Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nathan Cooper, Associate Professor of Law, University of Waikato

As the UN climate summit in Glasgow kicks off on Sunday, it marks the deadline for countries to make more ambitious pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The meeting is the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and is being heralded as the last best chance to avoid devastating temperature rise that would endanger billions of people and disrupt the planet’s life-support systems.

New Zealand will be represented by the climate minister and Green Party co-leader, James Shaw, along with a slimmed-down team of diplomats. Shaw, who described climate change as the “most significant threat that we face for decades to come”, will take part in negotiations aimed at achieving global net zero, protecting communities and natural habitats and mobilising finance to adequately respond to the climate crisis.

This is the time for New Zealand to commit to delivering on its fair share of what is necessary to avoid runaway global warming.

To understand why COP26 is so important we need to look back to a previous summit, COP21 in 2015, which resulted in the Paris Agreement. Countries agreed to work together to keep global warming well below 2℃ and to aim for no more than 1.5℃.

They also agreed to publish plans to show how much they would reduce emissions and to update these pledges every five years — which is what should be happening at the Glasgow summit. Collectively, current climate pledges (known as Nationally Determined Contributions or NDCs) continue to fall a long way short of limiting global warming to 1.5℃.

Many countries have failed to keep pace with what their climate pledges promised. The window to limit temperature rise to 1.5℃ is closing fast.

Read more:
COP26: 4 ways rich nations can keep promises to curb emissions and fund climate adaptation

Time to raise climate ambition

On our current trajectory, global temperature is likely to increase well above the 2℃ upper limit of the Paris Agreement.

New Zealand has agreed to take ambitious action to meet the 1.5℃ target. But its current pledge (to bring emissions to 30% below 2005 levels by 2030) will not achieve this.

If all countries followed New Zealand’s present commitments, global warming would reach up to 3℃. The government has committed to increase New Zealand’s NDC — after receiving advice from the Climate Change Commission that its current pledge is not consistent with the 1.5℃ goal — but has not yet outlined a figure.

Read more:
A successful COP26 is essential for Earth’s future. Here’s what needs to go right

The effects of the growing climate crisis are already present in our corner of the world. Aotearoa is becoming more familiar with weather extremes, flooding and prolonged drought.

Many of our low-lying Pacific island neighbours are particularly vulnerable to climate change. Some are already looking to New Zealand to take stronger regional leadership on climate change. A perception of New Zealand as a potential safe haven and “Pacific lifeboat” reminds us of the coming challenge of climate refugees, should global warming exceed a safe upper limit.

Read more:
Glasgow showdown: Pacific Islands demand global leaders bring action, not excuses, to UN summit

More work to do

New Zealand’s emissions have continued to rise since the Paris summit but our record on climate action has some positives. The Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Act, enacted in 2019, requires greenhouse gas emissions (other than biogenic methane) to reach net zero by 2050. Only a handful of other countries have enshrined such a goal in law.

The act also established the Climate Change Commission, which has already provided independent advice to the government on emissions budgets and an emissions reduction plan for 2022-2025. But much more needs to be done, and quickly, if we are to meet our international commitments and fulfil our domestic targets.

Climate Change Commission recommendations around the rapid adoption of electric vehicles, reduction in animal stocking rates and changing land use towards forestry and horticulture provide some key places to focus on.

As COP26 begins, New Zealand should announce a more ambitious climate pledge, one stringent enough to meet the 1.5℃ target. Announcing a sufficiently bold NDC at COP26 will provide much-needed leadership and encouragement for other countries to follow suit.

It will also act as a clear signpost for what our domestic emissions policies are aiming for, by when and why. But, no matter what New Zealand’s revised NDC says, much work will remain to ensure we make good on our commitments and give the climate crisis the attention it demands.

Nathan Cooper 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. COP26: time for New Zealand to show regional leadership on climate change – https://theconversation.com/cop26-time-for-new-zealand-to-show-regional-leadership-on-climate-change-170785

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Clune, Honorary Associate, Government and International Relations, University of Sydney

After two weeks of sensational Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) hearings into the conduct of Gladys Berejiklian, we have finally heard from the former NSW premier herself. This saw Berejiklian continue to maintain she has done nothing wrong.

She has argued her undisclosed relationship with disgraced former Liberal MP Daryl Maguire was not of “sufficient standard or sufficient signifiance” to be publicly declared. Berejiklian also told the ICAC there was no conflict of interest in the actions she took to facilitate projects Maguire had an interest in as she had not made a personal profit.

Asked why she had described him in an intercepted message as “family”, Berejiklian said he was family “in terms of my feelings but definitely not in any legal sense”. Counsel assisting, Scott Robertson ominously replied: “We’ll let the lawyers argue about the law”.

ICAC’s forensic approach

From the beginning, the tone of the hearing has been more like a prosecution than an investigation. Robertson has been logical, forensic, and relentless in his questioning.

The evidence of witnesses, which include former staffers, officials, former premier Mike Baird and former Nationals leader John Barilaro, has been notable for two things.

Almost all described Berejiklian as competent and conscientious. They also universally said that being in a secret relationship with Maguire and being involved in government decisions that would benefit him was an obvious conflict of interest that should have been declared.

Not intimate?

ICAC’s Operation Keppel investigation was always going to be dangerous for Berejiklian.

A crucial matter arising from hearings in October 2020 was whether Berejiklian should have publicly disclosed her relationship with the former MP. Under the Ministerial Code of Conduct, Berejiklian had an obligation to do so if the relationship was “intimate” and if she was involved in deciding any matter that could reasonably be expected to confer a private benefit on him.

Read more:
After a bombshell day at ICAC, questions must be asked about integrity in Australian politics

The form of words she used during her last ICAC appearance in October last year was that they were “close” not “intimate”, so it was not not serious enough to warrant disclosure. However, in an interview shortly after with The Sunday Telegaph she spoke of how she once had hopes to marry Maguire.

This week, via Maguire, we have also heard the couple talked about having a child. He also had a key and ongoing access to her home.

For her part, on Friday, Berejiklian said Maguire was part of her “love circle […] of people that I strongly cared for” but things were not serious enough to introduce him to her parents and sisters.

On this alone, she runs the risk of being accused of having misled ICAC.

Hospital upgrade, secret calls

The evidence of the last two weeks has also shown how Berekilian was involved in decision-making processes concerning substantial funds flowing to Maguire’s electorate of Wagga Wagga.

In a recording of a conversation between Maguire and Berejiklian in 2018, Maguire complained about a lack of funding for projects in his electorate. “I’ll deal with it, I’ll fix it,” Berejiklian replied. Two hours later, in another phone call, Berejiklian told Maguire she had spoken to Dom Perrottet (then treasurer) and it was in the budget.

During her appearance on Friday, Berejiklian repeatedly denied there had been a conflict of interest. “I always put the public interest first,” she said.

What happens now?

On the evidence we have seen so far, the future looks bleak for Berejiklian. Her life and career may be on hold for some time. If ICAC makes a finding of corrupt conduct against her, she can be referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP).

The DPP process could then take some time. For example, ICAC’s Operation Credo found in August 2017 that former NSW Labor ministers Eddie Obeid and Joe Tripodi and others had acted corruptly by faking a cabinet minute and referred them to the DPP. The DPP is still deciding whether criminal charges will be laid. Obeid’s recent sentencing over a mine license conspiracy follows another ICAC inquiry that started almost ten years ago.

Why someone as renowned for competence, honesty and political astuteness as Berejiklian should make such an obvious blunder as failing to declare her relationship with Maguire is inexplicable (although on Friday, she said she would not change her decision if she had her time again). She has paid – and will continue to pay – a very heavy price for neglecting to make an admission that would not have had many, if any, deleterious consequences.

It is clear Berejiklian realised what was coming would be very damaging and decided to preempt a messy end by resigning at the start of October. It is also clear much of the criticism of ICAC for “establishing a parallel system of rough justice, in which the presumption of innocence and equality before the law count for nothing” was ill-informed.

Read more:
ICAC is not a curse, and probity in government matters. The Australian media would do well to remember that

So far, Berejiklian has garnered a significant amount of public sympathy, as a successful woman, who lost her high-profile job over a personal misjudgement. It will be interesting to see if that sympathy holds.

The former premier is due to back at ICAC on Monday morning.

David Clune 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. Berejiklian says Maguire was part of her ‘love circle’ but was not significant enough to declare – will this wash with ICAC? – https://theconversation.com/berejiklian-says-maguire-was-part-of-her-love-circle-but-was-not-significant-enough-to-declare-will-this-wash-with-icac-170860

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Sarkissian, Operations Scientist, CSIRO

The CSIRO’s 64-metre Parkes Radio Telescope was commissioned on October 31 1961. At the time it was the most advanced radio telescope in the world, incorporating many innovative features that have since become standard in all large-dish antennas.

Through its early discoveries it quickly became the leading instrument of its kind. Today, 60 years later, it is still arguably the finest single-dish radio telescope in the world. It is still performing world-class science and making discoveries that shape our understanding of the Universe.

The telescope’s origins date back to wartime radar research by the Radiophysics Laboratory, part of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), the forerunner of the CSIRO. On the Sydney clifftops at Dover Heights, the laboratory developed radar for use in the Pacific theatre. When the second world war ended, the technology was redirected into peaceful applications, including studying radio waves from the Sun and beyond.

In 1946, British physicist Edward “Taffy” Bowen was appointed chief of the Radiophysics Laboratory. He had been one of the brilliant engineers, dubbed “boffins”, who developed radar as part of Britain’s secret prewar military research. The Radiophysics Laboratory had a dedicated radio astronomy group, led by the brilliant Joseph (Joe) Pawsey. Many of the group’s members went on to become leaders in the nascent field of radio astronomy, including Bernie Mills, Chris Christiansen, Paul Wild, Ruby Payne-Scott (the first female radio astronomer), and John Bolton.

While the group’s initial research focused on radio waves from the Sun, Bolton’s attention soon shifted to identifying other sources from farther afield. By the early 1950s, the Dover Heights radar dishes had discovered more than 100 sources of radio emissions from the Milky Way and beyond, including the signals from supernova explosions. These observations established the Radiophysics Laboratory as a world-leading centre of radio astronomy.

By 1954, the technology at Dover Heights was outdated and obsolete, prompting Bowen to initiate the next step for Australian radio astronomy: a state-of-the-art new radio telescope.

He decided the most versatile option was to build a large, fully steerable dish antenna. The eventual price tag was A$1.4 million (A$25.6 million in today’s terms) – far beyond CSIRO’s budget at the time.

The Menzies government agreed to fund the project, provided at least 50% of the money came from the private sector. Using his wartime contacts, Bowen secured A$250,000 each from the Carnegie Corporation and Rockefeller Foundation, plus a range of private Australian donations.

British firm Freeman Fox and Partners produced the detailed design, incorporating suggestions from legendary engineer Barnes Wallis, of “dambusters” fame. Based on the available budget and desired functionality, a diameter of 64 metres was agreed for the dish.

The chosen site was near the town of Parkes, about 350km west of Sydney. This location had favourable weather conditions and was free of local radio interference. The local council also enthusiastically offered to cover the cost of some of the earthworks.

In 2020, the local Wiradjuri people named the telescope Murriyang, a traditional name meaning “Skyworld”.

The telescope’s construction began in September 1959 and was completed just two years later. On October 31 1961, the Governor-General William Sidney, Viscount De l’Isle, officially opened the telescope in a ceremony attended by 500 guests.

Decades of discovery

John Bolton was appointed the founding director of the telescope. Under his dynamic, decade-long tenure, astronomers made a string of significant discoveries that established the dish as the premier scientific instrument in Australia.

Astronomers revealed the immense magnetic field of our Milky Way galaxy. A few months later, the telescope detected quasars, the most distant known objects in the Universe – a discovery that increased the size of the known Universe tenfold. To cap off a memorable first year, Parkes tracked the very first interplanetary space mission, Mariner 2, when it flew past Venus in December 1962.

In the 1970s, researchers discovered and mapped the immense molecular clouds interspersed through our galaxy. The study of pulsars – rotating stars that emit beams of radio waves, rather like a lighthouse – became a major field of research. Parkes has discovered more pulsars than all other radio observatories combined, including the only known double pulsar system, spotted in 2003.

In the 1990s, the distribution of galaxies was mapped to a distance of 300 million light years, revealing the complex structure of the Universe. More recently, Parkes discovered the first Fast Radio Burst – a short, intense blast of radio waves created by an as-yet unknown process. The telescope has also been involved in the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI), including the ten-year Breakthrough Listen project, which began in 2016.

Read more:
A brief history: what we know so far about fast radio bursts across the universe

To the public, the telescope is perhaps best known for its space tracking, especially its role in the Apollo lunar missions. But it has also supported other significant missions such as NASA’s Voyager 2, which flew past Uranus and Neptune in the 1980s and crossed into interstellar space in 2018. In 1986, Parkes was the prime tracking station for the European Giotto mission to Halley’s Comet. And next year, Parkes will track some of the first commercial lunar landers.

Read more:
Australia is still listening to Voyager 2 as NASA confirms the probe is now in interstellar space

Originally intended to operate for 20 years, the telscope’s longevity is a result of constant upgrades. Recent improvements include a new ultra-wideband receiver that can scan a huge range of radio frequencies, and CSIRO-developed “phased array feeds” (PAFs) that allow the telescope to observe up to 36 points in the sky at once. Work is now under way on a cryogenically cooled PAF that, when installed in 2022, will double this number. With these upgrades in place, a single receiver can be used to deliver more than 90% of current Parkes operations.

It’s hard to say how long the Parkes dish will continue to work. It depends on future upgrades and whether the telescope’s structure remains in good working order. But astronomers will always have a need for a large single-dish antenna.

Parkes has maintained its world-leading position in radio astronomy by constantly adapting to meet new requirements. Today it stands as an icon of Australian science and achievement. Sixty years after it first trained its eye on the sky, the future still looks bright at Parkes.

John Sarkissian 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. 60 years after it first gazed at the skies, the Parkes dish is still making breakthroughs – https://theconversation.com/60-years-after-it-first-gazed-at-the-skies-the-parkes-dish-is-still-making-breakthroughs-170753

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Keogh, Research Fellow, Department of Cognitive Science, Macquarie University

Halloween movies often feature kids sitting around a campfire sharing gory, spooky stories, trying to get someone to scream in fear.

This weekend you might be doing the same – sharing a horror story with friends. You may find one friend doesn’t get scared, no matter how frightening a scene you try to paint in their mind.

So why are some people more easily spooked by stories than others? We ran an experiment to find out.

Read more:
Halloween films: the good, the bad and the truly scary

Can you see it in your mind?

One reason some people are more easily spooked could relate to how well they can visualise the scary scene in their mind.

When some people listen to a story they automatically conjure up the scene in their mind’s eye, while others have to focus really hard to create any sort of mental image.

A small proportion cannot visualise images at all. No matter how hard they try, they do not see anything in their mind. This inability to visualise is known as aphantasia.

Although we have known people vary in their ability to visualise for many years, the term aphantasia was not coined until 2015.

We don’t yet know exactly how many people have aphantasia. But estimates vary at 1–4% of the population.

How scared are you?

If the ability to visualise images and scenes in the mind plays a role in how we react to spooky stories, what does that mean for people with aphantasia? How do they react when reading scary stories?

We ran a study to find out. We had people sit in the dark and read a number of short stories – not ghost stories, but ones with frightening, hypothetical scenarios.

One example involved someone being chased by a shark, another being covered in spiders.

As people read these stories, we recorded their fear levels by measuring how much the stories made them sweat.

We placed small electrodes on their fingers and ran a tiny electric current from one electrode to the other.

When you sweat this allows the electric current to flow from one electrode to the other easier, due to less resistance, and this results in increased skin conductance.

This measure can pick up even very small increases in sweat you wouldn’t otherwise notice.

For most people who could conjure up images in their mind, their skin conductance increased when they read these stories. But people with aphantasia didn’t show a significant increase in their skin conductance levels when reading the same scenarios.

There was no difference between the two groups when viewing scary pictures. This suggests aphantasic people’s lack of a reaction to these stories wasn’t due to a general dampening of emotional responses.

Instead, we concluded the lack of a change in skin conductance in these people with aphantasia is specific to being unable to visualise these fear-inducing stories.

Read more:
Pseudo-hallucinations: why some people see more vivid mental images than others – test yourself here

What’s going on in the brain?

Very little work has been done to measure neural activity in people with aphantasia to give us a firm idea of why they cannot visualise images.

One study shows both the frontal and visual regions of the brain are linked to visualising images. And in people with aphantasia, the connection between these two areas is weaker.

Another study found the pattern of activity in visual regions of the brain is correlated with the vividness of the mental images.

So any reduction in connectivity between the frontal and visual regions may result in less control over the visual regions. This might lead to the inability to visualise.

Read more:
Blind in the mind: why some people can’t see pictures in their imagination

So what if you have aphantasia?

If you have aphantasia, it might just mean reading a Stephen King novel is unlikely to ruffle your feathers.

Theoretically, remembering fearful experiences might also be less scary. We did not test personal memories in our study, but we hope to look at these in the future.

People with aphantasia report their personal memories (autobiographical memories) are less vivid and detailed than people with visual imagery.

People with aphantasia may also be less likely to develop disorders associated with fear memories, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Another possibility is they still may develop PTSD but it presents in a different way to people with visual imagery – without flashbacks. But more research is needed.

Read more:
Explainer: what is post-traumatic stress disorder?

Rebecca Keogh 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. Not spooked by Halloween ghost stories? You may have aphantasia – https://theconversation.com/not-spooked-by-halloween-ghost-stories-you-may-have-aphantasia-170712

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anne L. Bartlett, Associate Professor, UNSW

The military coup in Sudan follows a longstanding pattern in which a short period of democracy in the country is brought to an abrupt, and often sticky, authoritarian end.

This time, however, the stakes are higher than ever. Not only is Sudan’s peace and security at risk, but so is the security of the wider region and beyond, as dangerous and incompatible interests are unleashed that threaten to pull the country in multiple directions.

The fall of Omar al-Bashir’s National Congress Party government in 2019 brought 30 years of authoritarian rule to an end. But it also meant the dynamics from this period needed to be carefully managed. At stake was not just peace and justice, but the very identity of the country.

Sudan had fractured into hard-line Islamist elements, informal and formal armed forces, political parties and a plethora of groups and armed militias. All of them claimed to represent the interests of the Sudanese people.

The fledgling transitional government that emerged was tasked with not only managing a country on the edge of a financial abyss, but doing so with an improbable power-sharing arrangement. The military would rule for a period of 21 months followed by the civilian group for the remaining 18 months until elections were held in 2023.

Read more:
Sudan’s hard-won transition to civilian rule faces a precarious moment

The dissolution of this arrangement will now unleash a frightening array of competing groups and entities, all of which have interests to protect. These interests reach well beyond the borders of Sudan and connect with other major conflicts worldwide.

Sudan’s Islamist sympathisers include former members of the National Congress Party (NCP) of Omar al-Bashir, as well as the Popular Congress Party (PCP) of the late Hassan al-Turabi – ideologue and architect of Islamic extremism in the country. Turabi’s interests have threaded through Sudan since 1983. They have supported Osama bin Laden as he was building al-Qaeda in the country from 1991-1996, while also engaging Egyptian Islamic Jihad, responsible for the 1998 embassy bombings, Hezbollah, the PLO and many more.

Sudan’s Islamists have been supported by the Qatar-Turkey alliance, an on-off relationship with Iran and members of Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE (at least until the revolution).

