We now know enough about how COVID works for health authorities to have issued clear guidance on which drugs doctors should use on hospitalised patients. The recommended drugs are dexamethasone, remdesivir, and tocilizumab.
Remdesivir, also known as Veklury, is not manufactured in Australia and the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has recently issued an alert warning of a shortage of tocilizumab in Australia. And the large dexamethasone manufacturers are based overseas. The website Pharmaoffer, which shows suppliers of active pharmaceutical ingredients, lists the countries that produce the active ingredient in dexamethasone; Australia is not one of them.
More broadly, Australia lacks medicines manufacturing capability and this puts us at significant risk should supplies from overseas continue to be interrupted.
One report released last year described the Australian market for pharmaceuticals as “possibly one of the most vulnerable in the OECD”.
It’s time for Australia to re-invest in domestic medicine manufacturing.
Drugs used to treat COVID-19
Many people diagnosed with COVID-19 experience only mild, or no symptoms at all, and can be managed and monitored at home. Rest is the main treatment, and medicines such as paracetamol and/or ibuprofen can provide symptomatic relief of any mild fevers.
People with moderate to severe COVID-19 are treated in hospital. The medicines doctors will prescribe in hospital depend on a patient’s clinical circumstances, such as whether or not they are receiving oxygen therapy.
tocilizumab, a monoclonal antibody and immunosuppressive agent (monoclonal antibodies are lab-made proteins that mimic the immune system’s virus-fighting abilities).
Dexamethasone is already used for a wide range of conditions, such as certain forms of cancer and arthritis, and various other disorders. Now, it is used in treatment of COVID-19 to suppress inflammation and immune responses.
Remdesivir works by stopping the replication of viral RNA.
And tocilizumab is sometimes used when COVID-19 patients have signs of systemic inflammation.
Dexamethasone is already used for a wide range of conditions. Nati Harnik/AP
Where are they made?
Australia is heavily reliant on supply agreements for medicines that come from overseas (and a manufacturing network might include a lot of countries). It’s been reported some of the large dexamethasone manufacturers are in Brazil and India.
To meet growing demand for remdesivir, its company (Gilead) has approved new deals for manufacturing in Egypt, India, and Pakistan. But while the remdesivir manufacturing network now includes more than 40 companies in North America, Europe, and Asia, the medicine is not manufactured in Australia.
Tocilizumab was developed in Japan and is now also licensed for manufacturing by the California-based company Genentech.
Need for Australian manufacturing base
There is an urgent need for Australia to increase local manufacturing of many types of medicines, not just COVID treatments, to secure current and future needs.
In general, Australia does have some medicine manufacturing sites in Australia but several have either closed or are slated for closure.
The Australian government has acknowledged the importance of boosting local production of medicines but it’s unclear what progress has been made.
In March this year, an interim report by the Productivity Commission on vulnerable supply chains again indicated medicines as an area of concern, noting that
the pharmaceutical industry is highly regulated, making entering the market or modifying existing facilities to respond to a crisis a slow and costly process.
The final report from this committee is currently with the government.
Manufacturing of medicines in Australia is regulated by the TGA. According to its website, it can take up to 12 months for an Australian manufacturer to get approval to bring a new manufacturing site online. This means it would take us a long time to act if a supply shortage pops up.
Significant backing from the federal government for local medicine manufacturing would reduce the risk of key medicine shortages in Australia, while also creating many highly skilled jobs.
Associate Professor Wheate in the past has received funding from the ACT Cancer Council, Tenovus Scotland, Medical Research Scotland, Scottish Crucible, and the Scottish Universities Life Sciences Alliance. He is Fellow of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute and a member of the Australasian Pharmaceutical Science Association. Nial is science director of the medicinal cannabis company Canngea Pty Ltd, a board member of the Australian Medicinal Cannabis Association, and a Standards Australia committee member for sunscreen agents.
Elise Schubert is a registered pharmacist at Royal North Shore Hospital, and a PhD Candidate receiving scholarship from the University of Sydney and Canngea Pty Ltd.
Associate Professor Ingrid Gelissen in the past has received grant funding from the NH&MRC and National Heart Foundation. She is a member of the editorial board for several international journals including the BBA-Molecular and Cell Biology of Lipids and the International Journal of Molecular Science.
The intense colours of flowers have inspired us for centuries. They are celebrated through poems and songs praising the red of roses and blue of violets, and have inspired iconic pieces of art such as Vincent Van Gogh’s sunflowers.
Vase with Three Sunflowers by Vincent Van Gogh.
But flowers did not evolve their colour for our pleasure. They did so to attract pollinators. Therefore, to understand why flowers produce such vibrant colours, we have to consider how pollinators such as bees perceive colour.
When observed under a powerful microscope, most flower petals show a textured surface made up of crests or “bumps”. Our research, published in the Journal of Pollination Ecology, shows that these structures have frequently evolved to interact with light, to enhance the colour produced by the pigments under the textured surface.
A flower of Tibouchina urvilleana observed under a powerful scanning electron microscope shows a typical bumpy petal surface (left). In comparison, the opposite (abaxial) petal side, rarely seen by an approaching pollinator, shows a less textured surface (right). Author provided
Sunshiney daze
Bees such as honeybees and bumblebees can perceive flower colours that are invisible to us — such as those produced by reflected ultraviolet radiation.
Plants must invest in producing reliable and noticeable colours to stand out among other plant species. Flowers that do this have a better chance of being visited by bees and pollinating successfully.
However, one problem with flower colours is sunlight may directly reflect off a petal’s surface. This can potentially reduce the quality of the pigment colour, depending on the viewing angle.
You may have experienced this when looking at a smooth coloured surface on a sunny day, where the intensity of the colour is affected by the direction of light striking the surface. We can solve this problem by changing our viewing position, or by taking the object to a more suitable place. Bees, on the other hand, have to view flowers in the place they bloom.
Bumblebee on a smooth blue surface, where the colour is affected by light reflection.
We were interested in whether this visual problem also existed for bees, and if plants have evolved special tricks to help bees find them more easily.
It has been known for some time that flowering plants most often have conical-shaped cell structures within the texture of their petal surfaces, and that flat petal surfaces are relatively rare. A single plant gene can manipulate whether a flower has conical-shaped cells within the surface of a petal — but the reason why this evolved has remained unclear.
Past research suggested the conical petal surface acted as a signal to attract pollinators. But experiments with bees have shown this isn’t the case. Other explanations relate to hydrophobicity (the ability to repel water). But again, experiments have revealed this can’t be the only reason.
We investigated how bumblebees use flower surfaces with or without conical petal shapes. Bees are a useful animal for research as they can be trained to collect a reward, and tested to see how they perceive their environment.
Bumblebees can also be housed and tested indoors, where it is easier to precisely mimic a complex flower environment as it might work in nature.
Flowers cater to a bee’s needs
Our colleague in Germany, Saskia Wilmsen, first measured the petal surfaces of a large number of plants and identified the most common conical surfaces.
She then selected some relatively smooth petal or leaf surfaces reflecting light from an artificial source as a comparison. Finally, blue casts were made from these samples, and subsequently displayed to free-flying bees.
In the experiment, conducted with bumblebees in Germany, a sugar solution reward could be collected by bees flying to any of the artificial flowers. They had to choose between flying either towards “sunlight” — which could result in light reflections affecting the flower’s coloration — or with the light source behind the bee.
The experiment found when light came from behind the bees, there was no preference for flower type. But for bees flying towards the light, there was a significant preference for choosing the flower with a more “bumpy” conical surface. This bumpy surface served to diffuse the incoming light, improving the colour signal of the flower.
The results indicate flowers most likely evolved bumpy surfaces to minimise light reflections, and maintain the colour saturation and intensity needed to entice pollinators. Humans are probably just lucky beneficiaries of this solution biology has evolved. We also get to see intense flower colours. And for that, we have pollinators to thank.
Adrian Dyer receives funding from The Australian Research Council.
Jair Garcia 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.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Victoria Rawlings, Lecturer, University of Sydney School of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney
Warlpiri person showing a honey ant after hunting.shutterstock
For too long, “research” was an activity done to or on Indigenous people; it was something imposed from the outside. This was especially the case for people who came from communities that were oppressed or marginalised in the colonialism of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Indigenous people throughout the world feel they have been the subjects of endless measurement, recording, and invasion of privacy with little or no apparent benefit except for the scholars who make careers out of it. Māori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith calls this approach “research adventures in Indigenous lands” in her book Decolonising Methodologies.
The book asks how to move research done to and on people towards for and with people. It features both community and academic voices and reflects on research that foregrounds non-academic priorities.
Since the global Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and beyond, academic researchers have recognised the political and moral responsibilities we have to those impacted by our studies.
To meet their responsibilities to different communities, researchers have incorporated methodologies such as:
participatory action research, in which members of the community affected by the research actively participate in different parts of the project
public patient involvement, in which non-academic people work as employees or volunteers in organisations’ high-level work
community-based participatory research, which aims to equitably involve community members and others in research projects.
Each of these are slightly different, and are used variously in different disciplines, but their increasing presence affirms that involving communities in research is crucial for good research outcomes.
However, we have found that approaches putting community at the centre of research beyond disciplinary siloes have not yet been documented in a comprehensive way. Our book builds on previous research by bringing together various community-led approaches, including from education and social work, health and medicine, and archaeology.
