely on people to isolate when they’re told to? Experts explain

Some people who don’t test or report a positive result might still isolate. At the same time, some who do report their infections may not isolate properly.

This isn’t just about people being compliant or not. It also reflects the large number of asymptomatic infections, as well as other respiratory symptoms that can mask COVID.

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

A survey of 210 people in the United States found only 44% were aware they’d had a recent Omicron infection. Among those, 10% reported having had any symptoms which they mostly put down to a common cold or other non–COVID infection.

For those who do test and isolate, it’s important to also ask how far into their infections they are when they start isolating.

Isolation starts with a positive test which, in most cases, follows the onset of symptoms, possibly by a day or two. If someone knows they have been a close contact of a case, they may be on the lookout for signs of infection, knowing they have been exposed. Others may miss the signs initially if they commonly experience respiratory symptoms from other causes.

How long are we infectious?

A UK study in The Lancet of 57 people who developed COVID while under daily monitoring tracked participants’ infectious viral load and symptoms.

It found half had an infectious period that lasted up to five days. One-quarter had an infectious period that lasted three days or less. Another quarter were infectious beyond seven days – though with much lower levels of live viral shedding late in their infection.

However, the infections in this study were the Delta variant, so may overstate the duration of infectious periods nowadays.

Read more:
How does Omicron compare with Delta? Here’s what we know about infectiousness, symptoms, severity and vaccine protection

A JAMA review of the time from exposure to symptoms found the mean incubation period has shortened with each new variant. It went from an average of 5 days for infections caused by Alpha, to 4.4 days for Delta, and 3.4 days for Omicron variant. Omicron may therefore also have a shorter overall infectious period on average than Delta.

In the Lancet study, vaccinated people also had a faster decline in their infectious viral load than those not fully vaccinated. The high rates of vaccination and hybrid immunity in Australia could also be shortening the time we are infectious compared to Delta infections.

The Lancet study also reported one-quarter of people shed infectious virus before symptoms started. Interestingly, it found RATs had the lowest sensitivity during the viral growth phase and viral load peak. This means people were less likely to have a positive result in the first days of their most infectious period.

So some people will not test positive, and therefore not isolate, until one or two days into their infections, even if they’re testing with a RAT every day.

Overall, when you sum up the infectious time for those who do not isolate, and the days before isolation for those who do, people with COVID spend more time infectious in the community than they do in isolation. And this includes the time they are at their most infectious.

So, how many exposure days are prevented by current isolation rules?

It’s impossible to know, but based on the above, at most it would be around one quarter, and will probably be much lower than that.

The question, then, is whether reducing isolation by two days towards the tail of the infectious period when infectious viral loads are low will have an impact.

This is unlikely, and that has been the experience overseas, probably because this is a marginal change to a risk-mitigation strategy that can only be partially effective at this stage in the pandemic.

However, there are ways to make the transition from seven to five days safer. This includes:

• requiring acute symptoms experienced in the initial stage of the COVID infection to have resolved before they end isolation, especially fever

• using negative RAT tests to allow people with a persistent cough or other lingering symptoms that may not be associated with an active infection to leave isolation

• screening workers from high-risk settings such as health care and aged care before they return to work

• providing clear information on the infection risk to others in the week following isolation, and how to minimise risk.

Whether we take half steps away from isolation or a large leap, the small risk that people may still be infectious enough to pass the virus on to others on leaving isolation – whether that’s at five or seven days – needs to be managed.

It will always be important to wear well-fitted masks, preferably respirators, when around others and avoid people with compromised immune systems for those first two weeks after a COVID infection begins when you may still be shedding live virus.

Catherine Bennett receives funding from the National Health & Medical Research Council, Medical Research Future Funds, and VicHealth, and an independent scientific advisor on the AstraZeneca Australian Vaccine advisory group, ResApp Health, and Impact Biotech Healthcare.

– ref. Should states cut COVID isolation from 7 to 5 days? Here’s what they’ll need to consider – https://theconversation.com/should-states-cut-covid-isolation-from-7-to-5-days-heres-what-theyll-need-to-consider-189387