Many of the Islamists were jailed or went into hiding after the revolution. They now find themselves outmanoeuvred by the Sovereignty Council’s military faction that launched this week’s coup. Two major figures anchor this faction: General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan of the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) led by Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagolo.

This faction is politically pragmatic, equally dangerous and beset by internal divisions over their ambitions to control Sudan. Al-Burhan has been described as the military “architect” responsible for the genocide in Darfur. Hemedti was front and centre of the scorched earth campaign in that region, Khartoum’s June 3 2019 massacre, as well as illegal gold-mining operations in Jebel Amer, Darfur.

In recent years, this group received support from Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, not least because Hemedti has also supplied his RSF militias to fight the Houthis in Yemen on behalf of Saudi Arabia.

The military faction has numerous holding companies such as the Military Industrial Corporation and al-Junaid, which provide illicit income streams, gained through unregulated gold mining, construction, oil, aviation, arms dealing and overseas mercenary revenue.

Much of the revenue bypasses government coffers and goes into their private accounts abroad. This revenue makes the military side of the government financially unassailable. It also allows them to undermine the civilian government at every turn, including the creation of “rent-a-crowd” demonstrations in Khartoum to support their interests.

Given this situation, the beleaguered civilian side of the government has faced an impossible task. They could not financially outmanoeuvre the military faction or their foreign supporters. As a heavily indebted country, they have been in a parlous financial state driven by low tax receipts, military revenue streams that they can’t access and, until recently, little debt relief.

Sudan’s civilians are putting up a brave campaign of civil resistance against the military junta. It is possible they could push back the gains of the military. But to do so, significant diplomatic pressure needs to be brought to bear on countries supporting al-Burhan and Hemedti. On top of this, urgent attention needs to paid to forensic investigation of illegal revenue streams that bypass the government and undermine democratic change.

As with all transitions, there is a time when action is needed before it is too late. While the army are not natural bedfellows with the Islamists, they have been happy to look the other way for years while extremists operated from the country. With their powerful sponsors in the Gulf and beyond, the possibility of a dangerous power struggle inches ever closer.

Read more:
Why the African Union’s mediation effort in Tigray is a non-starter

This will not only affect Sudan’s civilians, but also refugees fleeing Tigray’s conflict and communities in the Sahel and on Europe’s borders, as the exodus of people from the country escalates.

If we have learnt anything from recent crises, it is that nation-building is hard, but the alternative is even worse. For Sudan, that nightmare is fast approaching. The question is whether the international community can act now to stop it, before it is too late.

Anne Bartlett is the President of the African Studies Association of Australasia and the Pacific (AFSAAP) non-profit.

– ref. Explainer: what Sudan’s coup is about and why the rest of the world needs to act – https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-sudans-coup-is-about-and-why-the-rest-of-the-world-needs-to-act-170774

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marcus Carter, Senior Lecturer in Digital Cultures, SOAR Fellow., University of Sydney

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has announced the company will change its name to Meta, saying the move reflects the fact the company is now much broader than just the social media platform (which will still be called Facebook).

The rebrand follows several months of intensifying discourse by Zuckerberg and the company more broadly on the metaverse – the idea of integrating real and digital worlds ever more seamlessly, using technologies such as virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR).

Zuckerberg said he hoped the metaverse will be a new ecosystem that will create millions of jobs for content creators.

But is this just a shallow PR exercise, with Zuckerberg trying to reset the Facebook brand after several scandal-ridden years, or is it a genuine bid to set the company on course for what he sees as the future of computing?

Facebook’s journey into the metaverse

What’s not in contention is that this is the culmination of seven years of corporate acquisitions, investments and research that kicked off with Facebook’s acquisition of VR headset company Oculus for US$2 billion in 2014.

Oculus had risen to prominence with a lucrative Kickstarter campaign, and many of its backers were angry that their support for the “future of gaming” had been co-opted by Silicon Valley.

While gamers fretted that Facebook would give them VR versions of Farmville rather than the hardcore content they envisioned, cynics viewed the purchase as part of a spending spree after Facebook’s US$16 billion stock market launch, or simply Zuckerberg indulging a personal interest in gaming.

Under Facebook, Oculus has gone on to dominate the VR market with over 60% market share. That’s thanks to heavy cross-subsidisation from Facebook’s advertising business and a console-like approach with the mobile “Quest” VR headset.

Beyond Oculus, Facebook has invested heavily in VR and AR. Organised under the umbrella of Facebook Reality Labs, there are nearly 10,000 people working on these technologies – almost 20% of Facebook’s workforce. Last week, Facebook announced plans to hire another 10,000 developers in the European Union to work on its metaverse computing platform.

While much of its work remains behind closed doors, Facebook Reality Labs’ publicised projects include Project Aria, which seeks to create live 3D maps of public spaces, and the recently released Ray-Ban Stories – Facebook-integrated sunglasses with 5-megapixel cameras and voice control.

Read more:
Ray-Ban Stories let you wear Facebook on your face. But why would you want to?

All these investments and projects are steps towards the infrastructure for Zuckerbeg’s vision of the metaverse. As he said earlier in the year:

I think it really makes sense for us to invest deeply to help shape what I think is going to be the next major computing platform.

Why does Facebook want to rule the metaverse?

The metaverse may eventually come to define how we work, learn and socialise. This means VR and AR would move beyond their current niche uses, and become everyday technologies on which we will all depend.

We can guess at Facebook’s vision for the metaverse by looking to its existing approach to social media. It has moulded our online lives into a gigantic revenue stream based on power, control and surveillance, fuelled by our data.

VR and AR headsets collect enormous amounts of data about the user and their environment. This is one of the key ethical issues around these emerging technologies, and presumably one of the chief attractions for Facebook in owning and developing them.

Read more:
Facebook’s virtual reality push is about data, not gaming

What makes this particularly concerning is that the way you move your body is so unique that VR data can be used to identify you, rather like a fingerprint. That means everything you do in VR could potentially be traced back to your individual identity. For Facebook – a digital advertising empire built on tracking our data – it’s a tantalising prospect.

Alongside Project Aria, Facebook launched its Responsible Innovation Principles, and recently pledged US$50 million to “build the metaverse responsibly”.

But, as Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren Klein note in their book Data Feminism, responsible innovation is often focused on individualised concepts of harm, rather than addressing the structural power imbalances baked into technologies such as social media.

In our studies of Facebook’s Oculus Imaginary (Facebook’s vision for how it will use Oculus technology) and its changes over time to Oculus’ privacy and data policies, we suggest Facebook publicly frames privacy in VR as a question of individual privacy (over which users can have control) versus surveillance and data harvesting (over which we don’t).

Critics have derided Facebook’s announcements as “privacy theatre” and corporate spin. Digital rights advocacy group Access Now, which participated in a Facebook AR privacy “design jam” in 2020 and urged Facebook to prioritise alerting bystanders they were being recorded by Ray-Ban Stories, says its recommendation was ignored.

Is the internet a blueprint for an open metaverse?

Appropriately enough, the metaverse under Facebook is likely to resemble the term’s literary origins, coined in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel Snow Crash to describe an exploitative, corporatised, hierarchical virtual space.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Tony Parisi, one of the early pioneers of VR, argues we already have a blueprint for a non-dystopian metaverse. He says we should look back to the original, pre-corporatised vision of the internet, which embodied “an open, collaborative and consensus-driven way to develop technologies and tools”.

Facebook’s rebrand, its dominance in the VR market, its seeming desire to hire every VR and AR developer in Europe, and its dozens of corporate acquisitions – all this sounds less like true collaboration and consensus, and more like an attempt to control the next frontier of computing.

We let Facebook rule the world of social media. We shouldn’t let it rule the metaverse.

Marcus Carter has received funding from Snapchat, Inc.

Ben Egliston 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. Facebook relaunches itself as ‘Meta’ in a clear bid to dominate the metaverse – https://theconversation.com/facebook-relaunches-itself-as-meta-in-a-clear-bid-to-dominate-the-metaverse-170543

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steve Turton, Adjunct Professor of Environmental Geography, CQUniversity Australia

Despite the overwhelming evidence, it’s still common to see politicians, media commentators or social media users cast doubt on the role of humans in driving climate change.

But this denialism is now almost nonexistent among climate scientists, as a study released this month confirms. US researchers examined the peer-reviewed literature and found more than 99% of climate scientists now endorse the evidence for human-induced climate change.

That’s even higher than the 97% reported by an influential 2013 study, which has become a widely cited statistic by both climate change deniers and those who accept the evidence.

Why has the needle evidently shifted even more firmly in favour of the evidence-based consensus? Or, to put it another way, what happened to the 3% of researchers who rejected the consensus of human caused climate change? Is this change purely because of the growing weight of evidence published over the past few years?

Unpicking the polls

We must first ask whether the two studies are directly comparable. The answer is yes. The latest study has reexamined the literature published since 2012, and is based on the same methods as the 2013 study, albeit with some important refinements.

Read more:
Consensus confirmed: over 90% of climate scientists believe we’re causing global warming

Both studies searched the Web of Science database – an independent worldwide repository of scientific paper citations – using the keywords “global climate change” and “global warming”. However, the recent study added “climate change” to the other two keyword searches, because the authors found that most climate-contrarian papers would not have been returned with only the two original terms.

The 2013 study examined 11,944 climate research papers and found almost one-third of them expressed a position on the cause of global warming. Of these 4,014 papers, 97% endorsed the consensus position that humans are the cause, 1% were uncertain, and 2% explicitly rejected it.

A 2015 review examined 38 climate-contrarian papers published over the preceding decade, and identified a range of methodological flaws and sources of bias.

One of the reviewers commented that “every single one of those analyses had an error – in their assumptions, methodology, or analysis – that, when corrected, brought their results into line with the scientific consensus”.

For example, many of the contrarian papers had “cherrypicked” results that supported their conclusion, while ignoring important context and other data sources that contradicted it. Some of them simply ignored fundamental physics.

The 2015 reviewers also made the important point that “science is never settled and that both mainstream and contrarian papers must be subjected to sustained scrutiny”. This is the cornerstone of the scientific method, and few if any climate scientists would disagree with this statement.

Separating the human influence from the natural

The recently published Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) Synthesis Report, says “it is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land”, and warns that the Paris Agreement goals of 1.5℃ and 2℃ above pre-industrial levels will be exceeded during this century without dramatic emissions reductions.

In reaching this conclusion, it is important to distinguish between changes caused by human activities altering the atmosphere’s chemistry, and climate variability caused by natural factors.

These natural variations include small changes in the Sun’s energy output due to sunspots and solar flares, infrequent volcanic eruptions, and the effects of El Niño weather patterns in the Pacific Ocean.

Excluding these natural variations, Earth’s surface temperature was generally stable from about 2,000 to 1,000 years ago. After that, the planet cooled by about 0.3℃ over several centuries, before the advent of fossil fuel-based industrialisation in the 1800s.

One study identified 12 major volcanic eruptions from 100 to 1200 CE, compared with 17 eruptions from 1200 to 1900 CE. Hence, heightened volcanic activity over roughly the past 800 years was associated with a general global cooling before the industrial revolution.

Current rates of global warming are unprecedented in more than 2,000 years and temperatures now exceed the warmest (multi-century) period in more than 100,000 years. Global average surface temperature for the decade from 2011-20 was about 1.1℃ higher than in 1850-1900. Each of the past four decades has been warmer than any preceding decade since 1850, when reliable weather observations began.

Read more:
99.999% certainty humans are driving global warming: new study

Researchers can separate human and natural factors in the modern global temperature record. This involves a process called hindcasting, in which a climate model is run backwards in time to simulate human and natural factors, and then compared with the observed data to see which combination of factors most accurately recreates the real world.

If human factors are removed from the data set and only volcanic and solar factors are included, then global average surface temperatures since 1950 should have remained similar to those over the preceding 100 years. But of course they haven’t.

The evidence, and the scientific consensus on it, are both clearer than ever.

Steve Turton has previously received funding from the Australian Government. Steve is the independent chair of the Wet Tropics Healthy Waterways Partnership, an initiative of the Reef 2050 Long Term Sustainability Plan.

– ref. The ‘97% climate consensus’ is over. Now it’s well above 99% (and the evidence is even stronger than that) – https://theconversation.com/the-97-climate-consensus-is-over-now-its-well-above-99-and-the-evidence-is-even-stronger-than-that-170370

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

This week’s excruciating case of a prime minister being beholden to a rogue section of his own Cabinet over climate policy has again drawn attention to the arcane nature of Coalition arrangements.

While the numbers eventually fell his way, a policy U-turn that Scott Morrison regarded as politically existential was for a time hostage to a famously mercurial party room of which he was not a member, and over which he could exercise net-zero influence.

In the end, both won. Morrison got his 2050 target but without any promise to cut methane output as sought by the US and Europe. There was also no interim (2030) pledge.

Read more:
Politics with Michelle Grattan: Scott Morrison’s (thin) climate plan for Glasgow

These exclusions make Morrison’s announcement essentially gestural rather than a substantive policy shift.

The government has since made a virtue of this fact, arguing its 2050 target will be achieved within existing policy settings and without the need for legislation.

Such inter-party dependencies make obvious numerical sense in a system of compulsory two-party-preferred voting. In the case of the Coalition, it has enabled it to deny Labor a parliamentary majority in all but one federal election since 1993.

However, this success has come at the cost of ceding disproportionate power to a bit player that commands only a sliver of the nation-wide vote and promotes policies widely divergent from majority public sentiment.

According to the latest survey by Nine’s Resolve Political Monitor released on Wednesday, Labor’s primary vote sits at 34% and the Liberal Party (absent the Nats) is just a shade higher at 35%.

Interestingly, with the Nationals added on, the Coalition vote is a mere 2% higher, at 37%.

Read more:
With Labor gaining in polls, is too much Barnaby Joyce hurting the Coalition?

At the last election, Labor secured a primary vote of 33.34% nation-wide.
The Liberal Party (in its own name) came in at less than 30% in 2019, although this total excludes the Queensland tally where the two conservative parties form a single entity, the Liberal-National Party (LNP).

The total Coalition share of primary votes for Liberals and Nationals in 2019 was 41.44%, whereas the respective Labor and Greens first-preference tallies of 33.34% and 10.40% amounted to 43.74%.

On the face of it, this suggests Labor could do as well out of the Greens as the Liberals do out of the Nationals.

But the key difference is that while the Nationals provide brand difference from the Liberals in the regions where they operate exclusively, the city-centric Greens largely cannibalise Labor’s urban-progressive vote.

The Liberal-Nationals carve-up of the electoral map is more analogous to the Qantas-Jetstar arrangement, where the full-service carrier established a cheaper no-frills service under different branding.

Both are airlines, but different branding freed up the Qantas subsidiary to go after an economy market segment against Virgin and other lower-cost operators without confusing the presentation and pricing structure of its major brand.

Another difference is the existence of a formalised Coalition, the precise terms of which are set out in a secret power-sharing agreement that confers a sizeable proportion of the jewels of office on the junior partner.

This includes the deputy prime ministership and additional cabinet posts (currently there are four) plus other outer-ministry portfolios, and undisclosed undertakings on policy.

So codified are these arrangements that the Liberal prime minister of the day does not have a say over who represents the Nationals is in his (or her) own cabinet.
Barnaby Joyce’s return to the Nationals leadership in June 2021 is a case in point. His move on the hapless but co-operative former deputy PM Michael McCormack came as a shock to Morrison, who was out of the country at the time.

Joyce had left the ministry in February 2018 in disrepute, well before Morrison’s ascension to the prime ministership.

The two have not appeared together in a press conference since Joyce’s return.

In the aftermath of the Turnbull government’s razor-thin 2016 election win, Joyce, in his first stint as Nationals leader, was quizzed as to what the Coalition Agreement would cover. In a triumph of hubris over accountability, he boasted:

The first aspiration is that the agreement remains confidential. That’s aspiration one, two, three, four, five and six.

The deployment of tailored messaging between city and bush is central to the Nationals’ success, and therefore to Coalition success.

It is a capacity Labor, as a single, largely metropolitan party, lacks.

Indeed, then leader Bill Shorten was criticised in the 2019 election campaign for inconsistent messaging or so-called audience shopping, for stressing green credentials in Melbourne and a more pro-coalmining stance in Queensland.

While it is too early to tell, in the few days since grudging Nationals support for the net-zero by 2050 target was secured, several conflicting messages have emerged on the conservative side.

Key Nationals, such as Matt Canavan, have openly declared their intention to campaign against net-zero.

Almost immediately it became known that Joyce himself was personally against Morrison’s 2050 carbon neutrality pledge, but had lost the debate in the party room.

Read more:
Grattan on Friday: Can Barnaby Joyce sell his supporters the net zero he’s previously trashed?

Presumably this is bad for Joyce and the Nationals. But perhaps not. On the one hand, it makes him look lame and ineffective as a leader, incapable of carrying his small 21-strong party room.

On the other, Joyce’s reputed antipathy to climate virtue-signalling (as the conservative right characterises it) allows the Nationals as a party to continue casting doubt on the primacy of emissions reduction among government priorities when communicating with its electoral base.

Tellingly, the only concrete thing to come so far from the net-zero retreat was the immediate promotion of the trenchant fossil-fuel booster, Resources and Energy Minister Keith Pitt. He moved from the outer ministry into the Cabinet.

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

– ref. Want to understand how the Coalition works? Take a look at climate policy – https://theconversation.com/want-to-understand-how-the-coalition-works-take-a-look-at-climate-policy-170103

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Raquel Peel, Lecturer, University of Southern Queensland

Popular culture has plenty of examples of people sabotaging their romantic relationships.

In the movie 10 Things I Hate About You, Kat says she has no interest in romantic engagements. Then Patrick asks about her dating style:

You disappoint them from the start and then you’re covered, right?

But as the plot develops, we learn this is Kat’s way of protecting herself, to cope with the trauma of a previous relationship.

Other people move through relationships searching for “the one”, making quick assessments of their romantic partners.

In the TV series The Mindy Project, Mindy is a successful obstetrician and gynaecologist with poor relationship skills. She has a trail of relationship failures, and partners who did not measure up. She is looking for the “perfect” love story with unrealistic expectations.

Another example is Jacob in the movie Crazy, Stupid, Love. He quickly moves through sexual partners night after night to avoid a serious commitment.

In the same movie, we meet Cal and Emily, who stayed in a marriage long term but had become complacent. This caused them to split, but once they started to work on themselves, they found a way to reconnect.

Read more:
What is ‘the ick’? A psychological scientist explains this TikTok trend

What is relationship sabotage?

My team and I define relationship sabotage as self-defeating attitudes and behaviours in (and out of) relationships. These stop relationships succeeding, or lead people to give up on them, justifying why these relationships fail.

Most importantly, relationship sabotage is a self-protection strategy for a win-win outcome.

For example, you might feel you win if the relationship survives despite your defensive strategies. Alternatively, if the relationship fails, your beliefs and choice to protect yourself are validated.

Why do we do this?

We found people sabotage their relationships mainly because of fear. This is despite wanting an intimate relationship.

As Sam Smith says in his song Too Good at Goodbyes:

I’m never gonna let you close to me

Even though you mean the most to me

‘Cause every time I open up, it hurts.

However, fear responses are not always visible or easy to identify. This is because our emotions are layered to protect us. Fear is a vulnerable (and core) emotion, which is commonly hidden beneath surface (or secondary) emotions, such as defensiveness.

Recognise any of these patterns?