Stories, not blueprints
The chapters in our book reflect on community-led approaches to research in different spaces. They consider questions of identification of a community, appropriate protocols, and how to build positive collaborations.
The authors do not attempt to provide a template that can be applied in all research situations. Nor should they. As several chapters point out, there is a risk to “community-led” becoming another buzzword that ends up being appropriated for marketing or institutional propaganda.
We found community-led research must be built on a foundation of real relationships, mutual respect, and true reciprocity. We have all come into community-led research from different disciplinary perspectives and research experiences, as well as personal experiences.
As the editors of the volume, we were inspired by working with young people, Pacific Islanders and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. Each of us has our own ideas about community-led research because of who we work with and where our interests lie. We reflect on our own work individually below to give a sense of different experiences in the field.
Rawlings: While young people clearly make up a large and important part of our community, they often don’t get a seat at the table, even when research is “about” them. They can be seen as not critical or sophisticated enough to partner in research, or as needing “protection”, where they are seen as too innocent to take part in research about sensitive issues.
Imagine, then, co-designing research with LGBTIQA+ young people about their experiences of self-harm and suicide. While some young people may baulk at participating in this kind of discussion, research shows they benefit from conversations about their distress and trauma, particularly when they feel it might benefit others.
We found this to be the case as we co-designed our research in partnership a youth advisory group. Not only did the young people benefit, but our research was higher quality, too.
Flexner: My first trip to Vanuatu, in 2011, was almost a parody of lost luggage, cultural and linguistic misunderstanding, and geographical disorientation in the remote southern islands of Erromango and Tanna.
However, that initial fieldwork experience proved formative. It taught me how to work with community through the chiefs, elders, and knowledge holders facilitated by the Vanuatu Cultural Centre filwokas (fieldworkers). It set up intellectual engagement with cultural traditions encapsulated by the Melanesian term kastom (which translates as customs or traditions).
After a decade of research in Vanuatu, I still find myself learning new things, and finding new ways to work with the people who call these islands home.
Riley: A huge concern in First Nations communities is in having no control over what research is undertaken or the right to veto the interpretation of data and findings. This is due to the fact much past research has helped to form government policies and practices concerning First Nations lives with little life improvement. This is clearly evidenced in current Closing the Gap statistics.
Often, First Nations peoples find they are called upon when the government and researchers arrive at an impasse and they do not know what else to do. Let us change this approach and ensure First Nations peoples are asked what research they want undertaken first and what benefits they want from the research.
That is, how can research improve First Nations people’s lives and enhance community development?
Although we are inspired by the contributions in Community-Led Research: Walking New Pathways Together, we also need to recognise and acknowledge the limits of what we do. Universities remain institutions that many people, especially Indigenous people, associate with colonialism.
Besides our work in the communities, one of our great challenges is how to make the places where we work as academics more welcoming, inclusive, and egalitarian. Further, there are very real differences that regularly map onto differences in class, nation, geographical region, and identities.
It is impossible to dismantle 500 years of history in a single project, no matter how much goodwill the researchers and community establish together. Community-led research is in part about changing academic research, but it is also about changing other kinds of relationships in the world we all live in.
There is great promise in so many new approaches people are taking in their research, and their understandings of the groups of people they work with both inside and outside of academia. Community-led research is, however, a type of research that is still developing and we do not believe our work is finished. Rather, our pathway is just beginning.
Victoria Rawlings receives funding from the Australian Research Council (DE210101619).
James L. Flexner receives funding from the Australian Research Council (DE130101703, DP160103578, LP170100048). He works for the University of Sydney.
Lynette Riley receives funding from NSW Aboriginal Languages Trust and an ARC Linkage Grant for SSESW, Research Centre for Children and Families. Lynette has also received past funding from SSESW, Research Centre for Children and Families.
Lynette is a member for the Labor Party, is a NAIDOC Committee member and is a board member for the Aboriginal Languages Trust.
Lynette is also affiliated with Aboriginal Affairs OCHRE Committee and is the chairperson for Yirigaa.
Yirigaa – Chairperson.
On July 26 1971, a top secret cabinet meeting ended what was then Australia’s longest conflict. The public would hear about it for the first time in August, when Prime Minister William McMahon announced the withdrawal of Australian forces from Vietnam.
Eighteen months — and a change of government later — Australia’s Vietnam War was over. Alongside untold Vietnamese, some 521 Australians had died in conflict, including 202 national servicemen.
The end of Australia’s war also saw the wrapping up of a novel and now largely forgotten organisation. The Ex-Services Human Rights Association of Australia was founded in October 1966 by former servicemen and women who “oppose militarism” and “believe that National Service […] should not involve conscription for foreign wars”.
The final issue of the group’s newsletter, Conscience, in February 1972 paid special tribute to Martin Leslie (Les) Waddington, a World War II veteran and leather goods manufacturer, and the group’s “spiritual leader, and greatest workhorse”.
Fifty years since Australia officially began withdrawing from Vietnam, my forthcoming article reflects on how Waddington exemplified an undercurrent of anti-war citizen soldiery in Australia.
Australia’s anti-militarist tradition
The Ex-Services Human Rights Association of Australia emerged out of a long Australian tradition of opposition to compulsory national service, perhaps best exemplified in the famous struggle against conscription during the first world war.
Pre-war national service schemes had proven unpopular: 27,000 court cases were filed against non-compliers between 1912 and 1914.
During the war, two plebecistes defeated Prime Minister Billy Hughes’ attempts to conscript Australians for overseas service.
This subversive legacy continued. Ex-serviceman and communist Len Fox used a 1936 pamphlet, The Truth About Anzac, to suggest:
[the] heroism of the Conscientious Objector, the Militant Anti-War Fighter, and the Anti-Conscriptionist, [be] give[n] its place besides the heroism of the Anzacs.
While the Menzies government’s National Service scheme of 1964 was initially widely supported as citizen building, the return of “Nashos” in body bags saw the tide of public opinion slowly turn.
From Sydney to a national movement
The Returned and Services League was established in 1916, and by the 1960s the “political pressure group” used its authority to support anti-communism, national service and the Vietnam war.
Waddington was still an active member of his local Cronulla RSL sub-branch when he spearheaded the Ex-Services Human Rights Association of Australia’s founding meeting in 1966.
Attended by both current and former RSL members, and including doctors, academics and “leading lay churchmen”, the Australia reported the 60 attendees were “well-tailored, well-fed and, to all appearances, essentially middle class”.
The Sydney-based group began actively participating in the city’s anti-war movement, including the December 1966 protests against visiting US President Lyndon B Johnson.
Anti-Vietnam War demonstration outside United States Consulate-General, Sydney, New South Wales, February 1966. Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales and Courtesy SEARCH Foundation, CC BY
Waddington believed the Anzac tradition should venerate war resisters as much as battlefield sacrifice. These beliefs saw him expelled by the RSL’s State Executive in late May 1967 for “conduct subversive to the objects and policy of the League”.
The resulting controversy meant “there must be hardly anyone left in this country who has not now heard of our Association”, Waddington happily reported in Conscience. Membership exploded to over 500, with branches across the country.
Fellow RSL members came forward to defend Waddington. One resigned his membership, writing the league displayed “a hardening, intolerant attitude”, while another accused it of “deprivi[ing] members of the right to […] express political opinions”.
An editorial in the Canberra Times stated if the Vietnam war was “the be-all and end-all” of RSL policies, then “there would be great gaps in the ranks”.
Anzac and the heroic resister
Amid the outcry, Waddington was reinstated — but changing the RSL was not the Ex-Services Human Rights Association of Australia’s main priority. Its primary interest was supporting conscientious objectors.
The number of young Australians who refused to serve in Vietnam, while always small, rose quickly after the widely publicised case of Sydney school teacher Bill White in late 1966. The association took on his case, as it did other non-compliers like John Zarb.
Anti-Vietnam War demonstrators protest outside Central Police Court, Liverpool Street, Sydney, 1965. Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales and Courtesy SEARCH Foundation, CC BY
What the association had — and the wider anti-war movement lacked — was their status as ex-servicepeople. Members wore service medals conspicuously at demonstrations to undermine the image of protesters as “long haired radicals”.
To refuse service was not an act of cowardice, the association claimed, but rather the highest form of bravery. As Waddington, protesting the ongoing imprisonment of objectors, remarked in a 1971 letter:
Two years in jail is the price for national heroes to pay to avoid murdering on a foreign field.
Waddington and his fellow anti-war veterans were convinced it was as brave to face prison for your beliefs as it was to face death on the battlefield.
This example highlights how, contrary to popular opinion, the ex-service community has always been far from monolithic in its politics. Equally, it shows Anzac is not an uncontestable mantra, but a pliable tradition that could, rhetorically at least, include proud soldiers and brave resisters.
Today, Australia reflects on the withdrawal from Vietnam as we face the aftershocks of another overseas war. Perhaps we should also reflect on those war resisters and their allies who believed, as the Ex-Services Human Rights Association of Australia put it, “war is a crime against humanity”.
Jon Piccini 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.
Earth science is vital to Australia’s economic and environmental future but we are dramatically decreasing our earth science capability. Earth scientists work not only in mining and mineral exploration (which contribute 11% of Australia’s GDP) but also in fields such as environmental science, groundwater monitoring for the agricultural and environmental sectors, geotechnical work for the construction industry, and satellite remote sensing. These skills will be increasingly important to meet the challenges of climate change, particularly as renewable energy sources require new discoveries of minerals for batteries, electric cars and wind turbines.
Already in short supply, geologists, geophysicists and earth science technicians are on the skilled occupation list for immigration. Despite this need, Australian universities have recently made huge cuts to earth science teaching. In the past year, the University of Newcastle and Macquarie University have closed entire earth science departments.
Earth science jobs have also been lost at other universities including ANU, UNSW, Tasmania and Melbourne. Almost every university in the eastern states has cut undergraduate courses in earth sciences.
Federal government policies bear significant responsibility for this loss of earth science capability. The lack of JobKeeper support for universities during the pandemic has been widely discussed, but the unhelpful policies run much deeper.
Funding changes hit earth science teaching hard
Despite its importance, earth science undergraduate enrolments in Australia are modest. Most years only about 200 students graduate with an honours degree (the minimum generally required to be employed in the field), while over 15,000 people work as geoscientists in Australia. Commonwealth funding for university teaching is based on student numbers, so earth science departments receive little teaching income.
The stated aim of the 2020 Job-Ready Graduates Package was to address this by “better preparing students for jobs that reflect Australia’s expected economic, industry and employment growth”. The package did reduce fees for earth science students. However, it did not increase funding to cover the resulting fee shortfall.
As a result, university income was reduced by 16% for science students and 29% for environmental science students. At a time when universities are deciding which courses to cut, these suddenly less profitable courses have risen to the top of the list.
Australia excels in earth science research. In the 2020 QS World University Rankings, nine Australian earth science institutions were in the top 100 in the world, compared to five in biology, three in physics, one in chemistry and none in mathematics. However, research funding policies have hit earth science departments particularly hard.
Most Australian government research funding does not cover the full costs of doing research, including academic salaries and university overheads. This funding system essentially punishes earth science departments for their research excellence because there is no money to cover the required laboratory facilities or academic salaries that come with research success.
Responsibility also lies with the universities that ultimately decided to cut earth science departments and jobs. Not all these cuts were made in response to COVID-19. For instance, Macquarie University began earth science redundancies in 2019, well before any COVID-19 budgetary crisis.
However, the pandemic has accelerated the loss of earth science teaching. With Macquarie again as an example, in the past year the university has made most academic positions in earth science redundant, while announcing plans to build a A$60 million law school.
A solution to this problem requires Commonwealth funding to be restructured. For a start, research funding should cover the costs of research.
If the Australian government is serious about producing graduates for jobs in areas of need, it should design policies that encourage universities to invest in those areas rather than punishing them for doing so. Universities, as public institutions that seek the support of the public, should commit to supporting areas of importance to Australia, even if these are not the most profitable for the universities themselves.
The immediate problem that must be solved to protect our remaining earth science teaching is low undergraduate student numbers. An easy step for the Australian government would be to boost the small amount of earth science content in the school curriculum. Yet current proposals are to reduce it.
The government should also mount campaigns to show school students the variety of exciting, important and impactful careers they could have as geoscientists. Without immediate changes, the future of earth sciences in Australia looks grim.
Kate Selway receives funding from the Australian Research Council and is on the Federal Executive of the Australian Society of Exploration Geophysicists. Kate took a voluntary redundancy from Macquarie University in February 2021 and currently works at the University of South Australia.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne
Mick Tsikas/AAP
In the latest Resolve poll for Nine newspapers, the Coalition had 38% of the primary vote (down two since June), Labor 35% (down one), the Greens 12% (up two) and One Nation 4% (up one).
This is based on a sample of 1,607, conducted from July 13 to July 17.
Two party estimates are not provided by Resolve, but The Poll Bludger estimates 51.5-48.5 to Labor from these primary votes, which is a one-point gain for Labor.
Negative ratings for Joyce, Morrison and Albanese
Of those surveyed, 45% said they had a negative view of Nationals leader and Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce. Just 16% had a positive view, for a net likeability of -29. Former Nationals leader Michael McCormack had a 17% negative, 11% positive rating for a net -6 in June.
This poll suggests the ousting of McCormack in favour of Joyce could hurt the Coalition, as I wrote about last month.
Also in the Resolve poll, 46% (up six) gave Prime Minister Scott Morrison a poor rating for his performance in recent weeks and 45% (down three) a good rating. Morrison’s net -1 rating is his first negative rating from any pollster since the COVID pandemic began, though Resolve’s ratings are harsher than other pollsters.
Labor leader Anthony Albanese’s net rating fell three points to -16. Morrison continued to lead Albanese by 45-24 as preferred prime minister (46-23 in June).
On COVID, voters thought lockdowns and border restrictions should be gradually eased over the coming months as more people are vaccinated by a margin of 54-19%. By 54-19%, they thought fully vaccinated people should be given more freedom, though they believed (45-34%) this should not occur until everyone has had an opportunity to be vaccinated.
On economic management, the Liberals and Morrison led Labor and Albanese by 41-25% in July (43-20% in June). On COVID management, the Liberals led by 37-25% (40-20% previously).
Essential voting intentions, and anti-vaxxer sentiment
The Essential poll no longer publishes voting intentions with each poll. Instead they release them every few months for all polls they conducted during that period. Essential’s voting intentions numbers include undecided voters.
Last week’s Essential report gave Labor a 47-45% lead with 8% undecided. If undecided voters are removed (as other pollsters do), Labor led by 51-49.
This is a slightly different result from early July when Labor led by 48-44 (52-48 without undecided). They have led by two or four points since April. The Poll Bludger said applying last election preferences instead of respondent preferences to the current poll gives Labor above a 52-48 lead,
With the Sydney and Melbourne lockdowns, anti-vaxxer sentiment has dropped. In Essential, 11% (down five from early July) said they’d never get vaccinated, and 27% (down six) said they’d get vaccinated but not straight away. In Resolve, 21% (down eight since May) said they were unlikely to get vaccinated.
The federal government had a 46-31 good rating for response to COVID in Essential, slightly better than 44-30 in early July, but a long way below the 58-18 rating in late May, before the Victorian and NSW outbreaks. 54% (down three) gave the NSW government a good rating.
Morgan poll and BludgerTrack poll aggregate
A Morgan poll, conducted over July 10-11 and 17-18 from a sample of over 2,700, gave Labor a 52.5-47.5 lead, a 2% gain for Labor since mid-June. Primary votes were 39% Coalition (down 2.5%), 37% Labor (up 2.5%), 11.5% Greens (down 0.5%) and 3% One Nation (down 0.5%).
With polls from Newspoll, Resolve, Essential and Morgan, the Poll Bludger’s BludgerTrack aggregate of recent polls has Labor ahead by 52.0-48.0, from primary votes of Coalition 39.8%, Labor 37.3%, Greens 10.7% and One Nation 2.9%. Labor has been gaining during this year.
NSW Coalition retains large lead in Resolve state poll
In a Resolve NSW poll for The Sydney Morning Herald, Berejiklian’s Coalition had 43% of the primary vote (down just one point since May), Labor 28% (steady), the Greens 12% (steady) and the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers 1% (down three).
This poll was conducted at the same time as the federal June and July Resolve polls from a sample of 1,100. While the July poll was conducted during Sydney’s lockdown, the June poll
occurred after Jodi McKay was ousted in favour of Chris Minns as Labor leader, owing to a disappointing result in the May 22 Upper Hunter byelection.
The Sydney Morning Herald’s poll article says the Coalition’s position was worse in July than in June. With NSW’s optional preferential voting, the Coalition would lead by around 55-45 from these primary votes. Incumbent Gladys Berejiklian led Minns as preferred premier by 55-16 (compared to 57-17 vs McKay in May).
In questions on the outbreak (only asked of the July sample), 56% thought Sydney was too slow to go into lockdown and 52% said the government should have been more proactive in urging people to get vaccinated. Almost half (46% agreed) the state has handled the outbreak well.
In Essential, 44% of NSW respondents (down seven since early July) thought NSW had moved at about the right speed to enforce lockdown restrictions. But 44% (up five) thought NSW was too slow, and 12% (up two) too quick.
Other states were unsympathetic to NSW, bringing the national figure to 56% for too slow, 34% for about right and 10% for too quick.
Labor easily holds Stretton at byelection
A state byelection for the Queensland Labor-held seat of Stretton occurred on Saturday. It was caused by the death of the previous member, Duncan Pegg.
With 73% of enrolled voters counted, the ABC’s results currently give Labor a 63.8-36.2 win over the LNP, a mere 1.0% swing to the LNP from the 2020 election. Primary votes are 56.6% Labor (no change), 32.7% LNP (up 2.5%) and 6.5% Greens (down 2.2%). The anti-vaxxer Informed Medical Options Party won just 2.5%.
Parties defending seats at byelections normally suffer from the loss of the previous MP’s personal vote. State Labor has held government since 2015, so this is a good result for them. 62% of Queensland respondents in Essential gave their government a good rating on dealing with COVID.
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.
There’s no shortage of people online looking to exploit and manipulate the vulnerable among us. One such group is anorexia coaches, or “anacoaches”.
They are typically middle-aged, male sexual predators who go online to find impressionable young people to exploit under the guise of providing weight-loss “coaching”.
I have been researching how anacoaches operate. I’ve found they are facilitated by flaws within social media algorithms, as well as large numbers of young people seeking weight-loss help online.
An anacoach message on Tumblr. Author provided
My ongoing research, coupled with other media reports, indicates opportunity for anacoaches has risen in the past few years. My analysis showed that on Twitter alone there are about 300 unique requests for anacoaches around the world daily.