Relationship sabotage is not a “one off” moment in a relationship. It happens when fear triggers patterns of responses from one relationship to the next.

My research highlights three main patterns of attitudes and behaviours to look out for.

Defensiveness

Defensiveness, such as being angry or aggressive, is a counter-attack to a perceived threat. People who are defensive are motivated by wanting to validate themselves; they are looking to prove themselves right and protect their self-esteem.

Threats that trigger defensiveness are a previous relationship trauma, difficulty with self-esteem, loss of hope, the possibility of getting hurt again, and fear of failure, rejection, abandonment and commitment. However, defensiveness is an instinctive response that sometimes makes sense.

People can believe relationships often end up in “heart break”. One research participant was tired of being criticised and having their feelings misunderstood:

I protect myself from getting hurt in a romantic relationship by putting up all of my walls and not letting go of my guard.

Trust difficulty

Having difficulty trusting others involves struggling to believe romantic partners and perhaps feeling jealous of their attention to others. People who feel this way might not feel safe and avoid feeling vulnerable in relationships.

This is often a result of past experiences of having trust betrayed, or expecting to be betrayed. Betrayals could be as a result of small deceptions (a white lie) or bigger deceptions (infidelity).

People explained choosing not to trust, or being unable to trust, was a way of avoiding being hurt again. One research participant said:

I no longer trust my romantic partners 100%. I will always be thinking about what I would do if they left or cheated, so I never get fully invested.

Lack of relationship skills

This is when someone has limited insight or awareness into destructive tendencies in relationships. This may be a result of poor relationship
role models, or negative interactions and outcomes from previous relationships.

One research participant said:

What used to hold me back was lack of experience, poor relationship examples (from my parents), and my own immaturity.

But relationship skills can be learned. Healthy relationships can help foster relationship skills and in turn lessen the effects of defensiveness and trust difficulty.

The cost of relationship sabotage

Relationship sabotage does not necessarily end relationships. This depends on whether these patterns are long term.

For singles, relationship sabotage might prevent you from starting a relationship in the first place. For people in relationships, a long-term effect of repeatedly using self-defensive strategies might be to see your fears turn into reality, like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Difficulties in intimate relationships are among the top main reasons for seeking counselling. Such difficulties are also significant contributors to anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts.

So, what we can you do about it?

I have seen countless testimonials from people who sabotaged their relationships and felt helpless and hopeless. But here are three ways to do something about it:

• insight: we need to know who we are first, and the “baggage” we bring to relationships. Be honest with yourself and your partner about your fears and what you might be struggling with

• expectations: we need to manage our expectations of romantic engagements. Understand what you can realistically expect of yourself and your partners

• collaboration: you need to collaborate with your partner to implement strategies to maintain a healthy relationship. This means learning how to communicate better (across all topics, while being honest) and showing flexibility and understanding, especially when dealing with conflict.

Above all, believe you can have healthy relationships and deserve to be loved.

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

Raquel Peel 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. 3 ways we sabotage relationships (and 3 ways to kick the habit) – https://theconversation.com/3-ways-we-sabotage-relationships-and-3-ways-to-kick-the-habit-169467

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Pearse, Lecturer, Australian National University

This week, the Morrison government finally released its plan to get Australia to net-zero emissions by 2050.

Labor leader Anthony Albanese was quick to dismiss the Coalition policy, describing it as a mere “vibe” with “nothing new” in it. His climate spokesperson Chris Bowen added

I’ve seen more detail in a fortune cookie.

These are fair comments. But Labor’s climate policy is also light on detail and the party won’t announce its full climate plan until after international climate talks in Glasgow, which finish on November 12.

What do we know about Labor’s policy so far? Will it be environmentally effective and fair?

No 2030 target

Global warming cannot exceed 1.5℃ this century if we hope to avoid catastrophic climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change) predicts global warming is on track for 2.7℃. We really do need to act fast.

Yet the ALP has no current plans to increase Australia’s 2030 emission reduction target. The party took a target of 45% below 2005 levels to the 2019 election. But this was short of what scientists have been calling for.

The Climate Council’s estimate for an appropriate climate target for Australia at the time was a 65% reduction. Today, they argue we can, and should, reach for a 75% reduction by 2030.

Read more:
Morrison’s climate plan has 35% 2030 emissions reduction ‘projection’ but modelling underpinning 2050 target yet to be released

Australia’s 2030 target is important because “net-zero” is vague in the abstract – it basically means a managed balance between sources and sinks of carbon. We need to know what parts of the carbon cycle, and which industries, technologies, and groups of people are involved, and how.

Towards a green industrial strategy

The ALP has been signalling it wants to focus on labour issues at the heart of decarbonisation. As Bowen frequently observes, “good energy policy is good employment policy”.

After the tortuous carbon price debate of the Rudd-Gillard years and Labor’s shock defeat at the 2019 election, Albanese has announced a renewed focus on policies to promote a green “industrial revolution”. More recently, he has joined labour economists in arguing the pandemic exposes the Australian economy to fragile global supply chains.

Read more:
Australia’s net-zero plan fails to tackle our biggest contribution to climate change: fossil fuel exports

Labor has proposed a A$15 billion national reconstruction fund for economic diversification and advanced manufacturing, including renewables.

Energy transition involves job losses in fossil-fuel based electricity generation and related mines and transport. There are significant opportunities for new employment in new green tech industries, but they don’t magically appear in the places jobs are being lost.

So any shift to a green industry policy should be meticulously planned and targeted to specific locations.

Supporting transitions in electricity and transport

Thanks to the renewable energy boom, electricity market decarbonisation is underway. Labor says it’s committed to underwriting the transition.

The ALP’s “rewiring the nation” policy commits A$20 billion to rebuild and modernise the grid, in line with a plan by the Australian Energy Market Operator. Labor is also proposing a public institution called Rewiring the Nation Corporation that may reintroduce some public ownership in the sector. For households and distributed energy off the grid, it promises more support for community batteries.

The ALP has also committed to more vocational training and a scheme for apprentice electricians to gain renewable energy skills. But we need more detail on how they propose to govern transition in the most affected regions.

It’s unclear if Labor still intends to create the Just Transition Authority announced under Bill Shorten’s leadership. These kinds of independent authorities are important for negotiating redundancy and retraining programmes and economic diversity initiatives in hard hit regions.

Transport systems are on the verge of a major transition too. The ALP has a tariff removal policy to make electric vehicles more affordable. It proposes to work with the unions and the sector to develop manufacturing capacity. But it could be doing more, for instance, through pollution standards or mandating large manufacturers meet targets for electric vehicle sales.

What about food and fuel?

All of this makes sense. But if net-zero is to become more than just a slogan, emissions reduction is urgently needed in other sectors such as agriculture and mining.

Decarbonising these sectors will be challenging in an economic, practical and political sense.

Labor’s policies to reduce emissions in the agriculture sector have focused on land carbon offsetting. Under this approach, farmers are encouraged to maintain vegetation and adopt farming practices that lead to more carbon being stored in soil and plants. This activity could be rewarded in the form of “credits” sold to polluting firms looking to compensate for (or “offset”) their ongoing emissions.

The Gillard government established the Carbon Farming Initiative as a voluntary land offset scheme linked to the short-lived compliance emissions trading scheme. This continued under the Coalition’s Direct Action Plan as a combined competitive grant programme and way to offset emissions under the Safeguard Mechanism which which sets a (loose) limit on the most polluting firms in Australia.

Both Labor and Coalition’s approaches to land carbon are a light touch. Offsets should not be heavily relied on to reach net-zero.

Read more:
The clock is ticking on net-zero, farmers must not get a free pass

Meanwhile, Labor has never properly addressed the future of our export mineral and energy industries. Australia’s coal and gas exports will be exposed as trading partners such as South Korea, Japan and China pursue net-zero emissions targets.

And Labor will be under ongoing pressure from environmentalists and Indigenous groups who have long been calling for major reforms to both cultural heritage and environmental protection laws.

Capping pollution

Labor has said it will not seek an economy-wide carbon price instrument, like it had during the Gillard government. This means it will need other ways to legislate and regulate for emissions reductions. One possibility is to strengthen the existing “safeguard mechanism” without building a carbon market. In its current form, the mechanism has allowed big polluters to increase their emissions, but that could be changed.

If Labor went down that route, it would also need a separate policy to deal with emissions from agriculture. Effective climate policy doesn’t have to be top-down economy-wide carbon price. Sector-by-sector industrial policy and regulation could be a more realistic way to create incentives for innovation.

Looming election

The federal election due early next year is shaping up as another “climate election”.

We urgently need a government with vision for what jobs and livelihoods will look like in a decade of green industrial transformations. Labor is offering some new industrial details, but the emissions target and plans for mining and regional communities are vague.

We need the details in Albanese’s climate policy fortune cookie soon.

Rebecca Pearse receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Labor doesn’t have a 2030 target yet either – what do we know of the ALP’s climate policy so far? – https://theconversation.com/labor-doesnt-have-a-2030-target-yet-either-what-do-we-know-of-the-alps-climate-policy-so-far-170770

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Pi-Shen Seet, Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Edith Cowan University

In mid October, the New South Wales government’s top beaureacrats urged new Premier Dominic Perrottet to push for “an aggressive resumption of immigration levels” to spur post-pandemic economic recovery.

Industry seized on this as the answer to skills shortages that have resulted from Australia’s border closures. The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry called for a near doubling of the skilled migration program, to around 200,000 annually over the next five years.

In the same week, the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) released a report that showed a 35% increase in the number of Australians enrolled in courses linked to apprenticeships and traineeships, compared to the start of the pandemic. But the news seemed to fly under the radar.

This significant rise in training may not satisfy those who want a quick solution to the skills shortages. But growth in Australia’s vocational education and training sector is a more sustainable way of filling the gaps.

Where are the skills shortages?

Earlier this year, a NSW and federal government report suggested increased skilled migration would be a big part of Australia’s future success after a pandemic-induced fall in migration and population growth.

More recently, Infrastructure Australia anticipated skilled job shortages could rise to around 100,000 by 2023. It argued Australians needed an urgent skilled migration program but that some skills shortages were likely to persist in the significant post-COVID infrastructure boost.

A June 2021 ABS survey showed more than a quarter (27%) of Australian businesses were having difficulty finding qualified staff. Among the skilled trades, these were mainly in hospitality, sales, transportation, construction and mining.

But there are many issues with relying on migration to fix these, beyond a decrease in international travel due to COVID.

Migration not the magic bullet

Demographer Liz Allen has argued the migration effort may be problematic due to more aggressive international competition to attract needed workers, such as in health care, and Australia’s reduced attractiveness as a destination.

Also, the upcoming longer waiting periods for new Australian migrants to access welfare payments can make similar destinations like Canada and New Zealand more attractive.

Read more:
Migration is a quick fix for skills shortages. Building on Australians’ skills is better

Meanwhile, an aggressive migration strategy may not be politically palatable. Research shows only 19% of voters agreed with the government’s long-term migration target. The rest supported lower levels, including 28% who wanted nil net migration.

Another argument made by the likes of Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe is that a lower population leads to tightening of labour markets, fewer unemployed and employers improving wages and conditions causing employment participation rates to rise.

So, what’s a better way to fill the skills gap?

Apprenticeships and traineeships on the rise

Apprenticeships and traineeships enable individuals to work and learn on the job while they complete a nationally recognised qualification.

The NCVER report (quarterly, to March 2021) shows 329,585 apprentices and trainees were in training, an annual growth rate of 20.7%.

Commencements in traineeships and apprenticeships increased by 28.5% to 186,745. Of significance are increases such as 45.1% in the 25-44 years group and 58.2% in the over 45 years group. This raises the possibility they are re-training or upskilling, perhaps precipitated by the pandemic.

Read more:
Trade apprentices will help our post COVID-19 recovery. We need to do more to keep them in work

The growth rate in commencements was approximately the same in trades and non-trades. In trades, technical staff in IT, engineering and science recorded the greatest growth rate. In non-trades, this was for managerial/professional and administrative roles. These are some of the roles identified as being in current shortage or expected to be in strong future demand.

More Australians training up since pandemic

One reason for this increase is that during the pandemic, federal and state governments increased spending in re-skilling initiatives. Government programs included the Boosting Apprenticeships Commencements program (and its expansion) and JobTrainer, which gave 17-24 years looking for work a way to study a course in high-demand sectors for free or by paying a low fee.

Another reason may be that a record number of people meeting the shock of the pandemic have either quit their job or are thinking about doing so in developed economies. More than 19 million US workers have quit their jobs since April 2021.

Recent ABS unemployment data shows fewer Australians are applying for jobs or participating in the workforce. In September 2021, the participation rate fell by 333,000 people and hit a 15-month low, with just 64.5% of people aged 15 and over currently working or actively looking for work.

These data suggest some Australians, whether voluntarily or not, are enrolling in VET courses to retrain themselves for new jobs.

Can domestic training solve the skills shortage?

There is growing evidence the increase in apprentices and trainees will help alleviate skills shortages in sectors of the economy flexible enough to take them on — and patient enough to see them trained through the system. Traditionally, these are sectors which have been more exposed to market volatility such as mining and construction.

A recent Grattan Institute report suggests most skills shortages in a market economy are likely to be temporary. It argues our flexible labour market and relatively demand-driven higher education and VET sectors should lead to increased supply of most in-demand skills over time.

A federal report estimates that to make up for skills shortages caused by an ageing population, there needs to be an annual migrant inflow of as much as 400,000. This is much higher than what employers are calling for. This means even with migration intakes, there is still a key role for domestic training to make up the projected skills gaps.

But for this to happen, the momentum in skills system innovation recommended in the Joyce Review — to ensure the VET sector can keep up with rapidly changing industry needs — should be accelerated.

Read more:
The government keeps talking about revamping VET – but is it actually doing it?

The federal government will need to continue working with states and territories, the training sector and industry on VET reform to ensure it is ready for the technological and demographic changes to work. For example, the fourth industrial revolution is disrupting traditional Australian jobs and workers are growing increasingly worried they will be displaced by technology.

It is unlikely earlier efforts to meet the requirements of these skills (such as by sending employees overseas to train at Industry 4.0 centres of excellence) will be as easy as before. Our research has shown that besides human capital (knowledge that exists in individuals), innovation in Australia is also driven by social capital (knowledge that exists in groups and networks), which is harder to import.

Hence the need for Australia to develop adequate self-reliance in skills that cannot be easily imported.

If the trend of apprenticeship and traineeship commencements continues to rise to where they were about a decade ago, this may help address the skills shortages. This will still be in the medium to long term as it takes time for people to be trained and qualified.

Read more:
Jobs are changing, and fast. Here’s what the VET sector (and employers) need to do to keep up

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. Local training is the best long-term solution to Australia’s skills shortages – not increased migration – https://theconversation.com/local-training-is-the-best-long-term-solution-to-australias-skills-shortages-not-increased-migration-170376

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen King, Adjunct professor, Monash University

Across Australia, the rate of imprisonment has climbed by about 25% in the past decade, over a time in which the rate of offending has dived 18%.

How can it be that we have less crime but more people in prison?

It’s the conundrum at the heart of a Productivity Commission research paper released this morning entitled Australia’s Prison Dilemma.

This graph presented in the report uses homicides as an indicator of trends in the incidence of violent crime because almost all homicides are reported to police.

Homicides and imprisonment per 100,000 Australians

The apparent fall in imprisonment during the pandemic may not last. It appears to be due to COVID-related decisions to release more unsentenced prisoners on bail, and slowdowns in court processing during lockdowns.

Competing explanations

One obvious – but incorrect – explanation for rising imprisonment at a time of falling crime might be that rising prison numbers are deterring crime. But the best evidence from Australia and overseas shows little if any such connection.

Another might be that “tough on bail” laws are leading to more people being held in prison awaiting trial. Even if some are later found not guilty or are not sentenced to prison, such a change could push up prison numbers while total crime is falling.

Read more:
Australia’s prison rates are up but crime is down. What’s going on?

Or it might be that “tough on crime” policies are making us send people to prison for crimes that previously would have led to a fine or suspended sentence.

Or we might have increased sentences – imposing more time for the same crime.

Our research finds the correct answer is “all of the above”, with the key driver across Australia being changes that are “tough on crime”.

The biggest drivers of increased prisoner numbers across Australia are the chance that a person who is found guilty is imprisoned and the length of the term.

Both have been increased by new policies that mandate prison sentences for certain crimes, eliminate suspended sentences, and make it harder to get parole.

Toughness is understandable

The changes might be appropriate. Perpetrators of violent crime can destroy lives, and they make up almost 60% of the prison population.

However, a lot of prisoners have committed more minor offences with little risk of harm to others. Over one third of prisoners have sentences of less than six months and 60 per cent have been in prison before.

Many of the repeat prisoners are stuck on a treadmill of prison, minor crime, prison with untreated drug or alcohol problems, untreated mental illness, and few if any employment prospects.

Locking up low level offenders just to have them churn through prison again and again is costly.

Toughness is expensive

On average, we find imprisonment costs taxpayers about A$120,000 per prisoner per year – about $5.2 billion in total.

We find that if Australia’s imprisonment rate had remained steady, rather than climbing for twenty years, the saving in prison costs would approach $13.5 billion.

And we find that if we could focus on alternatives for just the 1% of prisoners who create the least risk to society we would save about $45 million per year.

Australia already uses alternatives such as home detention with electronic monitoring, and diversion programs where offenders receive community-based treatment for their addiction or illness.

The alternatives are cheap

These alternatives save money. Community corrections programs cost one-tenth of prison terms.

They can also lead to better outcomes, for both the offender and for society, by getting prisoners off the prison-crime-prison treadmill.

They do heighten some risks, but a careful choice of the offenders offered the alternatives along with strong supervision using modern technology, and the knowledge that prison awaits those for whom the alternatives don’t work means the risks can be kept small.

Read more:
FactCheck: are first Australians the most imprisoned people on Earth?

Adopting these alternatives requires evidence about what works and buy-in.

The existing evidence base is poor. Our report highlights a range of evidence-based alternatives from here and overseas, but many are never evaluated.

The alternatives need to be fair and just – not only to the offenders but also to the victims. But for low-level offenders caught on a prison-crime-prison treadmill, “tough on crime” means “tough on the taxpayer”. We ought to be able to do better.

Stephen King is a Commissioner with the Australian Productivity Commission.

– ref. More prison time for less crime, our swelling prisons are costing us dearly – https://theconversation.com/more-prison-time-for-less-crime-our-swelling-prisons-are-costing-us-dearly-170792

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Shino Konishi, Associate professor, Australian Catholic University

Prior to colonisation there were approximately 250 different Aboriginal languages spoken by some 500 clans throughout Australia. Each clan possessed numerous Dreaming stories, depicting how the land was traversed and marked by the Ancestral Beings, who created land-forms, people, animals, plants and celestial stars.

Their experiences, and often the consequences of their actions, formed the basis for Aboriginal kinship systems, laws, ways of caring for Country and connecting to land.

These ancestors are not relegated to the past, for their presence is still felt at sacred sites, and they are still responsible for providing the resources that sustain the clan. Some Aboriginal people maintain their connection to these powerful beings by continuing to perform the songs and dances they gave them, and marking their bodies and objects with their sacred designs.

Thus Aboriginal cultures are necessarily rich with symbolism. Towards the end of the 20th century, Aboriginal culture was increasingly being called upon to provide a symbol of nation – representing Australia as a whole – by groups of non-Indigenous Australians who believed it offered a depth and richness of symbolic meaning that more conventional symbols had lost (or perhaps had never had).

The most widely known Ancestral Being is the Rainbow Serpent, or Rainbow Snake, the English names for the figure that appears in the Dreamings of many different Aboriginal language groups across the continent.

It features as an important creator figure, guardian of sacred places, bringer of monsoonal rains and storms, bestower of powers upon healers and rainmakers, or a dangerous creature that punishes people who violate laws, or dwells in waterholes threatening to swallow unwary passers-by, to name just a few incarnations.

It is also strongly connected with fertility, both human and ecological. In all
of its guises and geographies the Rainbow Serpent is associated with
water, an essential resource, and the rainbow, whose shimmering light
and curved form reflects the scales and body of the snake. The rainbow
is also an important bridge between the water and the sky, the sky yet
another resting place for the Rainbow Serpent.

Just one of the many Rainbow Serpents who travelled the land
is Yingarna, whose story is told by Kunwinjku-speaking people from
western Arnhem Land. In one of many stories she was said to be the first Rainbow Serpent, and all of creation burst from her body. The Kunwinjku also possess Dreaming stories about Yingarna’s child, Ngalyod, who is associated with the “potentially destructive power of the storms and the plenty of the wet seasons”.

The immense power that Yingarna and Ngalyod have is both creative and destructive: these Rainbow Serpents are not simply benevolent symbols of unity, but can also be threatening, so their resting places should be avoided. This menacing aspect has been symbolised in Dick Nguleingulei Murrumurru’s painting from the National Museum of Australia’s collection, which depicts Yingarna with
terrible crocodile’s teeth and tail, and a round, emu-like body capable of holding all she has swallowed.

The idea of the Rainbow Serpent as a composite of many other animals and even plants appeared elsewhere; western Arnhem Land rock paintings portray Rainbow Serpents with the head of a kangaroo, body of a snake, tail of a barramundi, and yam-shaped protrusions from the body. The oldest of these rock paintings have been dated to 6000 years, supporting the argument that Rainbow Serpent stories are among the world’s oldest continuous religious traditions.

This makes it especially useful as a national symbol, claiming
for modern Australia both universality and longevity.

Read more:
‘Dreamtime’ and ‘The Dreaming’: who dreamed up these terms?

For Aboriginal people the Rainbow Serpent is not relegated to the past and time of creation, but remains an awesome source of power that shapes the contemporary world. When Cyclone Tracy devastated the city of Darwin in 1974, local Aboriginal people interpreted it as a “warning to stop neglecting their traditional law and associated rituals”, and succumbing to the temptations of “lawless” city
life.

Attaching meaning

Non-Indigenous Australians have known stories about other Rainbow
Serpents since colonial times. Francis Armstrong, the first government
interpreter of the Swan River Colony (now Perth), recorded an account
of the Waugal (also spelled Wagyl), a Noongar Rainbow Serpent, in 1836,
seven years after the establishment of the settlement. He observed that
there were

certain large round stones, in different parts of the Colony,
which they [Noongar people] believe to be the eggs laid by the waugal … On passing such stones, they are in the habit of making a bed for it, of
the rushes of the blackboy [balga, grass tree or Xanthorrhoea preissii].

This was because, according to Noongar elder Clarrie Isaacs, the Waugal
had created the Swan River and all its associated waterholes, and “has the
power of life and death over Aborigines and demands the respect due to
it”.

However, despite noticing the reverence that the Noongar paid these
stones, the settlers still removed them from their place, indicating that
they accorded them no significance.

This instance suggests the difficulty
of translating the symbolic significance of an object and story across
cultures, especially when there is such disparity in power relations. But
in addition it reveals the way the very land contained symbolic meaning
for Indigenous people, whereas for the increasingly utilitarian colonisers
the land was reduced to little more than an economic resource.

The Rainbow Serpent, then, means different things for Indigenous
and non-Indigenous Australians. Armstrong’s example demonstrates
that in the early period it was considered a mere curiosity and
disregarded, for the colonists were busy transforming and re-purposing
the land.

Conflicting attitudes about the Waugal arose again in the 1980s when the state government wanted to redevelop the site of the Old Swan Brewery, also known as Goonininup, a resting place of the Rainbow Serpent.

Again, a century and a half later, few non-Indigenous Western Australians sympathised with Noongar protests, and received the idea of the Waugal with great scepticism. Isaacs attempted to find equivalences in European systems of belief:

They say because when they drive past the site that because they
cannot see some sort of ridiculous fire breathing dragon-like creature
poking its Loch Ness Monster-like head from the waters that it does
not exist. It is as ridiculous as myself making an assertion that God
is actually a large white man sitting on a throne atop some puffy
clouds.

But the developers ignored inconvenient arguments about religious
symbolism, preferring a more self-interestedly rational interpretation
which, according to cultural studies scholar John Fielder, demonstrates the imperial nature
of Western rationality, where our logic renders all other logics as
essentially illogical, irrational – not to be thought of as logic at all.

The Noongar saw the Waugal as a “spiritual being”, while their opponents
saw the Waugal as “some wildly primitive superstition” and the Noongar
themselves as troublemakers.

‘Domesticated’

However, non-Indigenous Australians have attached a range of
other meanings to the Rainbow Serpent, for the most part far from
hostile. This is partly due to the influence of anthropologists who, in the
early 20th century, became interested in what they called “myth”.

Anthropologist AR Radcliffe-Brown compiled a survey of stories from different Aboriginal language groups across Australia, and concluded
that the Rainbow Serpent occupied “the position of a deity”. Despite
noticing many differences in these stories, Radcliffe-Brown assumed that there was just a single Rainbow Serpent, and that it was akin to a god, “the most important nature-deity”. It was a view that greatly influenced non-Indigenous Australian understandings.

Taken out of the particular contexts of each language group’s
Dreamings, the Rainbow Serpent has been stripped of its numerous
ambivalent symbolisms and iconographic forms, and frequently
reduced to a singular entity – a benevolent mother/creator-figure in
the form of a brightly coloured snake.

Read more:
Indigenous cultural appropriation: what not to do

Perhaps this is in part due to the snake’s particular morphology; it is easy to imagine its enormous sinuous body carving out the rivers and creeks in the ancient “Dreamtime” (as it used to be described), whereas the meaning of the multiple symbolisms and composite form of Yingarna, Ngalyod and other Rainbow Serpents discussed by Aboriginal clans eludes outsiders.

It could be argued that this new rendering as a benevolent snake is a process of intellectual colonisation, for the settlers have domesticated the Rainbow Serpent, making it comprehensible and palatable to Western ideas. It was a case of non-Indigenous Australia connecting to Aboriginality only on a disembodied and superficial aesthetic level rather than at a level of deep understanding.

In the 1970s, celebrated Australian artist Sidney Nolan painted two large
murals depicting Rainbow Serpents. Snake, a 45-metre long mosaic was said to be Nolan’s “homage to Australia’s Aborigines”.

The second work, Little Snake was inspired by the sight of the Central Australian desert blooming after years of drought. Nolan used the Rainbow Serpent to represent “the magical power of water that brings
life from a state of stasis”.

It is this “domesticated” image of the giant brightly coloured snake with which Australians are probably most familiar, and which would prove most suitable for representing the Australian nation as a whole.

A commonplace symbol

Since then, images of Rainbow Serpents have slithered across school walls and community murals in suburbs and towns throughout the nation, at least those with large Indigenous or left-leaning populations.

The education system has taken the Rainbow Serpent to its widest audience. For many young Australians the Rainbow Serpent has been packaged as an Indigenous fairytale. From the 1970s, Australian children have read illustrated books depicting the life and adventures of the Rainbow Serpent.

By the 1990s, children could paint their own Rainbow Serpent designs during NAIDOC Week, Harmony Day, or other events celebrating Australia’s multiculturalism. For adult Australians, the Rainbow Serpent has a number of other connotations. Tourists have been able to buy prints, T-shirts, books and jewellery or even underpants decorated with the great snake’s sinuous form, as an exotic souvenir of Australia.

Walkers and leisure-seekers can photograph, sit on or picnic by large public sculptures of the snake in public spaces, where it was intended to acknowledge and commemorate Aboriginal people. And since 1997 New Agers, ravers and ecotourists can come from “across the globe to dance a common dream” at the annual Rainbow Serpent Festival in Lexton, central Victoria, to camp and dance, but also learn from local Dja Dja Wurrung and Wadawurrung peoples and other Indigenous people from the Pacific and north America.

The New Age market has been one of the most avid consumers of the Rainbow
Serpent symbol, reading in it positive messages about the earth and
people’s spiritual relationship with it. Anthropologist Sallie Anderson has noticed that:

The authors of many New Age books on Aboriginal culture and spirituality pick and choose characteristics from ethnographic descriptions of various rainbow serpent myths that seemingly support their comparisons with the Kundalini, electromagnetism, Vishnu, fertility and death, vibration and energy sources and various other themes.

The Rainbow Serpent’s winding form and brilliant colours have become a commonplace symbol within Australian pedagogical, cultural, economic and built environments.

This widespread familiarity with the image, and the apparent tangibility of the concept in its domesticated and aestheticised form, has led to it being understood as a preeminent symbol of Aboriginal identity, especially apparent in public
events celebrating the centenary of Federation.

The turn of the century saw a groundswell of interest in Aboriginal
people and their place in Australia. The first year of the new millennium
was supposed to mark the end of the ten-year journey towards
reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia.

In June 2000, hundreds of thousands had participated in the Walk for Reconciliation
and in September Australians cheered for Indigenous athlete Cathy
Freeman at the Sydney Olympics. These milestones meant that a feelgood emblem of the newly reconciled nation was needed for 2001, when Australia’s national identity was celebrated in the centenary of Federation. The Rainbow Serpent was called into service.

On 1 January 2001 the Journey of a Nation – Centenary of Federation parade through the streets of Sydney included a float shaped like a huge coiled snake, with dancers wearing costumes decorated with Rainbow Serpents designed by Bundjalung artist Bronwyn Bancroft.

Then, at Canberra’s 2001 Floriade festival, the Rainbow Serpent again
appeared, this time in the “Century in bloom” display. On this
“floral walk through the decades”, viewers passed through plantings of
humble vegetables representing the hardships of the Depression and
beds of flowers planted in the shapes of the German Iron Cross and
the Japanese Rising Sun, indicating World War II.

The 1970s were represented by a display of tulips and native flora planted in the design of the Rainbow Serpent, ostensibly symbolising “Australia’s Aboriginal
heritage”. These examples suggest that the Rainbow Serpent was used
by the event organisers as a metonym for Aboriginality, so audiences
could embrace Aboriginal peoples’ place within Australia’s national
identity.

However, the Rainbow Serpent was also used to symbolise Australia as a whole, and not just its Indigenous peoples. In Sydney’s annual New Year’s Eve fireworks display, the grand finale is always the lighting of the mystery symbol that adorns the eastern side of the city’s beloved Harbour Bridge. In 2001 that symbol was the Rainbow Serpent, depicted alongside the Federation Star. The maxim of that
year’s show was “100 years as a nation, thousands of years as a land”.

Thus the Rainbow Serpent was used to give modern Australia an
ancient past, and, in conjunction with the star, was appropriated to
represent Australia.

The use of the Rainbow Serpent was no doubt well intentioned, but this plainly benevolent and amorphous meaning was far removed from that connoted by the original, highly ambivalent Rainbow Serpents of the Dreaming.

Aboriginal people have also adopted new symbolic meanings for the Rainbow Serpents. Due to the history of colonisation and the emergence of Indigenous political organisations and media, Aboriginal societies have become more mixed and cosmopolitan, and a pan-Aboriginal identity has emerged.

Instead of identifying solely with one’s clan or language group, Aboriginal people have formed a community that encompasses the entire continent. As such, they have needed to develop their own symbols to represent this new pan-identity, and the ubiquity of the Rainbow Serpent in both Indigenous and non-Indigenous societies makes it well placed to act as “a symbol of unity … amongst urban Aborigines”.

The image of the Rainbow Serpent has been used in a number of ways. The Rainbow Serpent has provided a logo for Aboriginal corporations such as the Northern Land Council. Victoria’s Rumbalara Oral Health Centre depicted the Rainbow Serpent as dental floss, “twisting through
an orange tangled web, which represents plaque on teeth”.

For the Aboriginal community of Moree, it was a symbol of unity when they constructed a 17-metre long Rainbow Serpent for the Black + White + Pink Reconciliation Float, entered in the 1999 Mardi Gras parade.

Inscribing new meaning

The Rainbow Serpent has been an important symbol in Aboriginal societies for thousands of years, and by the start of the 21st century it was also a recognised symbol for the wider Australian society. In making that transition it lost its particular “traditional” meanings of creation, water and fertility, and its ambiguous combination of creative and destructive forces.

Although it has not featured much on the national stage as a symbol since the Federation centenary in 2001, it remains a potent symbol of local Aboriginal community spirit and reconciliation. For example, Bundjalung artist John Robinson’s
Rainbow Serpent artwork was installed at a shopping centre in East Maitland, New South Wales to celebrate 2018’s Reconciliation Week.

In 2019 a Rainbow Serpent water feature designed by a collective of Kamilaroi women artists was commissioned for the Gunnedah Civic Centre, and the Perth Royal Show showcased a public performance by Noongar elder Walter McGuire, featuring a “35m long Wagyl inflatable creation … illuminated by the colours of the rainbow”.

It is evident then, that the supple skin of the Rainbow Serpent continues to provide an ideal canvas for inscribing new meanings and symbolisms for both
Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

This is an edited extract from Symbols of Australia: Imagining a Nation, edited by Melissa Harper and Richard White, published by NewSouth Books. Footnotes for this article can be found in the book.

Shino Konishi receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Friday essay: creation, destruction and appropriation – the powerful symbolism of the Rainbow Serpent – https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-creation-destruction-and-appropriation-the-powerful-symbolism-of-the-rainbow-serpent-169934

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

In the press gallery at Parliament House, there’s a bell that years ago was rung regularly to alert journalists to press conferences and statements. Email has made it an anachronism.

But shortly before 8am on Thursday Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce appeared in the gallery, looking rather agitated, and personally rang the bell.

Joyce was there to lay an ownership claim to the exclusion of a methane reduction pledge from the 2050 net-zero climate plan Scott Morrison announced on Tuesday. “One of the key reasons that the Nationals went in to bat has become so clearly evident today,” Joyce declared.

This followed a report in The Australian, briefed by the office of Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor, rejecting the United States push for a 30% reduction by 2030 of methane emissions (produced by cows burping, gas extraction, and the like).

Taylor apparently had been onto the methane exclusion issue for some time. Later on Thursday Morrison said the government never had any intention of agreeing to the reduction. He also rejected Joyce’s confusing claim there was an agriculture carve out from the climate plan.

Who gets political “branding rights” on the treatment of methane was just the latest pinch point in the fallout from Tuesday’s announcement.

Much doubt has been created by the government’s failure to release the plan’s modelling, which Morrison says will be out in a few weeks – that is, after COP26 is well and truly behind him.

Read more:
Morrison’s climate plan has 35% 2030 emissions reduction ‘projection’ but modelling underpinning 2050 target yet to be released

An industry department official told a Senate estimates committee the material was being put into digestible shape.

“As the plan was only finalised on Tuesday, we need to make sure we have written that technical work up. The actual modelling, of course, had been finalised at that point.

“But the write-up of that – we just need to take a little bit of extra time to make sure that it’s written clearly and able to be presented well to the Australian public,” Jo Evans, a deputy secretary in the department, said.

Meanwhile most of the trade-offs the Nationals have received for their reluctant support continue to remain a mystery.

Joyce, who became acting prime minister after Morrison departed on Thursday night for the G20 in Rome followed by COP26 in Glasgow, is likely to announce certain measures while he’s in the spotlight.

But others are to be in the budget update at the end of the year, presented as election commitments, or in next year’s budget if that occurs before the election.

Some of these unknown measures still have to be brought forward as cabinet submissions and go through the formal bureaucratic hoops, including being costed.

That shows how unsatisfactory the process has been – the government had months to deal with net-zero, settling things with the minor Coalition partner and finalising the trade-offs.

More importantly from the Nationals’ standpoint, they’re left exposed as they return to their electorates now parliament has risen for a three-week break. When they meet their constituents, they are not able to produce the suite of benefits they obtained in return for their policy sign-up.

Read more:
View from The Hill: Morrison’s net-zero plan is built more on politics than detailed policy

For Morrison the 2050 policy is an attempted barnacle-removing process, for both the Glasgow conference and the election. The Nationals, in contrast, see it adding to their barnacles.

The rejection of the requested methane cuts is another indication of the general weakness of the Australian plan. For all the struggle to land it, the plan is a bare minimum and will be seen as such in Glasgow.

Domestically, given the flaws and inadequacies, the plan is not likely to win votes for the government; rather, it is designed to stem the loss of them to Labor and independents in the “leafy” southern seats.

We’ve yet to see Labor’s alternative but one would think independent candidates will still have plenty of scope to stake out ground on the climate issue.

Earlier this week Morrison made some comments that set off speculation he planned a May poll, as opposed to a March-April one.

A May election would give the time for another budget, with the opportunities that brought.

Whether the election is in May or March, Morrison is already in campaign mode.

In this week’s Newspoll, the government is on the back foot, trailing 46-54% on the two-party vote. Regardless, both sides regard the battle as open.

Despite the election being so near, Labor hasn’t broken out of a trot. Albanese’s strategy is to leave the attention on the government and, more generally, to keep Labor a small target in policy terms. On the logic of its wider approach Labor could be expected to be cautious in the policy it issues on climate change, although it is still debating its position, expected to be released before Christmas.

Read more:
With Labor gaining in polls, is too much Barnaby Joyce hurting the Coalition?

Albanese has been heavily influenced, negatively, by his predecessor Bill Shorten’s approach before the 2019 election, when Labor put forward an extensive and radical bag of policies.

The big target approach was seen to have scared off voters. Whether the small target will encourage people to vote Labor is hard to judge. The danger for the opposition is that, in the absence of a leader who is a drawcard, many people might be inclined to stick with the status quo.

Without the prospect of much substantive and highly differentiated policy being contested, the seat-by-seat campaigning will be especially significant at this election. Voters think local to a greater extent than they used to.

On Thursday the government introduced controversial legislation to require voters to produce ID at the polling booth. Labor and some in the welfare sector warn this will discourage the disadvantaged, including Indigenous people, from voting. The government says there would be plenty of protections – a range of identification could be used, including a Medicare card, and a person without identification would be allowed to cast a vote, with his or her identity checked later.

Given the widespread demand for identification for all sorts of things in our community, the requirement for ID when voting is not unreasonable. But it seems a solution in search of a problem, because voter fraud hasn’t been a feature of federal elections.

And it reflects distorted priorities that this legislation has been introduced before we see the bill for the long-awaited national integrity commission.

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

– ref. Grattan on Friday: The weather gets choppy with Joyce and Morrison’s climate contradictions – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-the-weather-gets-choppy-with-joyce-and-morrisons-climate-contradictions-170809

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jatin Kala, Senior Lecturer and ARC DECRA felllow, Murdoch University

In a few days world leaders will descend on Glasgow for the United Nations climate change talks. Much depends on it. We know climate change is already happening, and nowhere is the damage more stark than in Australia’s southwest.

The southwest of Western Australia has been identified as a global drying hotspot. Since 1970, winter rainfall has declined up to 20%, river flows have plummeted and heatwaves spanning water and land have intensified.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns this will continue as emissions rise and the climate warms.