Anacoaches operate on numerous channels, including established social platforms such as Twitter, TikTok, Tumblr and Kik. Despite this, these platforms haven’t addressed the problem.
Targeting teens
An estimated 4% of Australians, or roughly one million people, are affected by eating disorders. And almost two-thirds (63%) of these people are thought to be female.
Screenshot from TikTok. Author provided
Teenagers with eating disorders are more likely to experience poor mental health and impaired functioning in social environments — which leaves them more vulnerable to the influence of anacoaches.
Also, research has shown social media use can exacerbate the extent to which teenagers and young adults chase a “thin” ideal.
One study published by a Dutch human rights law group on the predatory behaviours of anacoaches found self-reporting victims had been sexually assaulted and even raped.
And with anacoaching comes the potential for other forms of criminal abuse, such as paedophilia, forced prostitution and even human trafficking.
With the rise of online platforms there has been an emergence of communities pursuing a thin ideal. These networks tend to share content that endorses extreme thinness.
Group identity is formed through interactions and hashtag sharing, with a focus on terms used regularly in the context of eating disorders. Common hashtags include #proana (pro-anorexia), #bonespo (bone inspiration), #edtw (eating disorder trigger warning), #promia (pro bulimia), #bulimia, #thighgap, #uw (ultimate weight), #cw (current weight), #gw (goal weight) and #tw (trigger warning).
As highlighted in my previous research, communication in these communities includes exchanging weight-loss tips, diet plans, extreme exercise plans, imagery of thin bodies and emotional “support”.
Anacoaches lurk in chat forums focused on thin ideals. Each coach will tend to be present in numerous chatrooms, luring teenagers with stories of their past “successes” from coaching.
They market themselves with dubious claims. Some will assign themselves labels such as “strict coach” or “mean coach”. The screenshots below show messages posted on the app Kik.
Screenshot from Kik. Author provided Screenshot from Kik. Author provided
The coaching predominantly involves sharing pictures and videos for nude body checks (or in undergarments), weekly weigh-ins, and enforcing strict rules on what foods to eat and avoid.
Screenshot from Kik. Author provided
While there’s currently no way to know how long coaching lasts on average, the harms are extensive. Because of the way its content algorithms work, TikTok, which has a massive young following, will start to recommend user accounts centred around eating disorders once such content is initially sought.
Screenshot from TikTok. Author provided
What is being done?
There are currently not enough regulations in place by platforms to prevent anacoaches from operating, despite an array of reports highlighting the issue.
Best efforts so far have involved Instagram, TikTok and Pinterest filtering out selected words such as “proana” or “thinspo” and banning searches for content that promotes extreme thinness.
A TikTok spokesperson told The Conversation the platform does not allow content depicting, promoting or glorifying eating disorders.
“When a user searches for terms related to eating disorders, we don’t return results and instead we direct them to the Butterfly Foundation and provide them with helpful and appropriate advice. We’ve also introduced permanent public service announcements (PSAs) on related hashtags to help provide support for our community,” the spokesperson said.
Screenshot from TikTok. Author provided
The spokesperson said accounts found to be engaging in sexual harassment may be banned. Platforms will ban users if they violate user guidelines, but anacoaches will often reappear under a new account name.
According to Twitter, evading account bans is against the rules. Earlier this year Twitter announced it would enable a safety mode that will allow users to turn on the proactive screening of spammy and abusive content. It remains to be seen what role this will play in curbing targeted attacks from anacoaches.
A research-based report released this month by the 5Rights Foundation has detailed how minors online are targeted with sexual and suicide-related content. It references platforms including Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Discord, Twitch, Yubo, YouTube and Omegle.
The research showed children as young as 13 are directly targeted with harmful content online within 24 hours of creating an account online.
Screenshot from TikTok. Author provided
They may receive unsolicited messages from adults offering pornography, as well as recommendations for eating disorder content, extreme diets, self-harm, suicide and sexualised or distorted body images.
Australia’s policies involving platforms need to be overhauled to ensure platforms adhere to community guidelines and are held accountable when violations occur.
The government should prescribe set rules, informed by the eSafety office, regarding how vulnerable youth online should be helped.
A nuanced intervention approach would generate better outcomes for users with eating disorders as each user would have a different set of circumstances and a different mental health state.
Anacoaches on social media should be considered and dealt with like criminals. And platforms that fail to uphold this should face fines for failing to provide a safe user environment for the vulnerable.
In the past the European Union has fined platforms for allowing terrorist content. Social media giants have also hired contract workers to screen content for examples of terrorism, paedophilia and abuse. This effort should be extended to include anacoaches.
Screenshot taken from Kik. Author provided
The Conversation approached Tumblr for comment but did not receive replies within the deadline allocated. Popular messaging app Kik was acquired by MediaLab in 2019. The Conversation approached MediaLab for comment but did not receive a response within the allocated timeframe.
Suku Sukunesan receives funding from NHMRC-MRFF examining social media content involving Eating Disorders.
Skateboarding will make its Olympic debut this year at the Tokyo Games.
The women’s and men’s competitions will both involve park and street events. In each, athletes perform optional skill sets within a time limit and are judged based on the combined difficulty and execution shown, similar to diving or gymnastics.
Skateboarding has been included at Tokyo for the first time as part of a bid to make the games “more youthful, more urban [and] include more women”.
But gender equality in sports is not as simple as just scheduling a women’s competition.
My research suggests female athletes in Tokyo are likely to cop sexist abuse online, especially if they are competing in traditionally male events.
In my recently published research, I examined nearly 4,000 comments posted to YouTube about women’s skateboarding competitions. The comments were collected from 14 competition live streams, from 2017 to the end of 2019. The competitions selected were high-profile skateboarding events with large prizes.
Given that YouTube comments can be added, edited or removed at any time, all comments were extracted at the beginning of the study to create a stable data set.
How Olympic skateboarding works.
‘Welcome to womanhoodsville’
Of the comments examined, 17% of those made on street skating competitions contained misogyny or abuse. While recent studies have found sportswomen to be individual targets of online abuse, I also found frequent gender discrimination targeting women skaters collectively. This was often expressed through gendered gate-keeping of both skateboarding and sport.
Girls, please stay in the kitchen.
Many comments used aggressive language that dehumanised and sexualised women.
Give the bitches armor [sic] so they don’t skate like pussies.
There were also frequent anti-feminist sentiments posted, suggesting women were being granted a free ride for the sake of equality.
Welcome to womanhoodsville, where you get 1000x the attention with a 1000th of the effort.
Interestingly — and disturbingly — some of the abusive comments we observed seemed to suggest women’s inclusion comes at the cost of men.
These hoe’s [sic] should be greatful [sic] that men did all the work so they can just go around doing flatground kickflips and missing 5050s for $20,000.
Dude culture
Despite women’s sustained participation, skateboarding has long been perceived as a “dude” culture. The new TV series Betty, based on its actors’ real-life experiences, highlights the macho monopolisation of skate spaces. As creator Crystal Moselle explains:
[…] skateboarding for so long has been set up as a male sport. So even just, like, going to the store to set up a board is intimidating. It’s a lot of intimidation.
Women have had to fight to be included in elite skateboarding events. Riccardo Antimiani /EPA/AAP
Women have also had to fight for competitive opportunities, including the sport’s “Billie Jean King moment”, when women threatened to boycott the 2005 X Games to gain better access to practice time, coverage and prize money.
Meanwhile, some major skate events have only recently included full women’s programs in the course of becoming Olympic qualifying competitions.
Beyond skateboarding
This is not just a skateboarding problem, unfortunately. There is a wider problem with misogyny in sport. The uninhibited online abuse we observed is similar to the explosion of sexist commentary that occurred around the formation of the women’s AFL league.
In 2019, trolls flocked to an image of AFL player Tayla Harris kicking a football. The following year, the Herald Sun attributed their decision to close comments on their coverage to “constant trolling, harassment and disgraceful commentary”.
And of course, sadly, it’s not just athletes — women working in sports journalism face this, too. This year, American sports writer Julie DiCaro published a book, Sidelined, about the online vitriol experienced by women working in the field.
Online abuse is everywhere
Since this research was undertaken, the vilest comments have been slowly removed from the streams. But this is not enough — online abuse of women is ubiquitous.
And while moderation can remove comments calling women skaters “a bunch of broken dishwashers” or a viewer’s bucket list of sexual acts they’d like an athlete to perform, it can’t change attitudes to women’s participation.
Abusive, sexist language posted on online spaces where the sport is now consumed by global audiences may also shape perceptions of skateboarding as neither inclusive nor safe for women. And this occurs at a moment when women skaters are poised to become more visible than ever, providing opportunity to inspire further growth at the grassroots level.
My research is yet another example of how social media can reveal the deep entrenchment of misogyny in a society where women are still seen as interlopers and threats to certain areas of public life.
Brigid McCarthy 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.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachael Jefferson-Buchanan, Lecturer in human movement studies (health and PE), Creative Arts, Charles Sturt University
Georgios Kefalas/EPA/AAP
Women’s dress codes in sport are determined by “traditions” that are both outdated and gendered. Their outfits have long tried to reconcile notions of “femininity” with those of “athleticism”, but this process has turned women into objects to be admired rather than being valued for their sporting skills.
However, there is recent rebellion in the ranks. Slowly, female athletes are pushing back on outdated uniform regulations and demanding that athleticism be prioritised over aesthetics.