Discussion of Australian ecosystems vulnerable to climate change often focuses on the Great Barrier Reef, as well as our rainforests and alpine regions. But for southwest Western Australia, climate change is also an existential threat.

The region’s wildlife and plants are so distinctive and important, it was listed as Australia’s first global biodiversity hotspot. Species include thousands of endemic plant species and animals such as the quokka, numbat and honey possum. Most freshwater species and around 80% of marine species, including 24 shark species, live nowhere else on Earth.

They evolved in isolation over millions of years, walled off from the rest of Australia by desert. But climate heating means this remarkable biological richness is now imperilled – a threat that will only increase unless the world takes action.

Read more:
Australia’s south west: a hotspot for wildlife and plants that deserves World Heritage status

Hotter and drier

Southwest WA runs roughly from Kalbarri to Esperance, and is known for its Mediterranean climate with very hot and dry summers and most rainfall in winter.

But every decade since the 1970s, the region’s summertime maximum temperatures have risen 0.1-0.3℃, and winter rainfall has fallen 10-20 millimetres.

And remarkably, a 1℃ increase in the average global temperature over the last century has already more than doubled the days over 40℃ in Perth.

This trend is set to continue. Almost all climate models project a further drop in winter rainfall of up to 30% across most of the southwest by 2100, under a high emissions scenario.

The southwest already has very hot days in summer, thanks to heat brought from the desert’s easterly winds. As climate change worsens, these winds are projected to get more intense, bringing still more heat.

Drying threatens wildlife, wine and wheat

Annual rainfall in the southwest has fallen by a fifth since 1970. That might not sound dangerous, but the drop means river flows have already fallen by an alarming 70%.

It means many rivers and lakes now dry out through summer and autumn, causing major problems for freshwater biodiversity. For example, the number of invertebrate species in 17 lakes in WA’s wheatbelt fell from over 300 to just over 100 between 1998 and 2011.

The loss of water has even killed off common river invertebrates, such as the endemic Western Darner dragonfly, with most now found only in the last few streams that flow year round. The drying also makes it very hard for animals and birds to find water.

Most native freshwater fish in the southwest are now officially considered “threatened”. As river flow falls to a trickle, fish can no longer migrate to spawn, and it’s only a short march from there to extinction. To protect remaining freshwater species we must develop perennial water refuges in places such as farm dams.

The story on land is also alarming, with intensifying heatwaves and chronic drought. This was particularly dire in 2010/2011, when all ecosystems in the southwest suffered from a deadly drought and heatwave combination.

What does that look like on the ground? Think beetle swarms taking advantage of forest dieback, a sudden die off of endangered Carnaby’s Black Cockatoos, and the deaths of one in five shrubs and trees. Long term, the flowering rates of banksias have declined by 50%, which threatens their survival as well as the honey industry.

For agriculture, the picture is mixed. Aided by innovation and better varieties, wheat yields in the southwest have actually increased since the 1970s, despite the drop in rainfall.

Read more:
Saving water in a drying climate: lessons from south-west Australia

But how long can farmers stay ahead of the drying? If global emissions aren’t drastically reduced, droughts in the region will keep getting worse.

Increased heating and drying will also likely threaten Margaret River’s famed wine region, although the state’s northern wine regions will be the first at risk.

Hotter seas, destructive marine heatwaves

The seas around the southwest are another climate change hotspot, warming faster than 90% of the global ocean since the middle of last century. Ocean temperatures off Perth have risen by an average of 0.1-0.3℃ per decade, and are now almost 1℃ warmer than 40 years ago.

The waters off the southwest are part of the Great Southern Reef, a temperate marine biodiversity hotspot. Many species of seaweeds, seagrasses, invertebrates, reef fish, seabirds and mammals live nowhere else on the planet.

As the waters warm, species move south. Warm-water species move in and cool-water species flee to escape the heat. Once cool-water species reach the southern coast, there’s nowhere colder to go. They can’t survive in the deep sea, and are at risk of going extinct.

Marine heatwaves are now striking alongside this long-term warming trend. In 2011, a combination of weak winds, water absorbing the local heat from the air, and an unusually strong flow of the warm Leeuwin Current led to the infamous marine heatwave known as Ningaloo Nino.

Over eight weeks, ocean temperatures soared by more than 5℃ above the long-term maximum. Coral bleached in the state’s north, fish died en masse, 34% of seagrass died in Shark Bay, and kelp forests along 100km of WA’s coast were wiped out.

Following the heatwave came sudden distribution changes for species like sharks, turtles and many reef fish. Little penguins starved to death because their usual food sources were no longer there.

Recreational and commercial fisheries were forced to close to protect ailing stocks. Some of these fisheries have not recovered 10 years later, while others are only now reopening.

This is just the start. Projections suggest the southwest could be in a permanent state of marine heatwave within 20-40 years, compared to the second half of the 20th century.

Read more:
How much do marine heatwaves cost? The economic losses amount to billions and billions of dollars

Adaptation has limits

Nature in the southwest cannot adapt to these rapid changes. The only way to stem the damage to nature and humans is to stop greenhouse gas emissions.

Australia must take responsibility for its emissions and show ambition beyond the weak promise of net-zero by 2050, and commit to real 2030 targets consistent with the Paris climate treaty.

Otherwise, we will witness the collapse of one of Australia’s biological treasures in real time.

Jatin Kala receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the the Department of Planning, Industry and Environment New South Wales

Belinda Robson receives funding from the Australian Research Council and Lotterywest.

Joe Fontaine receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Stephen Beatty receives funding from a broad range of government and non-government agencies for research to better understand the threats to freshwater biodiversity. He is also affiliated with the Australian Society for Fish Biology.

Thomas Wernberg receives funding from The Australian Research Council, The Schmidt Marine Technology Partners and the Institute of Marine Research.

– ref. Drying land and heating seas: why nature in Australia’s southwest is on the climate frontline – https://theconversation.com/drying-land-and-heating-seas-why-nature-in-australias-southwest-is-on-the-climate-frontline-170377

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Renzo Mori Junior, Senior Advisor, Sustainable Development, RMIT University

Corporate Australia has of late become a strong voice for more action on climate change. Earlier this month the Business Council of Australia, which represents the nation’s 100 biggest companies, declared its support for the federal government committing to halving its greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, and net zero emissions by 2050.

“Business is leading,” says the report arguing this case. “Domestic and international companies are rapidly adopting net zero and ambitious internal decarbonisation targets.”

That report goes on to say that among the top 200 companies listed on the Australian Stock Exchange – the ASX 200 – net-zero commitments in the past year have “more than tripled” to about 50 companies and that this represents about half the ASX200’s total market capitalisation.

Our research on Autralia’s 150 biggest public companies supports the Business Council’s claim that commitments are growing. But there’s still a long way to go in showing evidence of tangible progress.

Based on disclosures made in companies’ 2020 annual reports, our research shows 17 reported having achieved carbon neutrality while 46 have either declared commitment or an intention to achieve net zero emissions.

Of those 46 companies aiming for net zero, 38 declared commitment to achieving net zero by 2050 and 15 of them disclosed their intention to become carbon neutral by 2030. Another eight companies did not set a time frame (which arguably makes the commitment meaningless).

That means just 55 have committed to zero emissions by 2050.

Measuring sustainable development goals

These findings on corporate climate action are part of a broader research project by RMIT University and CPA Australia into action by Australian companies on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

This framework of 17 goals was adopted by the United Nations in 2015 to provide a uniform approach to defining and measuring progress on things such as eliminating poverty and discrimination, improving health and well-being, and achieving economic progress without harming the environment.

Each of the goals has a set of targets to measure achievement by 2030 (there are a total of 196 targets). On the goal of climate action (SDG13), one of the five targets is to integrate climate change measures into policies, strategies and planning.

The SDGs were originally intended for governments. But business committing and acting on them is fundamental for the transformational investments and new markets needed to promote more sustainable practices.

We have been monitoring the extent of corporate Australia’s commitment to the SDGs since 2018, based on disclosures in their annual reports. In particular we have been interested in evidence these commitments are meaningful, through companies having mechanisms to measure and report on what they have achieved.

Commitments growing, but KPIs lacking

The good news is that recognition and disclosure is growing. In 2018 just 56 of the ASX 150 (37%) mentioned the Sustainable Development Goals in their annual reports. In 2019 it was 72 (48%). In 2020 it was 94 (62%).

Statements on commitments, however, are not meaningful unless supported by evidence of actual progress. This requires having a plan to turn a commitment into an achievement, setting key performance indicators (KPIs), measuring success (or failure) and reporting on results.

On these things far less progress has been made. The number of companies aligning their KPIs with SDG targets has increased from two (1.3%) in 2018, to five (3.3%) in 2019, and 14 (9.3%) in 2020.

Including colourful SDG graphics in annual reports and having senior executives making public commitments is one thing. But without reporting on the actual measures to turn a commitment into actual progress, companies can easily be accused of lack of transparency or even green washing.

For corporate Australia to really claim the mantle of leading on climate action, our major companies must also lead in setting clear goals and timelines, defining measurements by which they will rate their success, and being fully transparent in reporting their progress.

Renzo Mori Junior has previously received funding for research projects from governments, foundations, non-for-profit organisations and companies.

Hui Situ works for both RMIT University and Cardiff University during the time of conducting this project – SDG disclosure in Australia.

Nava Subramaniam has previously received funding for research projects from governments, foundations, non-for-profit organisations and companies.”

Sophia Ji has previously received funding for research projects from governments, foundations, non-for-profit organisations and companies.

Suraiyah Akbar 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. Fewer than half of Australia’s 150 biggest companies have committed to zero emissions by 2050 – https://theconversation.com/fewer-than-half-of-australias-150-biggest-companies-have-committed-to-zero-emissions-by-2050-170457

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne

A federal Resolve poll for Nine newspapers, conducted October 21-24 from a sample of 1,603, gave the Coalition 37% of the primary vote (down two since September), Labor 34% (up three), the Greens 11% (up one), One Nation 3% (down one) and independents 9% (steady).

As usual with Resolve, no two-party estimate was given, and independents are likely to be greatly overstated owing to people who are unsure who to vote for parking their votes. I have previously criticised Resolve for these issues.

Read more:
Coalition gains in federal Resolve poll, but Labor increases lead in Victoria

Analyst Kevin Bonham estimated a two-party preferred of 52-48 to Labor, a three point gain for Labor since September.

In my Newspoll article on Monday, I was sceptical of Newspoll having Labor ahead by 54-46, given that the end of lockdowns in Sydney and Melbourne was expected to help the Coalition. But since then, there’s also been poll movement to Labor in Resolve, Essential and Morgan.

The Resolve poll report made much of the Nationals’ vote falling two points to 3%, while the Liberal vote was up one to 35%, with rounding explaining the Coalition’s two-point slide. The drop for the Nationals has been attributed to their negotiations with the Liberals over Australia having a zero carbon emissions target by 2050.

I am dubious that average voters have been following the negotiations at all closely. However, a big negative for the Coalition is the prominent role played by deputy PM and Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce.

In a July Resolve poll, Joyce had dismal ratings of 45% negative, 16% positive (net -29). It is likely that the more Joyce is in the limelight, the worse the Coalition will perform.

Other Resolve questions

47% (down two since September) rated Scott Morrison’s performance good in recent weeks, and 43% (down two) rated it poor, for an unchanged net approval of +4. Anthony Albanese’s net approval was up six points to -10. Morrison led as preferred PM by 44-26 (45-26 in September).

8% said they were prepared to accept a significant personal cost to reduce Australia’s emissions and 43% a small personal cost. 8% said they wouldn’t pay but others should, and 27% wouldn’t pay and didn’t think others should either.

7% of respondents thought the general public was doing more than its fair share at combatting climate change, 38% its fair share and 34% less. But when asked about how respondents rated their personal contribution, 13% said more, 57% fair share and just 15% less.

By 62-11, voters supported net zero emissions by 2050, and by 57-13 they supported a more ambitious target by 2030. Support for both measures increased two to five points from September.

Despite the slump for the Coalition in voting intentions, the Liberals and Morrison extended their lead over Labor and Albanese to 45-23 on economic management (42-24 in September). The Liberals also led on COVID by 40-22 (37-24 previously).

Essential and Morgan voting intentions

Essential occasionally releases voting intentions for all polls it conducted during the last few months. The Guardian reported Thursday that Labor led by 53-47 in this week’s Essential, its best position for this reporting period. The Coalition’s best was a 50-50 tie in September. Clive Palmer’s UAP was at 5% in the latest poll, ahead of One Nation’s 3%.

A Morgan poll, conducted October 16-17 and 23-24 from a sample of nearly 2,800, gave Labor a 54-46 lead, a one point gain for Labor since early October. Primary votes were 36.5% Coalition (down one), 35% Labor (down one), 13.5% Greens (up two), 3.5% One Nation (up 0.5) and 11.5% for all Others (down 0.5).

Essential: premiers’ ratings

This week’s Essential poll used an expanded sample size of about 440 in both SA and WA to enable ratings for those state premiers to be based on a good sample.

WA Labor Premier Mark McGowan came top with an 82-13 approval rating. He was followed by Queensland Labor Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk (66-27), SA Liberal Premier Steven Marshall (61-27), new NSW Liberal Premier Dominic Perrottet (47-28) and Victorian Labor Premier Daniel Andrews (52-40).

By 46-31, voters gave the federal government a good rating on handling COVID (45-30 last fortnight). The NSW government’s good rating was up two to 57%, but the Victorian government was down three to 43% and for some reason the Queensland government tumbled nine points to 59% good.

37% thought immigration levels over the past ten years have been too high, 16% too low and 36% about right (56-12 for too high in January 2019). 35% thought setting a more ambitious emissions reduction target would have the most positive long-term effect on jobs, 29% a net zero target by 2050 and 14% not setting any targets.

Read more:
Grattan on Friday: Can Barnaby Joyce sell his supporters the net zero he’s previously trashed?

UAP at 19% in poll of three western Sydney seats

Redbridge conducted polls of the federal NSW seats of Banks, Lindsay and Macquarie from an overall sample of 1,201 during the week of September 13. Across the three seats, primary votes were 32% Liberal, 31% Labor, 19% UAP and 9% Greens.

The pollster gave the two party as 53-47 to Labor, but the Liberals would be doing better than that on these primary votes. The Poll Bludger said UAP had just 3.1% across these three seats in 2019, with the Liberals winning by a combined 53.7-46.3.

Core inflation highest since December 2015

In the ABS September quarter inflation report released Wednesday, headline inflation was 0.8% for the September quarter and 3.0% for the year to September. Owing to a rebound in the September quarter 2020 following COVID-caused deflation in the June quarter 2020, headline annual inflation was down 0.2% as last year’s September quarter disappeared from the calculation.

The ABS also reports trimmed mean and weighted median inflation, and both these measures of core inflation increased by 0.7% in the September quarter, and increased to 2.1% in the year to September from 1.6% in the year to June. Both measures are at their highest since December 2015.

Labor still well ahead in Victoria

A Victorian state Resolve poll for The Age gave Labor 38% of the primary vote (down two since August), the Coalition 34% (down one), the Greens 10% (steady) and independents 11% (up two). The Poll Bludger estimated 55-45 to Labor, a one point gain for the Coalition.

Andrews led Liberal leader Matthew Guy as preferred premier by 45-32, but this is a large improvement for Guy on the previous Liberal leader Michael O’Brien, who trailed Andrews by 24-50. This poll was conducted with the federal Resolve polls in the past two months from a sample of 1,105.

At least 57% said they always complied with four health measures, but it is likely non-compliance is higher as people don’t want to admit this to a pollster. By 63-20, voters supported the Victorian government’s vaccine mandates.

Two more NSW byelections

I previously discussed upcoming NSW byelections in Willoughby, Bega and Monaro.

There are likely to be two more in Strathfield and Holsworthy. In Strathfield (Labor by 5.0%), former Labor leader Jodi McKay is resigning. In Holsworthy (Liberal by 3.3%), incumbent Liberal Melanie Gibbons will contest Liberal preselection for the federal seat of Hughes, held by Liberal turned UAP Craig Kelly.

No byelection dates have been set yet, and the Bega and Holsworthy byelections would not be held until much later as current incumbents are contesting federal preselections. Bega Liberal Andrew Constance is contesting federal Labor-held Gilmore.

Adrian Beaumont 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. With Labor gaining in polls, is too much Barnaby Joyce hurting the Coalition? – https://theconversation.com/with-labor-gaining-in-polls-is-too-much-barnaby-joyce-hurting-the-coalition-170629

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By George Newhouse, Adjunct Professor of Law, Macquarie University

The climate crisis threatens all life on our planet. Even the people who a few years ago were shouting from the rooftops that it was all a hoax have suddenly acknowledged the need for urgent action.

But Australia’s response remains the worst in the developed world. As a result, lawyers have commenced multiple legal proceedings as a way of bringing change.

With their crops flooded with salt water and their sacred sites disappearing under the waves, a group of Torres Strait Islanders this week brought a class action lawsuit against the Australian government.

Two First Nations Elders, Pabai Pabai and Paul Kabai, will argue in court that the Australian government has a duty to cut greenhouse gas emissions to ensure their homeland and their people are not harmed by the climate crisis.

The class action follows another case brought against Environment Minister Sussan Ley by a group of eight children, led by Anjali Sharma. The group attempted to stop the minister from approving a proposed coal mine extension in the Hunter Valley, New South Wales.

In a landmark ruling earlier this year, the Federal Court found the minister

has a duty to take reasonable care to avoid causing personal injury to the children when deciding […] to approve or not approve the coal mine expansion.

This groundbreaking decision set an important precedent and has clearly emboldened the Torres Strait Islands elders to demand the Australian government take urgent action to protect their homes, culture and food sources.

The basis for the Torres Strait islanders’ claims

Mr Pabai and Mr Kabai’s class action is based on the famous Urgenda case in the Netherlands, in which more than 800 plaintiffs argued the Dutch government had an obligation to protect its citizens from climate change. That case was successful and forced the Dutch government to take action to reduce the Netherlands’ greenhouse emissions.

However, there is an important difference between the suits. While the Dutch courts concluded the Dutch government was in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights, we have no such rights protections in Australia. Environmental groups here are forced to use the common law instead.

Read more:
I’ve won cases against the government before. Here’s why I doubt a climate change class action would succeed

To complicate matters, the Morrison government is trying to overturn the Sharma decision by appealing it to the full Federal Court and possibly the High Court, a process that is expected to take a further two years.

For lawyers, it is fascinating to see, in real time, how the law of negligence – which developed from a 1932 Scottish case of a woman who ingested a snail in a bottle of ginger beer – is being stretched to protect Pacific islands from the risk of future inundation.

Unfortunately, these claims are not always successful.

A legal hurdle in a similar NZ case

Last week, the New Zealand Court of Appeal ruled in another case that common law tort claims are not an appropriate vehicle for addressing the problems of climate change.

Like Mr Pabai and Mr Kabai in the Torres Strait Islands, a Maori leader, Michael Smith, argued that various sites of customary, cultural, historical, nutritional and spiritual significance to his people are close to the coast on low-lying land or in the sea. As such, they were all at risk of harm from the greenhouse emissions of the dairy giant Fonterra and six other companies.

In a legal slapdown, three judges found Mr Smith’s three “tort-based” arguments departed from the fundamental principles of the common law and they refused to extend the existing law to cover his claims.

A tort is a legal wrong committed by one person or entity against another, which is usually remedied through an award of damages. Since 2016, the potential remedies have been expanded from damages to injunctions as a result of the work the National Justice Project did in an asylum seeker case.

Rejecting the idea that the law of negligence was appropriate in the Fonterra case, the New Zealand court added it was an inherently inefficient and ad hoc way of addressing climate change, likely to cause arbitrary outcomes and protracted litigation.

Read more:
Children deserve answers to their questions about climate change. Here’s how universities can help

Why these cases matter

If it is applied by the Australian Federal Court, the Fonterra case presents a serious legal impediment to the Torres Strait Islands class action.

Despite the chance of failure, climate change litigation based on tort law plays an important role in drawing the risks of inaction by our federal government to the attention of all Australians.

Crucially, these cases highlight the moral imperative for our leaders to do something, as summed up by Justice Mordecai Bromberg in the Sharma case:

It is difficult to characterise in a single phrase the devastation that the plausible evidence presented in this proceeding forecasts for the children. […] Lives will be cut short. Trauma will be far more common and good health harder to hold and maintain.

None of this will be the fault of nature itself. It will largely be inflicted by the inaction of this generation of adults, in what might fairly be described as the greatest intergenerational injustice ever inflicted by one generation of humans upon the next.

Through my work at the National Justice Project, I have worked for years on strategic court cases to establish a duty of care for the federal government to provide medical treatment for asylum seekers on Nauru and to eliminate systemic prejudice.

I can tell you the legal process is hard and drawn out, but the results are worth fighting for. The road ahead through the legal system may be tough but it can be a catalyst for change.

Mr Pabai and Mr Kabai should be congratulated for their brave stance.

George Newhouse 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. If governments fail to act, can the courts save our planet? – https://theconversation.com/if-governments-fail-to-act-can-the-courts-save-our-planet-170713

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Bagnall, Senior Lecturer in Humanities, University of Tasmania

Gough Whitlam’s visit to China in 1971 is an iconic moment in the history of Australia-China relations. As prime minister, he officially recognised the People’s Republic of China the following year, heralding a new era of engagement with China.

But Whitlam’s visit overshadows an earlier and equally significant moment in Australia’s relationship with China.

On October 28 1941, Australia opened its first diplomatic mission in China, a legation in the wartime capital of Chungking (Chongqing) in central Szechwan (Sichuan) province.

Until the 1930s, Australian foreign policy was still considered part of British Empire policy. But with the urgency of the second world war, Australia began to exercise a foreign policy distinct from Britain. Australia’s first overseas diplomatic missions were established in Washington and Tokyo in 1940. The Chungking Legation was the third.

Australia announced its decision to appoint an Australian Minister to China in May 1941. Sir Frederic Eggleston was chosen for the role and his counterpart, the first Chinese Minister to Australia, Dr Hsu Mo (徐謨), arrived in Canberra in September 1941.

The notorious White Australia Policy was still in place, but by the end of the year Australia and China would be allies in defending the Pacific against the Japanese.

Wartime Chungking

China had been at war with Japan since July 1937. With much of the east coast of the country under Japanese occupation, Chungking served as the wartime capital.

Perched on the steep banks of the Yangtze River, the city was swollen with refugees, suffered heavy bombing, and faced shortages of food, housing and supplies.

Read more:
On our side: remembering the national and international in China’s war

An early challenge for the Legation was finding suitable premises and equipping it. Eventually, a building at No. 71 I Au Tze (遺愛祠) in the Li Family Estate (李家花園) became home to the offices and residence for the staff.

Legation staff were advised to bring all the clothes they would need, medicines including quinine (to treat malaria) and aspirin, and daily items like soap, toothpaste and boot polish. Other stores had to be ordered from India.

Transport to Chungking was difficult. People and supplies first came in by road over the Himalayas via the Burma Road. Later they came by plane, landing on a tiny island in the middle of the Yangtze River.

Alison Waller, wife of First Secretary Keith Waller, recalled, “you felt you had ten tin trunks sitting on your chest, and you couldn’t breathe because you had to fly right over the Himalayas”.

The Legation staff

Sir Frederic Eggleston (1875–1954), known as “The Egg” to staff, was a warm and thoughtful leader, and a popular and respected member of the foreign diplomatic community. A former lawyer and experienced public servant, Eggleston proved himself an able diplomat, serving in Chungking until 1944, when he was appointed Ambassador to the United States.

Diplomatic and office staff sent from Australia worked alongside locally employed staff, including a Chinese teacher, translators and clerks. Australian wives, such as Alison Waller, were also employed by the Legation.

Their work supported the Australian Minister to China, whose role, in Eggleston’s words, was “to interpret the Chinese viewpoint to Australia and the Australian viewpoint to China”.

Among the staff was the first Chinese-Australian diplomat, Charles Lee (1913–1996), who was born in the Northern Territory to Cantonese parents.

After graduating from the University of Queensland, Lee joined the public service in 1936. He was chosen to become Third Secretary in Chungking because of his general aptitude and his abilities with Cantonese and Japanese.

During his time in Chungking, Lee’s proficient language skills (now including Mandarin), local connections and general knowledge rendered him invaluable. He went on to represent Australia in Indonesia, Singapore and Spain, among other countries, and retired in 1973.

Another notable staffer was Maris King (1922–1997). Only 20 when she left Australia, alone, for Chungking in 1943, King worked as Eggleston’s secretary.

She stayed in Chungking for 15 months and later returned to work in Shanghai and Hong Kong. King went on to have a lifetime career as a diplomat, becoming only the second woman to head an Australian diplomatic mission before her retirement in 1984.

As she recalled of her time in China: “I had a ball! I’m surprised my mother let me go, looking back, because life overseas was so hazardous really in those days, with the war and all that, and I was very young – and female!”

After the war

Japan surrendered to China on September 9 1945. With the war over, the Nationalist government moved back to Nanking (Nanjing). The Australian Legation followed, relocating in April 1946 under the charge of a new Minister to China, Professor Douglas Berry Copland (1894–1971).

The Nanking Legation was upgraded to an embassy in 1948, and closed in 1949 after the Communists gained power. Charles Lee was the only member of the Chungking Legation to stay until the Nanking Embassy closed.

It would be another 24 years until, with Whitlam’s recognition of the People’s Republic of China, a new Australian Embassy opened in Beijing in 1973. But 80 years on, it is worth remembering the changing and complex relationship Australia has had with China.

Read more:
Fifty years after Whitlam’s breakthrough China trip, the Morrison government could learn much from it

Kate Bagnall was commissioned by the Chinese Museum in Melbourne to undertake research on the history of the Chungking Legation for a project funded by the Australian Consulate-General in Chengdu, China.

Sophie Couchman was employed as Curator at the Chinese Museum in Melbourne and managed a project on the Chungking Legation funded by the Australian Consulate-General in Chengdu.

– ref. The Chungking Legation: Australia’s first diplomatic mission to China, 80 years ago – https://theconversation.com/the-chungking-legation-australias-first-diplomatic-mission-to-china-80-years-ago-169637

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vasso Apostolopoulos, Professor of Immunology and Associate Provost, Research Partnerships, Victoria University

Australian children aged five to 11 could begin receiving the Pfizer vaccine by the end of November, with the nation’s regulator currently reviewing the health and safety data.

Pfizer submitted a partial application to Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) this week and will supply the remaining data over the next two weeks. The TGA will then review all the information and make a decision about whether to approve the vaccine for use in this age group.

Barring any issues, TGA head John Skerritt expects a decision will be made by the end of November. The Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI), will then advise the government on timing of the rollout.

So what does the data say so far on safety and efficacy? And what are the benefits of vaccinating children aged five to 11?

Why vaccinate children?

While the risk of severe COVID in children is low, a small proportion of children who are infected will become severely unwell, and some of them will die from the virus.

As Delta case numbers rise, so too will the number of serious cases and fatalities.
In the United States, children represented more than six million (16.4%) of the total COVID reported cases (8,208 cases per 100,000 children). More than 23,582 US children have been hospitalised and 558 children died (0.01% of child COVID cases).

Read more:
How to talk to your child about a COVID diagnosis … and share the news with others

Multi-system inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) has been reported in children following COVID infection. This can cause multiple parts of the body to become inflamed, including the heart, lungs, eyes, brain, kidneys, skin and gastrointestinal system.

Since May 2020, 5,217 cases of MIS-C have been reported in the United States, with a median patient age of nine years; 46 children have died from the condition.

Thankfully, although MIS-C can be serious, most children who are diagnosed with MIS-C recover with medical care.

The long term effects of COVID are still unknown. In adults, even mild infection can cause a range of ongoing symptoms of long COVID. These include fatigue, shortness of breath, joint and muscle pain, loss of smell, chest pain and problems with memory, concentration and sleep.

Data from the UK found 9.8% of children aged 2–11 years reported at least one long COVID symptom five weeks after, with other research suggesting they rarely last more than 12 weeks.

However, data from Russia which is yet to be peer reviewed found one-quarter of children discharged from hospital had symptoms more than five months later.

Even if a small proportion of children have long-term symptoms, this is of concern, and further studies are required.

Read more:
Do kids get long COVID? And how often? A paediatrician looks at the data

There are also other factors to consider. With children under 12 completely unvaccinated, these children can potentially spread the virus to older, vulnerable people.

This may be a particular risk where extended family live together or older relatives care for younger family members.

Are the vaccines safe for children?

This week, the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) independent advisory committee recommended Pfizer be made available to children aged 5-11 years.

When approved, children will receive a reduced dose (one-third of the adult dose) and will receive two doses, at the same schedule as adults: approximately three weeks apart.

In order for the new vaccines to gain approval for a new use, they must undertake their own trials to show they are safe and effective in that population specifically.

A recent submission to the FDA showed a robust immune response following the vaccine. It also provided a good safety profile, with side effects comparable to those seen in a study of 16-25 year olds.

So far, no cases of myocarditis or pericarditis (inflammation of the heart and around the heart) have occurred among the children aged 5-11 in the three months after their second dose.

Read more:
The benefits of a COVID vaccine far outweigh the small risk of treatable heart inflammation

However, as the vaccination is rolled out to larger groups, there is a small risk of myocarditis and pericarditis.

But the benefits of being vaccinated – in preventing severe disease, hospitalisation and death – outweigh the risk of the rare inflammatory heart conditions, as you can see in the data below.

While the initial studies were not designed to measure efficacy, they showed the vaccine regimen was 90.7% effective at preventing COVID infection.

Of the vaccinated children who developed COVID, symptoms tended to be very mild and didn’t include a fever. Non-vaccinated children generally presented with headaches and fever.

What about the other vaccines?

Early data on Moderna, another mRNA based vaccine, found it was safe and induced strong antibody responses in 6-11 year olds. Children aged 6-11 were given half the adult Moderna dose, twice, 28 days apart.

As with adults and adolescents, the most common side effects in children aged 6-11 from Moderna were fatigue, headache, fever and pain at injection site; the majority were mild or moderate.

Moderna plans to submit the data to the FDA, European Medicines Agency and other regulators in the near future.

The protein-based vaccine Novavax, (currently under evaluaton by the TGA), has plans to evaluate its use in younger children, however the necessary trials are long from completion. So far, no preliminary data is available.

Read more:
What is Novavax, Australia’s third COVID vaccine option? And when will we get it?

A study evaluating the AstraZeneca vaccine in children was paused due to safety concerns about blood clots and is unlikely to continue.

Should I vaccinate my children?

Given the strong safety and efficacy of the vaccines, and the increasing risk of children contracting COVID as the only remaining population of unvaccinated people, the benefits significantly outweigh the risks.

Vaccination will also play an important role in ensuring vulnerable children can continue to participate in social and educational activities with their peers, and reduce their role in spreading the virus.

It’s OK for parents to have questions about the vaccines. If you do, talk to your GP who can listen your concerns and discuss the evidence and how that relates to your circumstances.

Read more:
We may need to vaccinate children as young as 5 to reach herd immunity with Delta, our modelling shows

Vasso Apostolopoulos’ COVID-19 research has received internal funding from a Victoria University research grant and from philanthropic donations

Athina (Tina) Soulis, Jack Feehan, and Maja Husaric 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. COVID vaccines for 5 to 11 year olds are inching closer. Here’s what we know so far – https://theconversation.com/covid-vaccines-for-5-to-11-year-olds-are-inching-closer-heres-what-we-know-so-far-169732

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Penny Levickis, Senior Research Fellow, REEaCh (Research in Effective Education in Early Childhood) Hub, The University of Melbourne

Australian early childhood educators feel burnt out and undervalued. Our research reports on more than 200 educators’ experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic, which exposed existing strains on the system and further eroded their well-being.

However, educators also identified three important ways their well-being can be restored. As one educator told us:

“You cannot pour from an empty cup. Our well-being needs to be supported so we can do the best job possible.”

The pandemic has brought into sharp focus the challenging working conditions the profession faces. Educators have to navigate emotionally complex work. They work long hours, with poor pay and a lack of status or public recognition. Their opportunities for professional development or career progression are limited.

As a result, levels of work-related stress and burnout are high. Many are choosing to leave the sector.

Read more:
Early childhood educators are leaving in droves. Here are 3 ways to keep them, and attract more

Well-being is essential for educators to do their job well. Their well-being affects the well-being, learning and development of children across the country. A stable, qualified and healthy workforce is essential for families, communities and societies.

In our research, more than 85% of educators reported the pandemic had negative impacts on their well-being. However, three key findings detail how well-being can be supported. Educators talked about the importance of:

1. self-care

2. relationships with children, families and colleagues (and in educators’ personal lives)

3. recognition for their essential work.

Self-care has to be a priority

Educators spoke about a renewed focus on self-care to support their own well-being.

“We’ve all finally realised that taking the dog for a walk has huge merits and having some meditation and doing some mindfulness and having our weekly yoga sessions are all actually working.”

Self-care involved more than exercise and meditation. Creativity was also a support for well-being, including activities such as baking, clay-making and knitting. Educators took proactive steps for their health, to strengthen their own well-being.

Service supports also matter. Counselling and professional development services were helpful. Educators made use of (mostly online) professional services such as Beyond Blue and the Employee Assistance Program. Some services provided additional resources to support mental health.

“The psychologist was extremely powerful and she’s given a few presentations of how to look after ourselves.”

Read more:
Early childhood educators are slaves to the demands of box-ticking regulations

Supportive relationships lighten the load

Personal and professional relationships are key to educators’ well-being. Supportive professional relationships provided solidarity and shared understanding. The value of being able to unload, debrief or talk with others at work increased throughout lockdowns.

“That sense of belonging to a team and all the educators really caring very strongly for each other.”

Despite reporting that the pandemic had a negative impact on their well-being, educators reported strong relationships with the children they work with. Teaching and engaging with children is central to educators’ well-being. Connection to other aspects of children’s lives is also important:

“COVID has taught us that it’s the relationships we have with parents, with families, with everybody in our community that’s the most important thing.”

Recognise their essential work

Educators in our research rated their sense of contribution high. Workforce studies reflect this, showing educators value and recognise the importance of their work with children. But their professional contribution is not always acknowledged.

“[Being told by government] we are here to support ‘essential workers’ without actually being referred to as essential ourselves was a real blow to the industry and self-esteem of educators.”

Read more:
‘Insulting’ and ‘degrading’: budget funding for childcare may help families but educators are still being paid pennies

Acknowledgement at the local level was even more important to educator well-being during the pandemic:

“Families [are] really, really appreciating the work that we do. I think they got an extra insight into, and appreciation, for the work that the educators do for their children.”

Research in child development shows us the continuum of vital learning between birth and eight years of age. However, the Australian education system treats school and pre-school settings very differently. Educators felt ignored in government decision-making throughout the pandemic, and have long argued for early learning to be recognised as pivotal for life trajectories.

“A system that acknowledges the absolute fundamental truth that unless you get early childhood right, you never get it. That child then struggles into adulthood. And as educators, we know that. So that affects our well-being as well.”

Let’s listen to educators

The pandemic has added to existing strains on the system. Educators’ well-being has continued to suffer as a result. As one educator said:

“The stress of COVID-19 exacerbated any of the stresses and difficulties that were going [on], it didn’t create them. The precedent that we have, there were always going to be problems.”

We know there’s a problem, we know the problem affects the community more broadly, but to support well-being effectively, we need to understand the experiences of educators themselves. We need to keep listening to them and act on what they’re telling us.

Here’s a good place to start: encourage self-care and provide access to resources; support and sustain relationships; acknowledge educators’ essential role in society and recognise that their well-being matters.

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

– ref. Early childhood educators feel burnt out and undervalued. Here’s what we can do to help – https://theconversation.com/early-childhood-educators-feel-burnt-out-and-undervalued-heres-what-we-can-do-to-help-170091

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Matthews, Associate Professor of Medical Ethics, Bond University

We write this article together – Kelly, a First Nations woman living on Kombumerri Country, and Richard, a Canadian white male settler living on the lands of the Minjungbal people of the Bundjalung Nation.

As a First Nations Australian academic, Kelly is often approached to give guest lectures. She aims to accept these invitations as she believes acts of reciprocity and relationality are essential building blocks for reconciliation. Further, her job requires her to teach First Nations People’s histories and knowledges.

Unfortunately, on many occasions, her knowledge is appropriated, reproduced without permission, frequently misconstrued, or misrepresented and colonised in some way. This all happens under the guise of a non-Indigenous person having “good intentions”. In addition, Kelly is frequently micromanaged regarding her Indigenous knowledges.

This is not an uncommon experience for First Nations academics.

The outcome for these academics is often an increased and unpaid workload, and no opportunities for collaboration between academic staff or faculty. This is all coupled with the trauma that occurs when experiencing ongoing micro-aggressions and racism.

White people often fail to appreciate the nature of power differentials and white privilege – with all the accompanying benefits, including money, prestige and even the option to act.

Further, good intentions are not enough. What settlers need to understand are the principles of proper allyship.

This requires not acting on behalf of someone, but ceding space and decisional authority to others, and privileging the voices and experiences of First Nations Peoples and communities. First Nations communities get to decide on all matters related to themselves and their knowledges. Allies need to understand this is not negotiable.

Here we invite you to consider some strategies for being a good ally with First Nations Peoples and communities.

What can I do?

1) First, allies must assume and confront racism in themselves, explore how they may be part of the problem and look at ways to change.

This means reflecting on and accepting one’s own assigned privilege. Acceptance allows us to become more understanding of how we impact others.

2) Always prioritise the voices of First Nations Peoples above your own. Their voices matter – not those of settlers – in what happens to their communities. This applies to everything – law, policy, health, funding decisions, choices made (or not), and research undertaken (or not).

3) As allies, one’s skills and achievements do not take priority over First Nations Peoples and their needs. Rather, allies should prioritise the creation of “right relations.” This is an act of establishing relationships with First Nations Peoples as an ally, in a culturally appropriate and reflective manner.

4) Listen to and believe the voices of First Nations Peoples and adopt a position of cultural humility.

Cultural humility is a commitment to self-awareness and refection. It also means redressing power imbalances and developing reciprocal, non-paternalistic partnerships with First Nations Peoples and communities.

Further, one must cede any right to determine the shape or direction of political, economic, or academic projects that involve First Nations Peoples. This needs to be determined by or in consultation with First Nations Peoples.

5) Publicly support First Nations People’s sovereignty, self-determination and autonomy. In this case, act only if First Nations Peoples judge it to be valuable. If they say it could be harmful, then back off and remain silent.

6) Finally, if consistent with relevant First Nations voices, teach (not preach) anti-racism messages to our white-privileged peers and others.