Where now the emphasis seems to be on revealing women’s bodies, the opposite was once the case. In the 19th century, when upper-middle-class women were eventually permitted to engage in games such as lawn tennis, their attire was suitably “feminine”, modest and designed to attract a potential husband rather than enhance their athleticism. Without doubt, their corsets and full-length dresses would have severely restricted their capacity to lunge and leap across the court in the way that today’s female tennis players do.
In 1908, the Danish gymnastics team sported some new ‘leotards’ – athletic attire has come a long way since. www.olympicleotards.com
By the turn of the 20th century, physical education began to contribute to the reform of female clothing for physical activities. The gymslip and tunic released the body from restraining garments such as corsets and bodices.
While this might seem progressive, the barrel shape of the new uniform carefully concealed young women’s bodies. Any signs of developing sexuality were effectively camouflaged, preserving their modesty for future maternal roles in society.
Women still battling conventions
Sportswomen of today are still navigating dress code conventions, but they are beginning to openly oppose them. Just this month, the Norwegian women’s beach handball team was fined for “improper clothing” during the European Championships in Bulgaria. This was because they were playing in shorts, as opposed to the required skimpy bikini bottoms, which should be “a close fit and cut on an upward angle toward the top of the leg” and have a maximum side width of 10cm, according to the 2014 International Handball Federation regulations.
The men’s beach handball teams have always been permitted to wear shorts. After unsuccessfully petitioning to replace the bikini bottoms with shorts, the Norwegian women’s team took matters into their own hands when they reached the bronze medal game against Spain. Despite being threatened with a fine or disqualification by the European Handball Federation, they opted to make a statement and wear thigh-length elastic shorts.
This resulted in a team fine of 1,500 euros (A$2,393). The Norwegian federation has agreed to pay the fine on behalf of the players in a show of support.
There were similar dress code protests by female athletes at the European Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Switzerland this year. German gymnasts decided to take a stand against their sexualisation, donning full-body suits. It all began with Sarah Voss’s performance, which was promptly followed by two of her teammates.
The decision to cover their entire body was a premeditated one. It received full support from the German federation (DTB), which advised that female athletes should always feel comfortable in their apparel.
The full-body suit, although rarely seen in women’s competitive gymnastics (unless there are religious reasons for wearing it), actually complies with the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) rules. Competitors are allowed to wear a “unitard (one-piece leotard with full-length legs – hip to ankle)”, as long as it is “of elegant design”.
Flexibility is therefore apparent in some female sporting dress codes, but certainly not in all. Voss and her team embraced the opportunity to compete as elite athletes in a uniform that best complemented their physical prowess.
Their right to choose what they wore no doubt helped them feel more at ease when performing. It should be noted that gymnastics has been a sport riddled with abuse scandals.
Both the handball and gymnastics examples highlight how women, as insiders within the institution of sport, are beginning to challenge how their bodies are presented and policed by sport federations.
This paves the way for more sportswomen to oppose dress codes that are based on archaic ideas of what women should look like, often through the eyes of men.
Although women’s sporting performances have been historically hampered and sexualised, sportswomen are finally calling the shots in terms of how their bodies are regulated through what they wear.
Perhaps now we can focus on their athleticism and contribution to sport.
Rachael Jefferson-Buchanan 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.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lidia Morawska, Professor, Science and Engineering Faculty; Director, International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health (WHO CC for Air Quality and Health); Director – Australia, Australia – China Centre for Air Quality Science and Management (ACC-AQSM), Queensland University of Technology
Australia is now in the grip of its second winter marred by the pandemic, with crippling lockdowns in multiple cities.
Earlier this month, the federal government announced a four-stage plan to bring the country back to something resembling normality. Acknowledging it will be impossible to eradicate COVID-19 completely, the plan focuses on a variety of steps — most notably vaccination — to enable the country to live with the virus.
However, if we want this plan to work, there’s one crucial control measure yet to be considered: protection against airborne transmission of the infection in public indoor spaces.
We need to modernise our indoor environments to protect Australians from respiratory infections, and more broadly, from all indoor air hazards. This includes indoor exposure to pollution originating from outdoors, such as bushfire smoke.
Put simply, over the past 18 months, we have come to understand most people become infected with the virus that causes COVID-19 by inhaling it from shared air. The risk is predominantly indoors.
Consequently, every public building should have control measures in place to provide adequate ventilation.
But this information hasn’t been communicated to Australians — many of whom remain focused on hand washing and cleaning surfaces. These are good practices, but because SARS-CoV-2 spreads predominantly through the air, they likely provide only a marginal contribution to infection control.
Surfaces don’t appear to be a major source of SARS-CoV-2 transmission. Shutterstock
While the World Health Organization has recently released a roadmap to improve indoor ventilation in the context of COVID-19, many Australian public spaces are significantly under-ventilated.
We don’t know exactly what proportion of infections would be prevented by improving ventilation in public places, but the evidence indicates this could drastically reduce the risk.
Appropriate building engineering controls include sufficient and effective ventilation, possibly enhanced by particle filtration and air disinfection systems. It’s also important to avoid recirculating air, as well as overcrowding.
We have the technology to make these changes, and these are things that can often be implemented at low cost. But for this to happen, Australia must first recognise the significant contribution these measures make to infection control. I propose the following solutions.
1. Establish a national regulatory group for clean indoor air
This is an issue that will require co-operation across various areas of government. The establishment of a national regulatory group — led by the federal government working with the states and territories through the national cabinet — would provide a platform for the relevant ministries to cooperate on this matter.
The key goal should be the explicit inclusion of protection against indoor air hazards (including airborne infection control) in the statements of purpose and definitions of all relevant Australian building design and engineering standards, regulations, and codes.
It will be important to establish a national fund enabling the rollout of indoor environment modernisation measures addressing both immediate emergencies, such as COVID-19, as well as a long-term transition process.
Over a period of years, all new buildings would ideally be designed to ensure good indoor air quality, while existing buildings would be retrofitted with the same objective.
3. Create a communication campaign
The Australian government should set up a communication campaign to educate people on the risks of shared air, and on how to improve ventilation.
Steps people can take themselves to improve ventilation include opening windows, and raising the issue with those responsible for the space if they feel ventilation is inadequate.
Opening windows is one way to improve ventilation. Shutterstock
Yes, it might sound daunting. But it’s possible
At first, it may appear to be a huge task to ensure clean indoor air to the entire country. Is it possible?
Perhaps the same questions were asked by Britons when in the 19th Century, Sir Edwin Chadwick was tasked by the British government with investigating clean water supply and centralised sewage systems.
His recommendations in 1842 changed the approach to sanitation in Britain, and ultimately the world, creating enormous public health benefits and corresponding economic dividends through health-care savings.
We cannot imagine now what it would be like to live without clean water flowing from our taps.
What we need is a similar “revolution” in Australia regarding clean indoor air — one that future generations will rightly regard as a baseline standard for the built environment.
Australia already has sophisticated building infrastructure and public health regulatory frameworks to support the required advances. These will require modernisation, but it’s far from a case of building from nothing.
Numerous expert Australian colleagues and myself would be pleased to offer our assistance to make this dream an Australian reality.
Importantly, in this crucial period while we wait for high levels of vaccination, addressing ventilation could be the difference between recurring lockdowns or enjoying a COVID-free life.
Lidia Morawska 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.
This article is part of a series providing school students with evidence-based advice for choosing subjects in their senior years.
From kindergarten to year 10, all Australian students follow the national health and physical education (HPE) curriculum. This expands in years 11 and 12 with a range of health and physical education selection options.
Depending on which state you live in, you may be able to do year 11 and 12 health and physical education subjects such as physical education (by itself), sport science, health studies, personal development, athlete development, food and nutrition, outdoor and environmental studies, and sport and recreation. These subjects include a variety of practical and theoretical options.
When deciding which subjects to do in years 11 and 12, it is important to consider your interests and study load, as well as what you want to do after year 12.
Do you want to embark on university study, enter the workforce, learn a trade or something else? Sport and recreation is a common choice for industry preparation, with ATAR and higher education pathways also available. But there are other options, too.
What subjects can I do?
In recent decades a number of reportshaveindicated studying health and physical education in year 11-12 is becoming more popular.
In 2016, almost 40% of students aged 16 to 17 across Australia elected to enrol in health and physical education subjects in years 11 and 12. The PE subjects were slightly more popular among males, and health education among females.
Similarly, in New South Wales, trends show the proportion of senior secondary students studying health and physical education rose by almost 10% over the decade from 2008.
Many subjects are available under the health and physical education umbrella – depending on where you live. Alongside the combinations of HPE or PE (by itself), these can include:
health studies and well-being are available in states such as Western Australia, South Australia, Queensland and Tasmania. Here you will learn about personal care and well-being and about where to find accurate health information. You can explore different dimensions of health such as physical, mental and emotional health — all of which can help you navigate busy and often stressful years at college
food and nutrition is available in states such as Tasmania and South Australia. This will teach you how to analyse nutrition and food information, food advertising and dietary trends. You will also explore what influences food choices, analyse how nutrition affects health and consider how secure and sustainable our food supply is
sport and recreation studies are available in states such as Queensland, Victoria and NSW. This subject can make you more aware of the many local organisations and experiences you can access for fun. It can also teach you how to get engaged in physical activities with your friends and family, and work with a local council to organise community sporting events
athlete development is available in states such as Tasmania. This can allow you to develop in your chosen (team or individual) sport through specialist coaching. You can learn about things like how to train effectively and prevent and recover from injuries
outdoor education is available in states such as Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia. This will give you exposure to many different activities, such as rafting, kayaking and climbing, that you probably would not be able to normally access. Experience in adventure activities is useful if you want to work as a recreational guide, with skills to lead and manage outdoor groups
For students who want to continue studying health and physical education at university as part of training to be a teacher, subjects that relate to sport science such as biology, chemistry and physics are highly recommended and scaled well towards ATAR scores in 2020.
They are also a great foundation for courses in exercise science, health promotion, nutritional sciences and physiotherapy.
What else will I learn?
Studying health and physical education in senior secondary school can give you an insight and appreciation of how our psychology, social networks, culture, environments and bodies all connect to influence our activity behaviours and overall physical performance.
For instance, when planning how to get people moving and performing well, you might consider a person’s motivation, the type of people to train with, the types of facilities available and levels of training preparation.
Doing subjects related to sports science could lead to a career in physiotherapy. Shutterstock
Many students choose senior secondary health and physical education for future careers relating to movement and the body. These include coaching, teaching, sport science, nutrition and recreation. Others may simply want to better understand how to plan and promote active and healthy lifestyles.
Studying health and physical education can lead to improved confidence in your movement, ability to make decisions and to develop teamwork and leadership skills that will help across life. These skills are transferable across a range of other professions such as management, policing and the defence forces.
Keeping active in the senior years
Across Australia, schools are expected to deliver at least two hours of planned physical activities each week to students until year 10.
But there is no time requirement for schools to deliver physical activity in the senior years.
Global reports indicate physical activity reduces through adolescence and to some extent into adulthood. Researchers suggest the decline is most often due to a lack of time, followed by the amount of resources available and the level of school support to get students moving.
Physical activity is vital to buffer stress in senior schooling. Even a few brief periods of four to eight minutes of intense activity such as push-ups in class each week can help senior students’ mental health, learning engagement and overall fitness.
Although taking health and physical education in years 11 and 12 does not have the same requirements to get you moving regularly as in the earlier stages of school, you will have the opportunity to develop a deeper appreciation of what you need to do to get moving on your own.
If physical education is just not your thing, still make sure you get at least one hour of activity each day that “makes your heart beat faster” to weather the stress of the final years of school and the evolving pandemic and to set up healthy habits for adulthood.
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.
While still struggling with a current shortage of Pfizer, the Morrison government announced it has secured 85 million doses of that vaccine for future “booster” shots.
This will be made up of 60 million doses in 2022, and 25 million doses in 2023. Delivery will start in the first quarter of next year.
Scott Morrison said on Sunday this was “prudent future proofing”, although there is still not definitive advice on when boosters wil be needed.
Meanwhile the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) has liberalised its advice on AstraZeneca.
It said in a statement on Saturday all people aged 18 and over in greater Sydney, including those under 60, “should strongly consider getting vaccinated with any available vaccine including COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca”.
This was on the basis of the increasing risk of COVID and “ongoing constraints” of Pfizer, the advice said.
Last week Scott Morrison said the government was constantly appealing to ATAGI to review its advice on AZ according to the balance of risk. Many people have shied away from AZ, supplies of which are plentiful, after ATAGI’s caution about it for younger people because of rare blood clots.
Asked about some general practioners being reluctant to give AZ to people under 40, Morrison said he certainly hoped GPs “would be very mindful of the ATAGI advice”.
ATAGI is presently considering whether children between 12 and 15 years old should be vaccinated against COVID, with the government expecting advice in mid-August.
As the crisis continues in Sydney, on Sunday NSW reported 141 new locally acquired cases and two deaths, including a woman in her 30s. This followed Saturday’s report of 163 new cases in the previous 24 hours.
Victoria on Sunday reported 11 new local cases, and is on track to end its lockdown soon, as is South Australia.
Morrison again stressed the lockdown was the primary weapon in fighting the Sydney outbreak.
“There’s not an easy way to bring these cases down. And it’s the lockdown that does that work. The vaccines can provide some assistance, but they are not going to end this lockdown. What’s going to end this lockdown is it being effective.”
But NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian, who tried unsuccessfully to get the vaccination program refocused on south western Sydney, the centre of the outbreak, has a different emphasis. “Please know that what will get us through this outbreak is a combination of our restrictions, but also of more people being vaccinated”.
Morrison has refused to alter the focus, saying this would “interrupt the rhythm of the national vaccine program”.
The federal government has found 50,000 extra Pfizer doses for NSW. Asked where these came from, Morrison said: “There are small variations in supply and delivery, which from time to time may ensure that there’s tens of thousands of doses that might be free at any given time.”
Morrison condemned Saturday’s Sydney anti-lockdown demonstration attended by thousands of people, which saw violence, dozens of people charged, and more being pursued where they can be identified.
He said it was not just selfish. “It was also self-defeating. It achieves no purpose. It will not end the lockdown sooner, it will only risk the lockdowns running further,” he said.
Asked about Queensland Nationals MP George Christensen, who attended a rally in Mackay, Morrison said: “As for other parts of the country that aren’t in lockdown, well, there is such a thing as free speech, and I’m not about to be imposing those sorts of restrictions on people’s free speech”.
Christensen said on Facebook, “Civil disobedience eventually becomes the only response to laws that restrict freedom. This is what we’ve seen in Melbourne today.”
Pressed on this, Morrison said: “The comments I made before related to an event that took place in Queensland where there are no lockdowns”.
The Prime Minister told the Liberal National Party state council in a virtual address on Sunday: “After a difficult start, the vaccine program is now making up lost ground, and quickly”.
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.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jon C. Day, PSM, Adjunct Senior Research Fellow, ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University
Shutterstock
After much anticipation, the World Heritage Committee on Friday decided against listing the Great Barrier Reef as “in danger”.
The decision ignored the recommendation of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the UNESCO World Heritage Centre — a recommendation based on analyses by Australian scientific experts of the reef’s declining condition.
In many ways, the outcome from the committee was expected. The Australian government fought very hard against this decision, including lobbying all the committee members, as it has done in previous years.
There was consensus among most of the 21 committee members to not apply the in-danger listing at this time. Instead, Australia has been requested to host a joint UNESCO/IUCN monitoring mission to the reef and provide an updated report by February, 2022.
This decision has only postponed the inevitable. It does not change the irrefutable evidence that dangerous impacts are already occurring on the Great Barrier Reef. Some, such as coral bleaching and death from marine heatwaves, will continue to accelerate.
The reef currently meets the criteria for in-danger listing. That’s unlikely to improve within the next 12 months.
Last month, the World Heritage Committee released its draft decision to list the reef as in-danger, noting the values for which the reef was internationally recognised had declined due to a wide range of factors. This includes water pollution and coral bleaching.
The draft decision had expressed concerns that Australia’s progress:
has been largely insufficient in meeting key targets of the Reef 2050 Plan [and the] deterioration of the ecological processes underpinning the [Reef has] been more rapid and widespread than was previously evident.
A photo depicting two threats to the Great Barrier Reef: coal ships anchored near Abbot Point and a flood plume from the Burdekin River (February 2019); such plumes can carry pollutants and debris to the Great Barrier Reef. Matt Curnock
In response, the government claimed it was “blindsided”, and said the UNESCO Secretariat hadn’t followed due process in recommending the decision. It also suggested there had been undue interference from China in making the draft recommendation.
These were political distractions from the real issues. During last night’s debate, one committee member strongly refuted the claims about interference from China and expressed concerns the dialogue had become unnecessarily politicised.
Following the draft decision, the intense campaign to reverse the decision began, with environment minister Sussan Ley undertaking a whirlwind visit to numerous countries to meet with ambassadors.
The government even hosted international ambassadors from 13 countries and the EU, taking them on a snorkelling trip. And it reported an increase in coral cover over the past two years as good news, ignoring the fact the assessment had cautioned the recovery was driven by weedy coral species most vulnerable to future climate impacts.
This wasn’t the first time Australia has undertaken significant levels of diplomatic lobbying of World Heritage Committee members to gain support for its position.
In 1999, Australia also strongly opposed the recommended in-danger listing of Kakadu National Park, following the Jabiluka mine proposal. This led to an extraordinary meeting of the committee being convened in Paris, specifically to discuss this matter.
Australia is expected to hand in an updated report on the reef in February 2022. Shutterstock
More focus on climate change
During its current meeting, the World Heritage Committee approved the draft UNESCO Climate Action Policy, which will guide the protection and conservation of World Heritage sites.
This policy will be ratified at the UN General Assembly later this year, but the fact it’s still a draft was one of several excuses the Australian government made as to why the reef should not be “singled out”.
The reef is one of the most iconic marine protected areas on the planet. Given Australia continues to have one of the highest per capita emission rates in the world, and has more capacity to address climate change than most other countries, it makes sense for the spotlight to be on Australia’s actions.
Marine heatwaves and water pollution are major threats to the Great Barrier Reef. Shutterstock
Not surprisingly, climate change was the central issue during the committee’s debate last night. UNESCO is now more focused on climate change than ever before, recognising the “window of opportunity to act” is now.
The delegates broadly agreed climate change remains the most serious threat, not just to the Great Barrier Reef but also to many other iconic World Heritage properties. Venice, for example, also dodged a potential in-danger listing at this meeting.
Rather than making challenging decisions now, it’s clear the committee is simply kicking the can down the road.