It is important to involve one’s peers in this process. People require space to voice their views, even when their views may be perceived as “racist”. Having an open dialogue is a way to address potential hostility that can arise when people get defensive.

Read more:
For too long, research was done on First Nations peoples, not with them. Universities can change this

All people have the right to autonomy and to determine what is right for their own communities. This, too, is an exercise of power, because only those sufficiently privileged to make such choices can do so. Being a better ally is to essentially use the space you are given to provide space for people who are too often excluded from the conversation.

If you are called out for racism or cultural insensitivity, please listen and take the comment seriously as a gift and an invitation to change.

Racism is a white problem and white people need to be the ones to solve it.

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. Working with us, not for us: strategies for being a better ally to First Nations people – https://theconversation.com/working-with-us-not-for-us-strategies-for-being-a-better-ally-to-first-nations-people-169455

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kiara L’Herpiniere, PhD Candidate, Wildlife Biologist, Macquarie University

Of all the vertebrates on Earth – that is, animals with backbones – birds are the only ones that lay colourful eggs. Scientists are still unsure why, but new research brings us a step closer to finding out.

In a study published today in the journal Evolution, my colleagues and I reveal how the colours of songbird eggs diversified alongside the evolution of “open cup” nests, more than 40 million years ago.

Why are eggs colourful?

Scientists are not entirely sure why birds lay such colourful eggs. Current theories fall into two main categories.

The first is that colour helps protect the eggs from environmental factors such as extreme cold or rain. Eggs with darker pigments heat up faster and maintain heat longer than white eggs. Pigments have also been shown to help strengthen thinner eggshells.

Eggshells can show areas of thinning, usually when the female’s diet is lacking calcium. This can often result from the use of pesticides, including DDT, in the wild — as they can dissolve or contaminate otherwise nutritious food such as snail shells.

Females have been shown to deposit pigments in the same spots where a shell is thinner (and more prone to breaking) — a bit like covering it with plaster. This may reinforce the shell and help keep it structurally sound.

We know the pigments are produced in the female’s uterus during the shell’s formation, but it’s still not known how different colours and complex patterns are applied to the shell while the egg is still inside the female.

Read more:
Hot as shell: birds in cooler climates lay darker eggs to keep their embryos warm

The second theory is that colour provides a survival advantage, either by camouflaging the eggs from predators or parasites, or by signalling the female’s reproductive fitness to potential partners. More colourful eggs, particularly blue, signify that the mother is healthy and can spare resources for her babies.

How is the colour made?

All the colours we see in bird eggs stem from just two pigments, one brown and the other blue. Different concentrations of these two pigments create the vast range of egg colours we see today.

Until 2017, scientists believed laying colourful eggs was a trait unique to birds. But as it turns out, the same pigments can be found in fossilised dinosaur eggs too.

Researchers also found a link between dinosaurs’ nesting behaviour and egg colour. Specifically, they discovered dinosaurs that laid their eggs in partially open nests (rather than burying them like crocodiles) had colour in their eggshells.

Nest-building through time

Until about 40 million years ago, songbirds built complex dome-shaped nests with insulated walls and roofs. Over time, however, they evolved the ability to create the open cup nests we see more commonly today.

Birds exhibit fantastic dexterity when building nests. Using only their beaks and feet, they can weave an array of nests ranging from relatively rudimentary designs to substantial, intricately woven structures.

The nests must have enough structural integrity to hold both the eggs and the weight of an incubating parent without being punctured. They must also stay intact while parents move around, hatched chicks start wriggling, and during rainfall and harsh winds.

Now, our research has found a link between eggshell colour and changes in nest construction. Specifically, birds have gone from laying a narrower range of coloured eggs (mainly white or dark brown) in closed dome nests, to a wider variety of colours (white, pink, olive, blue, pink and brown) in cup nests.

The transition to cup nests means the eggs are exposed when the incubating parent leaves to forage. During these foraging bouts, eggs are much more vulnerable to falling outside the temperature range needed to survive.

If they get too cold or hot, the embryos die. They’re also more exposed to passing predators looking for a snack.

Parasitic cuckoos lay their eggs inside other birds’ nests, and match their eggs to those already in the nest. Perhaps colour started playing an essential role in host parents’ evolutionary attempts to thwart the cuckoos?

Back when nests were mostly closed, and eggs hidden, the host wouldn’t have needed to produce colourful eggs to distinguish them from the cuckoo’s. Similarly, cuckoos wouldn’t have needed to match their eggs with the host’s.

Our research found that laying colourful eggs is a flexible trait, and was lost and regained multiple times during songbirds’ evolutionary history. Moreover, birds that evolved to make cup nests lost and regained this trait twice as many times as birds that still make closed nests today.

Read more:
Who would win in a fight between an emu and a cassowary? One has a dagger-like claw, the other explosive agility

Onward, upward

In the 1800s naturalists had a fascination with birds’ eggs, and it became common to own extensive egg collections. The ultimate goal for collectors, other than prestige, was to have as many different species as possible.

Today, collecting specimens is quite understandably illegal. But those old collections do come in handy.

For our work, we were able to draw on extensive egg collections donated to museums in Australia. We measured the egg colours of more than 250 different species of Australian songbird, took photographs, and analysed them against their evolutionary histories.

Many of the eggs from museum collections also come with geographical locations. We’re grateful to early naturalists for making extensive notes on where, when and how they collected each clutch.

Moving forward, we want to use this data to investigate how climatic variables interact with egg colour — as well as whether a female’s diet impacts egg colour. Egg-citing stuff!

We would like to acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land from which these eggs were taken, and pay our respects to the Elders, past and present and emerging.

Kiara L’Herpiniere 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. Why are birds’ eggs colourful? New research shows it’s linked to the shape of their nests – https://theconversation.com/why-are-birds-eggs-colourful-new-research-shows-its-linked-to-the-shape-of-their-nests-169095

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Glenn A Brock, Honorary Professor, Macquarie University

Most groups of modern animals had their beginnings more than half a billion years ago in an amazing evolutionary event known as the Cambrian Explosion.

This wasn’t the kind of explosion caused by a bomb or asteroid: we call it an “explosion” because of the huge and rapid increase in the diversity of animals we see in the fossil record during this time.

Read more:
Evolution’s ‘big bang’ explained (and it’s slower than predicted)

Many familiar features of today’s animals arose in this period. The first eyes and other sensory organs developed, and appendages for swimming and walking also appeared. Tooth-rimmed jaws for predation evolved, as did complex hard parts for protection against predators.

One group of animals, called bryozoans, has until now appeared to be absent from the Cambrian Explosion. In new research, we took a closer look at some old fossils and discovered these tiny coral-like creatures were indeed present during this riotous surge in the variety of animal life on Earth.

Have you heard of bryozoans?

Bryozoans are a distinct group of water-dwelling, filter-feeding animals. Like corals, bryozoans form colonies of tiny individuals. They eat using a crown of fine tentacles called a lophophore to extract tiny food particles from the water.

Bryozoan colonies come in a variety of shapes and sizes, including forms that encrust rocky surfaces, delicate branching structures, and even small jelly-like mounds.

Because the colony is often constructed of a hard material called calcium carbonate (the same material from which seashells are made), bryozoans are easily preserved as fossils. This is why roughly 15,000 species of fossil bryozoans are known to science.

Hidden origins

Despite all these fossils, the origin of bryozoans has remained a mystery. The group seemingly “bursts” into existence about 480 million years ago (some 50 million years after the Cambrian Explosion), during the Ordovician Period.

Before the Ordovician, there is no record of their existence. This “missing” record led many palaeontologists to speculate that bryozoans first evolved sometime during the Cambrian. But these early forms were probably tiny and delicate, and may not have constructed their colonies of calcium carbonate. This would make them much less likely to be preserved as fossils.

A new look at old fossils

Our research, published today in Nature, reveals bryozoans were indeed present during the Cambrian Explosion. The key to solving the mystery of their origins is a strange, honeycomb-like fossil called Protomelission (the name means “first honeycomb”).

The first specimens of Protomelission were originally described in 1993 from important Cambrian rocks in the Flinders Ranges in South Australia. However, it wasn’t clear from these original specimens that Protomelission was a bryozoan. Then, in 2018, an almost identical specimen was discovered in China.

Using a state-of-the-art technology called micro-computed tomography (MicroCT), we looked inside Protomelission to confirm it is, in fact, a fossil from a bryozoan colony.

MicroCT technology is similar to a CAT scan in a hospital. Using a thin beam of X-rays, we peer inside the fossil in a series of narrow “slices”. We then use a computer to stack the slices together and produce 3D images and videos of tiny objects like Protomelission.

Read more:
The science of medical imaging: X-rays and CT scans

Our new images confirmed the fossil lacked the robust calcium carbonate skeleton that most living bryozoans possess. Based on our analyses, we can now say with certainty that bryozoans first appeared during the Cambrian Explosion.

A hidden history revealed

It’s not every day the hidden history of an entire group of animals is revealed by the fossil record! For context, this would be like revealing the early ancestor of every fish, amphibian, reptile, bird and mammal all in one go.

Our discovery pushes back the first appearance of the phylum Bryozoa by about 35 million years, making Protomelission the oldest known bryozoan. Importantly, our results also mean that living in colonies, a rare feature in complex animals, also originated during the Cambrian Explosion.

The bryozoans can now take their place among the incredible evolutionary and ecological events associated with the rise of animal communities.

For more information and resources related to the wonderful phylum Bryozoa please go here.

Glenn A Brock is an Honorary Professor of Palaeobiology in the Department of Biological Sciences at Macquarie University. This research was funded partly from internal MQ Research funds and from the Australian Research Council (DP120104251).

Luke Strotz receives funding from a Shaanxi Province Research Grant (2019-2024) through Northwest University, Xi’an, China

– ref. The bryozoan mystery: a new look at an old fossil reveals the origin of these tiny coral-like creatures – https://theconversation.com/the-bryozoan-mystery-a-new-look-at-an-old-fossil-reveals-the-origin-of-these-tiny-coral-like-creatures-170261

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anne Tiernan, Adjunct Professor of Politics. Griffith Business School, Griffith University

All Australians have a stake in our nation’s good governance. The past week has provided plenty of reasons to be concerned about the Morrison government’s disregard of core tenets of Australian democracy in its quest for electoral advantage.

I can’t recall an Australian government that has been as blatant in its disdain for accountability as the one led by Scott Morrison. Nor has there been one that has more assiduously bred the culture of secrecy that permeates from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) down.

Its contempt for checks and balances, resentment of scrutiny and preparedness to trash long-standing conventions is widely observed among journalists, experts and practitioners – including former Coalition members. Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull describes “a culture of entitlement, a culture of non-accountability” within the government that he claims to be “deeply troubled by”.

This culture was on full display again in the parliament recently, when the government defied Speaker Tony Smith to stop the matter of Christian Porter’s blind trust fund being referred to the House of Representatives Privileges Committee.

Smith had ruled there was a “prima facie case” for the committee to investigate. But in a move unprecedented in the 120 years of the federal parliament, the government’s leader in the House, Peter Dutton, opposed the speaker’s ruling, mobilising Coalition MPs to win the vote. He achieved this by refusing to count the votes of independent members attending remotely, despite this being routine for remote attendance in the Senate since September 2020.

Much ink has been spilled documenting the Morrison government’s dubious record on integrity matters. These include the rorting and misuse of public funds through discretionary grants programs, its refusal to conform to reasonable expectations of accountability to parliament or answer questions from the media, its unwillingness to enforce ministerial or other codes of conduct, or to concede accumulating evidence of widespread abuses of power with respect to public appointments.

The parliament, like the national cabinet, is merely the latest arena to showcase Morrison’s audacity, given his slim majority and the deep fractures within his government.

‘Whatever it takes’ approach gains momentum

Political scientist James Walter argues Morrison embodies the decades-long move to the centralisation and predominance of the leader in Australian politics. Morrison has leveraged and strengthened the institutional and personal power of the prime ministership, including an inner court of trusted loyalists and a large and powerful PMO. It asserts discipline and control across the government, including the public service.

Morrison’s PMO has developed a reputation for backgrounding against rivals and punishing critics. His department, headed by former chief of staff Phil Gaetjens, has been accused of enabling the prime minister to evade accountability and scrutiny.

Read more:
View from The Hill: Scott Morrison becomes tangled in his own spider web

Australia is not the only Westminster-style system grappling with the trend towards an increasingly powerful political executive. In the United Kingdom, similar concerns have been raised about the extent to which unwritten “conventions” intended to guide political practice – premised on those holding power exercising self-restraint in the long-term public interest – are now sufficient to ensure appropriate standards of behaviour and respect for constitutional norms.

Since the Brexit referendum in 2016, a series of “constitutional abuses” has occurred in the UK. Andrew Blick and Peter Hennessy observe:

[The abuses] have touched upon many of the main government organs: the Cabinet, the Civil Service, Parliament, the judiciary, the devolved institutions, and even the monarchy.

These have brought into question whether the “good chap” theory that has underpinned the British political tradition (and also informs Australia’s) remains a sufficient bulwark against an overweening executive.

The flexibility of an unwritten constitution, based on restraint and mutual respect for governing norms, has served Britain and other Westminster-style systems well. However, Blick and Hennessy argue:

For the system to work, ministers must exercise [their] power responsibly and be willing to cooperate with oversight mechanisms to an appropriate extent.

[…] If general standards of good behaviour among senior politicians can no longer be taken for granted, then neither can the sustenance of key constitutional principles.

More effective ways need to be found to promote a culture of good behaviour among office-holders. This may include formally codifying expectations of behaviour and safeguards to protect the rule of law and strengthen the institutions of governance, including the civil service, parliament and the judiciary.

In 2020, Britain’s Committee on Standards in Public Life launched a review of “the strengths and weaknesses of the institutions, policies and processes that implement ethical standards in Westminster and beyond”. The review is being conducted against the backdrop of the Greensill lobbying scandal that involved (among numerous others) former prime minister David Cameron, and claims of a “chumocracy”, where access, positions and honours are a quid pro quo for mates and political donors.

It also comes amid criticism of the impact of informal, personalised networks surrounding British ministers on other institutions, notably the civil service. COVID-19 has exposed Boris Johnson’s shambolic governance style, his cavalier approach to the truth and preparedness to breach long-standing constitutional norms. This culture has extended to former supporters such as top adviser Dominic Cummings.

The case for a federal integrity commission is overwhelming

If, as recent performance in the Australian government suggests, “general standards of good behaviour among senior politicians can no longer be taken for granted”, the case for a federal integrity commission with strong powers is overwhelming.

But last week, as his government broke precedent to shield Porter from scrutiny, Morrison told independent MP Helen Haines his government would not facilitate debate of her Australian Federal Integrity Commission Bill.

Like his “forever friend” Boris Johnson, Morrison seems little inclined to accept restraints on government power. But as last week also showed, even predominant prime ministers face risks when they overplay their hand.

Coalition MPs voted down the motion to refer Porter to the privileges committee on party lines. But many MPs, reportedly angry, demanded a meeting with Dutton.

Read more:
Grattan on Friday: Porter’s funding from a ‘blind trust’ is an integrity test for Morrison

Similarly, the National Party sorely tested the prime minister’s authority. Its agreement to the net zero by 2050 target was achieved despite Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce’s opposition, although the Nationals leader accepted the decision of his party room.

As the PM touted his net zero by 2050 plan, it has been galling to hear both he and Minister for Industry, Energy and Emissions Reduction Angus Taylor invoke the “Westminster system” and conventions of Cabinet confidentiality while at the same time ignoring key traditions of “responsible government” – including accountability to parliament. These had already been comprehensively trashed by Joyce and fellow National Bridget McKenzie, whose pretence of “outsiderism” despite their place at the apex of power would have been laughable if not so cynically damaging.

Lacking a federal integrity commission and anything remotely resembling a Committee on Standards in Public Life, the Australian parliament is increasingly an outlier. It is diminished and demeaned by an emboldened political executive, which, as we saw in 2019, will stop at nothing to secure its return to office.

It’s time for the nation’s legislators to exercise constitutional stewardship by resetting the balance. That will require courage from moderate Liberal backbenchers, whose compliance under their leader’s whip hand may have electoral consequences.

During her academic career, Anne Tiernan won research funding from the Australian Research Council and the Australia and New Zealand School of Government.

– ref. Accountability is under threat. Parliament must urgently reset the balance – https://theconversation.com/accountability-is-under-threat-parliament-must-urgently-reset-the-balance-170530

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christopher Baker, Research Fellow in Statistics for Biosecurity Risk, The University of Melbourne

As lockdowns ease in New South Wales, Victoria and the ACT, and people return to work and socialising, many of us will be mixing more with others, even though a section of the community is still unvaccinated.

Many vaccinated people are concerned about the prospect of mixing with unvaccinated people. This mixing might be travelling on trains or at the supermarket initially. But also at family gatherings, or, in NSW at least, at pubs and restaurants when restrictions ease further, slated for December 1.

Some people are wondering, why would a vaccinated person care about the vaccine status of another person?

Briefly, it’s because vaccines reduce the probability of getting infected, which reduces the probability of a vaccinated person infecting someone else. And, despite vaccination providing excellent protection against severe disease, a small proportion of vaccinated people still require ICU care. Therefore some vaccinated people may have a strong preference to mix primarily with other vaccinated people.

But what exactly is the risk of catching COVID from someone who’s unvaccinated?

Read more:
As Melbourne cautiously opens up today, what lies ahead?

What’s the relative risk?

Recent reports from the Victorian Department of Health find that unvaccinated people are ten times more likely to contract COVID than vaccinated people.

We also know that vaccinated people are less likely to transmit the disease even if they become infected. The Doherty modelling from August puts the reduction at around 65%, although more recent research has suggested a lower estimate for AstraZeneca. Hence for this thought experiment, we’ll take a lower value of 50%.

As the prevalence of COVID changes over time, it’s hard to estimate an absolute risk of exposure. So instead, we need to think about risks in a relative sense.

If I were spending time with an unvaccinated person, then there’s some probability they’re infected and will infect me. However, if they were vaccinated, they’re ten times less likely to be infected and half as likely to infect me, following the numbers above.

Hence we arrive at a 20-fold reduction in risk when hanging out with a vaccinated person compared to someone who’s not vaccinated.

The exact number depends on a range of factors, including the type of vaccine and time since vaccination. But, in Australia we can expect a large risk reduction when mixing with fully vaccinated people.

The calculation holds true whether you yourself are vaccinated or not. But being vaccinated provides a ten-fold reduction for yourself, which is on top of the risk reduction that comes from people you’re mixing with being vaccinated.

So, dining in an all-vaccinated restaurant and working in an all-vaccinated workplace presents a much lower infection risk to us as individuals, whether we are vaccinated or not. The risk reduction is around 20-fold, but as individuals, we need to consider whether that’s meaningful for our own circumstances, and for the circumstances of those we visit.

There are also added complexities, in that there are three vaccine brands available, and eligibility is still limited to those aged 12 and older. Although, we do know kids are less susceptible and less likely to show symptoms.

However, as more information emerges, we can always update our estimates and think through the implications on the risk reduction.

What about people who can’t be vaccinated?

Some people haven’t been able to get vaccinated because they’re either too young or they have a medical exemption. Other people are immunocompromised and won’t get the same level of protection from two doses as the rest of the community.

Increasing our coverage across the board will help protect those who aren’t fully protected by vaccination (whether that’s by eligibility, medical reasons or choice).