Some committee members remarked during the meeting about the need to “maintain the credibility of the Convention” and acknowledged that the world is watching. The spotlight on the reef, and on Australia, will only intensify in coming years.
The government’s own report from 2019 shows many of the values for which the reef was inscribed on the World Heritage list in 1981 have declined in recent decades. Yet every delay weakens Australia’s claim it is doing all it can to protect the reef.
Later this year, the next major international climate summit will be held in Glasgow, Scotland, where even more attention will be placed on Australia’s inadequate actions.
An in-danger listing is not a punishment
It’s important to remember that throughout the meeting, UNESCO and the committee made it clear an in-danger listing is not a sanction or punishment. Rather, it’s a call to the international community that a World Heritage property is under threat, thereby triggering actions to protect it for future generations.
Now, more than ever, it is important to expand efforts to reduce the locally manageable impacts, such as poor water quality, while rapidly accelerating action on climate change.
These efforts must occur locally, nationally and globally. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is critical to stop the worst of the impacts now unfolding, not just on the reef, but on all the world’s natural and cultural heritage.
Jon Day previously worked for the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority between 1986 and 2014, and was one of the Directors at GBRMPA between 1998 and 2014. He represented Australia as one of the formal delegates to the World Heritage Committee between 2007-2011.
Scott Heron receives funding from Australian Research Council and NASA ROSES Ecological Forecasting.
Terry Hughes 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.
The rising of the Japanese flag and the singing of the national anthem is the first moment of stillness. Devoid of external commentary, before a sea of empty stadium seats, it is a stark reminder of the pandemic.
More than any of the previous symbols of the “apart but not alone” theme, this image reinforces the optimism (misplaced for some, hopeful for others) of continuing with the games despite the obstacles wrought by the pandemic.
Olympic opening ceremonies come with certain expectations: large-scale choral movement, overhead camera work (Busby Berkeley on steroids) and fireworks. This year’s ceremony ticks all these boxes. According to the commentators, there are 694 fireworks in the opening moment alone.
The Tokyo artistic program is an eclectic mix of animation, live-action and pre-recorded performers. Stylised virtuosic performers combine with regular folk doing regular movement.
Heavy with symbolism, Channel Seven’s commentators leave little room for the viewer’s imagination. From the opening image of a blossoming seed, every symbol is explained.
Unmistakably Japanese
Performed under stadium-spectacular lights and music in front of a giant glowing effigy of Mount Fuji, the program is a series of discrete sequences.
For an “in memoriam” that references both the Israeli delegates murdered at the 1972 Munich games and those lost to COVID, dancer Mirai Moriyama epitomises the power of one individual.
From this sombre reflection we are abruptly transported to a representation of life in Japan’s Edo period. A stylised ensemble routine of building accompanied by a traditional work song morphs into a troupe of tap dancers.
An integration of ancient and contemporary, and the interplay between the individual and the ensemble, reverberates throughout the ceremony. A single violinist tuning up is gradually joined by other musicians to become an orchestra.
It is a fitting parallel to the coming together of the world’s athletes to create the Olympics.
The parade of athletes is a sweetly shambolic affair. 205 nations later, the artistic programme resumes with its diverse snapshots.
Here’s an ensemble of clowns portraying the world’s media; now here’s some dancing children moving colourful boxes. Look up in the sky, there’s a ball of 1824 drones of light transforming into a rotating globe! Now, here’s some children, representing Asia, singing the Lennon/Ono classic Imagine.
A representation of Japan’s Edo period morphs into tap dancing. Kyodo via AP Images
But wait, beamed in from some heavenly white void now they’re joined by Angelique Kidjo representing Africa, then Alejandro Sanz for Europe, John Legend for the Americas and finally, Keith Urban for Oceania.
Less of a linear narrative than previous opening ceremonies, this is a series of isolated, discrete sections. Less a celebration of the host country (although it’s unmistakably Japanese in tone and style) this eclectic mishmash of styles and performances becomes a durational performance where you can wander in and out.
Together
The official speeches prior to the formal opening reference “the unifying power of sport”, the inclusion of refugee athletes and the adaption of the International Olympic Committee’s motto “Faster, Higher, Stronger” to include the word “Together”.
“Together” speaks to a world lingering in the residue of COVID-enforced separations. Given the austerity of the times the ceremony is relatively subdued, but the optimism of the speeches is matched by the overriding exuberance of the performers. Not drowning, but waving (and there is lots of waving).
There’s no room for cynicism; only high-pep energy. The ceremony is very genki (a Japanese word without a direct English translation, roughly meaning “energy” or “pep”), slightly kitsch, but presents a surprisingly diverse representation of contemporary Japan.
The brightest spot in the post-parade section is an animated performance of pictograms depicting fifty sports. Moving the pictograms from two to three-dimensions via a kind of human-puppetry meets real-life stop-motion animation, it is equal parts hi and lo-fi and totally camp.
Its complete weirdness makes it un-look-away-able, as minor human errors show it for what it is: real people in real time, operating within a framework of precise choreography smashed up against the reality and vagaries of live performance.
It is completely compelling.
Then, just when you think they couldn’t add any more eclectic ingredients to the mix, enter performers from that most Japanese of ancient art forms Kabuki, paired with an embodied performance from contemporary Japanese jazz pianist Hiromi.
Unexpected and inspired
Beginning with the requisite video collage tracing the journey of the torch from Greece, we watch it enter the stadium and hand over person to person to the sounds of Ravel’s Bolero. There’s a moment’s respite from the slick technology and choreography when it lands with Japanese baseball legend and octogenarian Sadaharu Oh.
In this human moment, we are forced to slow down and experience the world in his tempo, giving a true sense of what it means to be alone together.
If a performance needs a big ending, then this one delivers with the appearance of tennis player Naomi Osaka to light the cauldron.
As explained by Kumi Taguchi in Channel Seven’s commentary, the choice is particularly significant because of Osaka’s hafu status (literally the Japanese word for “half”) as a person of mixed heritage. For this reason, Osaka has not always been accepted in Japan’s notoriously homogenous society.
Another significance ringing in the air around Osaka is the worldwide attention she recently received for speaking about the impact media scrutiny has had on her mental health and the vitriol which she has been subjected to as a result.
The ceremony ends spectacularly with Naomi Osaka lighting the Olympic flame. The Yomiuri Shimbun via AP Images
These factors all contribute to making Osaka an unexpected and inspired choice.
As the symbolic Mount Fuji opens up and she ascends its internal staircase to the cauldron, Osaka lights the fire around which we can all gather for the next 17 days. And so, with yet another human moment, the games begin.
Leah Mercer 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.
This piece is part of a new series in collaboration with the ABC’s Saturday Extra program. Each week, the show will have a “who am I” quiz for listeners about influential figures who helped shape the 20th century, and we will publish profiles for each one. You can read the other pieces in the series here.
A court in Colombia has recently been working to uncover the dread secrets of a long and bloody civil war. But rather than identifying perpetrators for death or imprisonment, it seeks reconciliation of the estranged and restoration of a torn social fabric.
This last public role for the Anglican archbishop embodied what made him the most influential figure of the new South Africa after Nelson Mandela, and a world religious leader comparable only to Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama and Pope John Paul II in recent times.
Proud of his black African identity and culture, Tutu is an advocate of radical social change and a staunch proponent of non-violence. A pious Christian, he is at home with people of other faiths as well as those of none. His capacity to reconcile opposites and his unflagging hope about the human capacity to change has been influential in his country, his church and the world.
Desmond Tutu was born in 1931 to parents from Xhosa and Tswana backgrounds. He grew up in Sophiatown, a slum later demolished to make way for a whites-only suburb near Johannesburg. Their circumstances were not prosperous; his father was a teacher and his mother a laundress and then a cook.
His family were people of faith, but his most important religious influence in childhood was Trevor Huddleston, an Oxford-educated monk and priest then working in the slum. Tutu recalled Huddleston as the first white man he ever saw lifting his hat to his mother; in a place where white boys would taunt his educator father, this was striking. When Desmond came down with tuberculosis at 14, Huddleston brought books and conversation to him for months, which also had a lasting impact. Tutu would name his first child Trevor.
Like his father, Tutu first trained as a teacher, entering college in 1950 just as the National Party’s new apartheid laws were biting. After marrying Leah Shenxane, he began training for the Anglican priesthood in 1956, the same year Huddleston was ordered by his monastic superiors to leave South Africa to avoid arrest. The older priest’s memoir and exposé, Naught For Your Comfort, brought the Apartheid regime to wider international attention the same year.
Tutu with his wife Leah in 2014. AAP/EPA/Nic Bothma
Tutu had embraced the Anglo-Catholic sacramental ethos and its pastoral heart shown to him, but was not yet drawn into activism or public witness, even as Nelson Mandela was responding to the new racial laws with boycotts.
After a few years of parish work, Tutu was sent for postgraduate study in London, focusing on Islam in Africa. This openness to learn about and from those who differed from him was a hallmark throughout his life. He returned from the UK to teach trainee clergy, but finding racism more markedly expressed in law galvanised his commitments.
He dipped his toe in the waters of protest – in characteristic ways, via prayers and sermon – at the student demonstrations in Fort Hare in 1968, driven by the black consciousness movement of Steve Biko (at whose funeral Tutu would preach in 1977).