Those at higher risk also enjoy the risk reduction if they’re able to mix primarily with vaccinated people.

And other choices we make can help reduce the risk of transmission when vaccination is impossible, for example, wearing masks, washing hands carefully, and so on.

Do rapid antigen tests help?

Some people have proposed that frequent testing could be used to suppress COVID spread for those who are unwilling to be vaccinated.

Health minister Greg Hunt said Australians can buy rapid antigen tests from November 1, so they can test themselves at home or before entering certain venues.

So how much does a rapid antigen test reduce risk to others?

To answer that question we need to consider test sensitivity.

Test sensitivity is the probability a rapid test will return a positive result, if the person is infected.

It’s challenging to get an accurate estimate. But rapid antigen tests are about 80% as sensitive as a PCR test, which are the traditional COVID tests we do that get sent off to a lab. The PCR tests themselves are about 80% sensitive when it comes to identifying someone with COVID.

So, if you did a rapid antigen test at home, it’s about 64% likely to pick up that you’re positive, if you did have COVID.

Therefore, rapid antigen tests can find about two-thirds of cases. If you’re going to a gathering where everyone has tested negative on a rapid antigen test, that’s a three-fold reduction in risk.

Even though rapid tests provide a reduction in risk, they don’t replace vaccines.

When used in conjunction with high levels of vaccination, rapid tests would provide improved protection for settings where we’re particularly keen to stop disease spread, such as hospitals and aged care facilities.

Read more:
Home rapid antigen testing is on its way. But we need to make sure everyone has access

Consequently, despite the high efficacy of COVID vaccines, there are still reasons a vaccinated person would prefer to mix with vaccinated people, and avoid mixing with unvaccinated people.

This is particularly true for those at higher risk of severe disease, whether due to age or disability. Their baseline risk will be higher, so a 20-fold reduction in risk is more meaningful.

Christopher Baker receives funding from The Australian Government Departments of Health and Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Andrew Robinson receives funding for biosecurity research from the federal Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment and New Zealand’s Ministry for Primary Industries

– ref. Your unvaccinated friend is roughly 20 times more likely to give you COVID – https://theconversation.com/your-unvaccinated-friend-is-roughly-20-times-more-likely-to-give-you-covid-170448

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Martin, Director, Australian Centre for Agriculture and Law, University of New England

The Nationals this week finally agreed to a plan of net-zero emissions by 2050. Farmers say they’ve done much of the heavy lifting on Australia’s emissions reduction and had been calling for a deal that addressed purported inequities of the past.

The terms of the agreement between Morrison and the Nationals have not been formally released. We know it involves five-yearly reviews by the Productivity Commission to assess how regional Australia is faring throughout the transition, cutting red tape for farmers and a new cabinet position for the Nationals.

But so far, there’s no clear indication that the deal includes expanded measures to help farmers restore rural environments. This would be a huge missed opportunity.

Agriculture covers 58% of Australia’s land mass, and restoring farmland is one of the best ways to tackle climate and environmental issues over the long-term. A recent study I was involved in explored how farmers can best be supported to do this.

It found landholders are often forced to rely on unreliable and insufficient funding and support when restoring land. What’s more, no coordinated strategy exists to maximise the value land-stewardship programs might deliver.

Why farmer think they’re owed

Sentiment from farmers that they’re owed compensation for their emissions reduction efforts stems back to the 1990s and early 2000s. It was then, according to the National Farmers Federation, that Queensland and New South Wales farmers became “victims of land clearing legislation that removed their property rights, without compensation”.

The belief is linked to the unique concession Australia won in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. Following an extraordinary 1990 spike in land clearing, Australia was allowed to count reduced land-clearing toward its emissions reductions commitments.

Restrictions on land clearing mean more vegetation is retained, leading to carbon dioxide being drawn down from the atmosphere and stored in plants and soil. This limit to land-clearing relieved pressure on other sectors of the economy to reduce carbon emissions.

So it’s understandable the National Party wanted compensation for farmers, and used the net-zero emissions target as a negotiation opportunity. Details of the final deal are expected in coming months.

It would be in everyone’s interest if the measures included ways to boost environmental stewardship of rural areas. This would not only help farmers reduce emissions over the long term, but help improve Australia’s very poor environmental record.

Read more:
The Nationals finally agree to a 2050 net-zero target, but the real decisions on Australia’s emissions are happening elsewhere

Well designed, well funded programs

Land stewardship involves efforts to enable landowners and others to responsibly manage and protect land and environmental assets.

This year’s federal budget included A$32.1 million for “biodiversity stewardship”, in which farmers who adopt more sustainable practices can earn money on private markets. The funding includes programs to protect existing native vegetation, implement a certification scheme and set up a trading platform.

But as others have noted, the experience of environmental markets and certification schemes to date suggests they won’t effectively encourage farmers to take part.

Farmers often have unreliable or weak cash-flows, due to seasonal conditions, natural disasters, and the nature of commodity markets.
More government funding and policy support is needed to promote responsible land management, as well as to enforce rules prohibiting environmentally damaging practices.

A study I was recently involved in found current systems to achieve this are inadequate.

Well-designed, well-funded and long-term programs would create a significant win-win for the farming sector and for the environment, and shore up Australia’s credentials internationally. These measures should make it easy and affordable for farmers to:

• conserve water

• protect soil

• avoid manure and chemical runoff, which can contaminate soil and waterways

• reduce land-clearing

• support conservation of plants and animals

• avoid disturbance to habitats

• minimise chemical use.

Read more:
Nature is a public good. A plan to save it using private markets doesn’t pass muster

Make it appealing to farmers

Any new climate deal for agriculture should focus on removing hurdles to practical land stewardship. Industry-led sustainability initiatives show what’s possible.

Examples include:

• myBMP, a best practice training management program helping the cotton industry manage land sustainably and reduce water use

• Sustainawool, a similar example from the wool sector

• Freshcare Environmental which achieves similar outcomes in horticulture.

But current incentives and support for farmers to participate in programs like these are not strong enough to ensure a large proportion of farmers take part.

We need a national stewardship investment strategy, developed in partnership with industry and involving sufficient long-term government funding.

A new authority

Payments for environmental services and good stewardship practices often promote good environmental stewardship, but require sufficient investment to work. The National Farmers Federation and KPMG have proposed such a scheme for agriculture.

Our study recommended the creation of an authority to lead the design and initial implementation of a national rural stewardship investment strategy.

It could be created via a successor to the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) or a special purpose national and state body. We proposed this new authority should be responsible for initiating a national stewardship funding program within a specified time frame, such as three years.

The authority should be supported by research from the Productivity Commission or a similar body. Crucially, it must consult widely with environmental and primary production stakeholders and First Nations people and ensure they’re involved in design and decision-making processes.

Well-designed stewardship work can create efficiencies. A recent study, for example, devised a feasible plan to restore 30% of native vegetation cover across almost all degraded ecosystems on Australia’s marginal farming land, by spending just A$2 billion a year for about 30 years.

The plan could restore 13 million hectares of degraded land without affecting food production or urban areas, the authors found.

A feasible rural stewardship investment strategy for Australia is essential, possible, and would deliver a much needed win-win for landholders and the planet. It would be a shame for Australian politicians not to harvest such attractive, low-hanging fruit.

Read more:
A successful COP26 is essential for Earth’s future. Here’s what needs to go right

Paul Martin has received funding from the ARC and various government and private agencies, which are listed in full at https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0243-2654.

– ref. Scott Morrison’s deal with the Nationals must not ignore land stewardship – an attractive, low-hanging fruit – https://theconversation.com/scott-morrisons-deal-with-the-nationals-must-not-ignore-land-stewardship-an-attractive-low-hanging-fruit-170539

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Hurley, Policy Fellow, Mitchell Institute, Victoria University

Once five to 11 year olds have access to COVID vaccines, children up to four years old will make up about 40% of Australia’s unvaccinated population. This will make Australia’s early learning sector the next frontline of the pandemic.

A new report from the Mitchell Institute shows childcare centres are at risk of becoming major transmission locations without a comprehensive strategy to reduce the risk.

While high vaccinations rates across the population will slow the spread of COVID, outbreaks are still likely to occur with the virus predominantly finding the unvaccinated. As younger children are not yet protected by vaccines, it is important to implement measures that reduce possible transmission in educational settings.

Many of the approaches used to mitigate the spread of COVID in schools – such as masks and social distancing – will be more difficult to implement in childcare. The childcare funding model also means measures that result in a reduction in physical attendance threaten the viability of providers.

Our report calls for a federal strategy and package of support for the sector to reduce the risk of transmission among the one million unvaccinated children attending childcare and pre-school.

Children and COVID

Rates of sickness, hospitalisation and death due to COVID are much lower in children compared to adults.

Evidence from the most recent outbreak in New South Wales suggests about 2% of children and young people under 18 years old who catch COVID end up in hospital. The most common symptoms among children who showed symptoms of COVID include fever, stuffy or runny nose, cough and fatigue.

Read more:
Children may need to be vaccinated against COVID-19 too. Here’s what we need to consider

But children can still be effective carriers of COVID.

As vaccination rates rise among adults, so does the proportion of COVID cases involving children.

This has been the experience in Europe. The figure below shows the proportion of weekly reported COVID cases involving children under 15 years old in Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands, along with the rates of vaccination.

Before any vaccinations were available in these countries, children under 15 made up about 15-25% of reported COVID cases. They now make up about 35-40% of all reported cases.

As the figure below shows, children 0-4 years old make up about 6% of Australia’s total population. Once 5-11 year olds have access to vaccines, and vaccination rates are above 90%, children aged 0-4 make about 40% of the unvaccinated population.

Many of these children will interact on a daily basis at childcare centres.

There is also recent evidence that shows children under five are 40% more likely to transmit COVID than older children.

About 750,000 children aged 0 to 4 years attend a childcare services. About 330,000 children are enrolled in pre-school.

Mitigation measures harder in childcare

The consensus among health experts is that mitigation measures will help manage the spread of COVID in early childhood education and care, and school settings.

But our report highlights these measures can be more difficult to implement in childcare and preschools compared to schools.

For instance, “cohorting” reduces contact between groups of children. In schools, this means keeping class groups together and separate from other classes as much as possible.

However, in childcare, there is not always a consistent or regular group of children attending and the mix of children can change every day. This makes such a measure difficult.

Improving ventilation has also been proposed to reduce spread in childcare, preshools and schools. Open or well-ventilated spaces reduce the risk of COVID transmission because infectious particles are more quickly diffused in the open air than in spaces with less ventilation.

Read more:
COVID-19 cases rise when schools open – but more so when teachers and students don’t wear masks

Some states have offered funds to schools and preschools to introduce better ventilation. But childcare centres don’t yet have the same level of support.

Childcare operators are largely run by not-for-profit or private organisations and may not have the means to invest in costly measures such as improved ventilation.

The funding model of early childhood education and care providers is also very different from schools. While schools can still receive funds if students are learning remotely, childcare funding is closely tied to physical attendance.

Any COVID mitigation measures that reduce the number of children at a centre can quickly threaten the financial viability of providers.

The Australian government has had to rescue the sector from collapse — twice — during the pandemic when many children stopped attending.

Australia needs a plan

Some states and territories are providing schools with strategic direction and funding. But the childcare sector is largely the responsibility of the federal government, which does not have an urgently needed strategy or support package.

In the short term, Australia needs a plan specific to the operating reality of the early childhood education and care sector. The sector requires buttressing to not only prevent its collapse, but so it can play a significant part in minimising the potential harm COVID causes children and the wider population.

Read more:
The government has again rescued the childcare sector from collapse. But short-term fixes still leave it at risk

And in the medium to long term, the pandemic highlights Australia may need to rethink how it funds and delivers early childhood education and care services.

There is an enormous body of literature describing the benefits of high-quality childcare. Australia needs a system that ensures children and families can continue to benefit from a more resilient early childhood education and care service, even in times of crisis.

Peter Hurley works for the Mitchell Institute who receive funding from Minderoo and the Thrive by Five campaign to undertake research on Australia’s early childhood, education and care (ECEC) sector.

Maximilian de Courten is the director of the Mitchell Institute a Think Tank for Education and Health Policy.

Jora Broerse 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. 40% of Australia’s unvaccinated population will soon be kids under 5. Childcare will be the next COVID frontline – https://theconversation.com/40-of-australias-unvaccinated-population-will-soon-be-kids-under-5-childcare-will-be-the-next-covid-frontline-170551

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ehsan Gharaie, Associate Professor of Project Management, RMIT University

Thanks to HomeBuilder and the housing price boom, house building is experiencing its hottest year on the record.

Over the space of a year the number of houses (not apartments) under construction has jumped from 56,060 in the June quarter 2020 to 88,445 in the June quarter 2021 — the biggest peak of all time.

Houses under construction

It would be entirely reasonable to expect the record number under construction to be converted to record completions. That’s the point of construction.

But bizarrely, the same set of Bureau of Statistics figures show no such thing. Even after an enormous jump in construction, and all through previous jumps in construction, the number of houses completed each quarter has changed little.

In this year’s June quarter, it was 28,399 — little more than the quarterly total at any time over the past five decades.

It is as if starting building is one thing, and finishing it is another.

Houses under construction, houses completed, quarterly

The 88,445 or more houses presently under construction will eventually be built, but it is going to take seriously longer than normal.

Our research shows every time the number of houses under construction has peaked, completion times have blown out.

Read more:
As home prices soar beyond reach, we have a government inquiry almost designed not to tell us why

During the smaller 2001-2008 construction boom, the average completion time blew out from 5.2 months to seven.

Our projections suggest this time it will sharply blow out from 6.5 months to more than nine by the end of this year.

The impact will be felt by hundreds of thousands of Australian house buyers, builders, subcontractors and lenders.

Why can’t we build faster?

Houses are not built on production lines. Unlike other universal purchases such as cars, each house is built individually.

And the method hasn’t changed much in 100 years.

The people we call builders are better described as project managers who rarely employ in-house tradespeople or have long-term contracts with subcontractors.

The way they manage the process has not changed much since the introduction of construction checklists by AV Jennings in the 1970s.

Read more:
Home prices are climbing alright, but not for the reason you might think

The method is hard to scale up, and unresponsive to demands for speed.

It is ripe for innovations such as offsite construction and prefabrication, but it isn’t clear the authorities are especially aware of the problem.

Now would be a good time. Builders could absorb the costs of changing processes while demand was high, taking advantage of the changes when demand recedes.

But I’m not hopeful. Too much talk is about housing supply in the abstract rather than how to achieve it concrete.

Ali Zolghadr receives RMIT Research Stipend Scholarship for his PhD.

Ehsan Gharaie 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. Building more houses quickly is harder than it looks. Australia hasn’t done it in decades – https://theconversation.com/building-more-houses-quickly-is-harder-than-it-looks-australia-hasnt-done-it-in-decades-170223

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sabina Rahman, Sessional Academic in English Literature, Macquarie University

Review: The Green Knight, directed by David Lowery.

Nothing about The Green Knight, the new film from director David Lowery, is comfortable.

From its opening scene, where Gawain (Dev Patel) sits in an empty throne room, a crown menacingly hovering above his head as flames suddenly engulf him, this film is wonderfully unsettling.

The Green Knight is a reimagining of the Middle English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which tells the story of Gawain, a knight of King Arthur’s court. Gawain accepts a challenge from a supernatural Green Knight (Ralph Ineson) to use his axe to strike this knight, and take a reciprocating blow from him the following Christmas.

Although Gawain beheads his opponent, the Green Knight does not die. When Gawain departs the following year to fulfil his promise, he demonstrates chivalry and fidelity to duty. But despite this show of chivalry, his honour is tested by the lord and the lady of the Hautdesert, a castle in which he takes refuge.

This narrative poem is a part of the larger collection of stories about King Arthur: a pseudo-history caught up in ideas about nationhood and identity. Throughout this tradition, Arthur is posited as a “once and future king”; Camelot as a utopian government.

Today, representations of the Middle Ages have been embraced by right-wing nationalists. But Lowery’s adaptation disrupts these narratives of a utopian past and future.

Lowery presents a series of contradictions and conflicts between duty, heroism, honour, fear and temptation. He offers viewers a medieval world in which contemporary anxieties about nationality, national identity and personal politics can be explored.

Read more:
Why the far-right and white supremacists have embraced the Middle Ages and their symbols

The hero’s journey

Despite being named for the monstrous Green Knight, this film follows the story of Gawain, the nephew of King Arthur (Sean Harris).

Awed by the King’s invitation to sit with him, Gawain quietly contends the other knights present “have spilled enough blood” to be more deserving of the honour.

Read more:
Guide to the classics: the Arthurian legend

But despite his inexperience, Gawain is the first to meet the challenge of the eponymous knight: to strike him and receive the same blow in return the following year. Although Gawain severs the knight’s head with one clean blow, he retrieves his gruesome head, his raspy laughter echoing off the walls.

Unlike the knightly figure in the medieval poem, Patel’s Gawain is not yet a knight. The bulk of this film forms his hero’s journey: his chance to spill blood for his King and be worthy of a seat at the table.

Gawain was a celebrity as he left Camelot. The hero of street theatre productions and the subject of portraits; a popular culture icon recognised by all. But his bravery had been untested.

Indeed, the chivalric bravery expected of a legendary knight is remarkably absent during this journey. This Gawain displays weakness, uncertainty and fear.

He cites “honour” as the motivation for his journey. Yet the Gawain of this film asks the restless spirit of a raped and murdered woman for payment to retrieve her head so that she may be at peace. He succumbs to the sexual advances of the lady of the house in which he is given refuge. He would use an enchanted girdle to trick his way out of his knightly duty.

Honour does not seem to be one of his virtues.

Read more:
There’s no such thing as a ‘faithful retelling’ of the Arthurian legend

De-romanticising the medieval

This disparity between the celebrated hero of medieval legend and the flawed Gawain of this film invites us to consider how the medieval is reconstructed in popular culture.

The Green Knight begins in a conquered land. When Gawain rides to the Green Chapel, the signs of war are all around him, from the stark landscape pocked with ruin to an entire battlefield of recently dead men.

These are the Saxons the King is referring to when he gives his Christmas speech:

Out my window this morn, I looked and I saw a land shaped by your hands. You have lain those same hands on your Saxon brethren, who now in your shadow bow their heads like babes. Peace. Peace you brought to your kingdom.

The peace was won through a bloody conquest, but our contemporary imagining of a medieval past often romanticises these conquests. This sort of romanticisation encourages the use of the medieval in right-wing politics, and can legitimise racism.

This film interrupts those narratives not just with the colour-conscious casting of Gawain and his mother Morgana (Sarita Choudhury), but also with its demand that we look beyond the common plot points of medievalist stories into what lies beneath: the conquests, the displacement of people, the grotesque Middle Ages.

Patel’s performance as Gawain is nothing short of captivating. Doubt, vulnerability and trepidation pour from him throughout the quest.

Lowery’s film is beautifully cast and beautifully shot, but always disquieting and inquisitive. It leaves the viewer with more questions than answers.

From the lilting, hissing, ominous voice over of the opening scene, The Green Knight will enthral you – right through to the ambiguous ending where you will release a breath you did not even know you were holding.

The Green Knight is on Amazon Prime from 28 October.

Sabina Rahman 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. The Green Knight review: a wonderfully unsettling cinematic reimagining of the medieval story of Sir Gawain – https://theconversation.com/the-green-knight-review-a-wonderfully-unsettling-cinematic-reimagining-of-the-medieval-story-of-sir-gawain-167364