After more time away working with the World Council of Churches, where he was exposed both to Latin American Liberation theology and the Black theology emerging in the United States, Tutu became head of South Africa’s peak ecumenical church body, then successively bishop of Johannesburg and archbishop of Cape Town.
His criticism of Apartheid become more voluble and wider-known. He earned the wrath of white leaders for urging sanctions, famously saying in 1983:
If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.
Desmond Tutu with Nelson Mandela in 1994, two of the towering figures of the anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa. Jerry Holt/AP/AAP
While his opposition to Apartheid was admired, his insistence on rejection of violence did not satisfy some. The African National Congress found other religious allies like reformed theologian Allan Boesak, yet Tutu’s voice and influence grew stronger, in part because of his distance from the factions of the anti-Apartheid movement. His radicalism had emerged not merely as a religiously modulated version of contemporary politics, but something different.
After his retirement as archbishop, this same mixture of radicalism and uncompromising openness to others made his contributions to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission controversial as well as effective. He was criticised for conciliatory moves towards both former prime minister P.W. Botha and Winnie Mandela. After the work of the commission concluded, his uncompromising support of gay and lesbian rights in an Anglican Church still globally riven over the issue became his most celebrated cause. Here he has proved similarly inspiring as well as hard to pin down to factional positions.
Tutu’s contribution to the end of Apartheid has been so remarkable in part because of its strong grounding in his faith. Tutu’s work suggests every culture and tradition may dig deep for what it brings to present divisions, and that the way to address oppositions based on identity may be to embrace our own. That way, we can understand that others can be embraced and listened to as well.
Andrew McGowan 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.
Pfizer doses in NSW will be spaced out to enable more first jabs to be administered quickly, as the Berejiklian government on Friday declared the Sydney COVID crisis a “state of emergency”.
But the plea by the state for Pfizer doses to be diverted to Sydney as part of a refocusing of the national vaccine program has fallen on deaf ears.
Scott Morrison indicated if any extra Pfizer supplies became available they would be directed to NSW – but he made clear there would be no change in the national vaccination program.
“Where there is a potential to put more vaccines into NSW, even beyond what we’re already doing, well, of course, we will seek to do that. But we are not going to disrupt the vaccination program around the rest of the country,” he said after a meeting of the national cabinet.
Vaccines are distributed on a population basis, although NSW was recently given a special allocation of 300,000 doses, half AstraZeneca and half Pfizer.
Morrison also said suppression was the key immediate means of stopping community transmission and getting on top of the outbreak that is concentrated in south western Sydney. “Suppression is the primary tool to achieve that, and vaccines can help that.”
Earlier, General JJ Frewen, who is in charge of the vaccine rollout, was dismissive of the suggestion supplies be diverted.
“Vaccines are only one part of a response to the outbreak like this,” Frewen told a Senate committee.
Other states made it clear they would not give up any of their Pfizer supplies.
Morrison said extending the time between Pfizer doses – normally three weeks – to six weeks was within the advice of The Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI). This would be done in NSW vaccination clinics.
He also said there was “agreement amongst the national cabinet that we need to continue to lean in to AstraZeneca, particularly in NSW”.
Australian Medical Association President Dr Omar Khorshid on Friday called on ATAGI to review its advice on AstraZeneca in response to the growing risks posed by the outbreak of the Delta variant in NSW.
“As we don’t have enough Pfizer to use in a targeted rollout, the only option is AstraZeneca. It will save lives and help see life return to some normality in Greater Sydney,” Khorshid said.
ATAGI has preferred Pfizer for those under 60, although it recently qualified its advice in light of the Sydney outbreak.
As NSW on Friday reported136 new cases in the 24 hours to 8pm Thursday, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said “Sydney is on fire with this virus and we need a ring of steel put around Sydney”.
But Morrison said that at national cabinet Berejiklian had spelled out “in very specific detail the extensive lockdown” the state had in place.
“There’s nothing light about the lockdown in New South – in Sydney, I can assure you. My family are in it,” he said.
At her news conference on Friday morning, Berejiklian said Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant and her team “advised us that the situation that exists now in NSW, namely around south-western and now western Sydney suburbs, is regarded as a national emergency.”
She appealed for the vaccination strategy to be redirected to south western Sydney, particularly to younger people who had to perform essential work such as the production of food.
She said there was a very young population in the affected communities, “and we need at least more first doses of Pfizer.”
Meanwhile figures given to the Senate COVID committee showed only 47.2% of residential aged care workers had had a first vaccine dose and 27.8% had received their second dose.
Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Samoa’s Court of Appeal ruled today that the Faatuatua ile Atua Samoa ua Tasi (FAST) party was the country’s new government bringing three months of political stalemate to a close.
The court, the highest in the country, found that a swearing-in ceremony conducted by the party on the lawns of Parliament on May 24 was in fact legally binding, immediately installing FAST as the nation’s new government and declaring it had been so for nearly two months.
The decision apparently brings to an end the 22-year reign of Tuila’epa Dr Sa’ilele Malielegaoi as the nation’s Prime Minister.
Under the court order he will be succeeded by Samoa’s first female Prime Minister, Fiame Naomi Mata’afa.
In their conclusion, the Court of Appeal said to avoid doubt Samoa has had a lawful government since May 24, namely that led by the FAST party.
The decision also ends nearly four decades of uninterrupted political dominance by the Human Rights Protection Party (HRPP), which first won government in 1982.
Fiame is a former member of Tuila’epa’s government and Deputy Prime Minister who quit the ruling party last September over what she said were plans to dismantle the rule of law in the form of three bills that were passed into law in December.
Widespread criticism The bills drew widespread criticism for their effect on the independence of the courts from legal experts and the nation’s judges.
Fiame led the newly created FAST party to a slender one-seat victory 26-25 following the holding of April 9 national elections.
The impromptu swearing-in was held on May 24 — the last day on which Parliament was obliged to meet after a national election according to a stipulation in the nation’s constitution.
That ceremony, which was boycotted by HRPP members and the Head of State, was conducted before a majority of FAST Members of Parliament and followed a Supreme Court order the day prior ruling that must Parliament convene.
But the ceremony was held outside the Legislative Assembly building after the former Speaker of the Parliament, Leaupepe Toleafoa Faafis, ordered that it be locked down.
While the swearing-in was previously struck down by the Supreme Court, the FAST party argued that it needed to be held out of the “principle of necessity”, namely to stop the breach of that constitutional requirement.
The Chief Justice, Satiu Simativa Perese, alongside Justice Niava Mata Tuatagaloa and Justice Tafaoimalo Leilani Tuala-Warren delivered the decision at 4.30 pm this afternoon.
Legal challenges Since then the swearing-in HRPP’s numbers on the floor of of Parliament has fallen by seven to reach 18 following successful seat-by-seat post-election legal challenges to its election victories that will result in fresh byelection contests.
The HRPP and the Head of State have ignored decisions instructing them to convene Parliament that they could not do so until all Members of Parliament were represented in the Legislative Assembly, particularly women MPs who are required to make up 10 percent of all legislators under a constitutional mandate.
The panel of justices said it did not recognise the caretaker government being legitimate and said it was unlawfully occupying office.
The court also ruled that the role of the Head of State in swearing-in the Speaker and members of the FAST are ceremonial roles to administer the swearing-in where the oath is to the Almighty God.
The appeal from the Attorney-General’s Office was dismissed and the cross appeal from the FAST party upheld.
The question of whether the courts have the legal right to force Parliament to sit in cases where the constitution had been violated, or whether that power was exclusively vested in the Head of State, lay at the heart of the case, which was held last week.
In that hearing, arguing on behalf of the Samoa Law Society, New Zealand QC Robert Lithgow said something had stood in the way of the Legislative Assembly convening despite the court’s clear power to force Parliament to sit within a day.
Constitution’s ‘higher purpose’ He said the constitution, as the supreme law of the land, could not be “bolted” down by interested parties but it had a broader, higher purpose: protecting the central interests of the Samoan people as expressed by them in their recent election.
Friday’s decision came as a surprise to parties involved in the case, who had previously been under the impression that a decision would not be handed down until Monday next week.
A notification that a decision on the matter had been reached was only sent to involved parties at about five minutes past 4 pm this afternoon with the decision handed down shortly after at about 4.30 pm.
The HRPP was added as a party to the Supreme Court case but no comment has yet been made by Tuila’epa or any of its other representatives.
In late May, Tuila’epa promised to abide by any ruling by Samoa’s highest court on the issue of the validity of the swearing-in.
Lanuola Tusani Tupufia-Ah Tong is a Samoa Observer journalist. Republished with permission.
Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) has condemned the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) under the leadership of Firli Bahuri as an “authoritarian and anti-criticism” institution over the Greenpeace laser protest.
ICW researcher Kurnia Ramadhana said this after the KPK had reported Greenpeace Indonesia to the South Jakarta district police (Polres) for laser painting the KPK’s red and white building on June 28.
“The report against a civil society organisation with the South Jakarta district police by the KPK will become a historical note that the KPK under the command of Firli Bahuri has truly changed into an authoritarian institution which is anti-criticism,” Ramadhana told Kompas.com.
Also, according to ICW the KPK’s move to report Greenpeace to police further demonstrated the KPK’s inability to cover up the scandal surrounding the civics or nationalism test (TWK) for KPK employees.
At the very least, said Ramadhana, there were three things that must be looked at in response to the KPK’s report to the South Jakarta district police.
‘Democratic’ system First, Indonesia practises a democratic system which is embodied under Article 28 E Paragraph (3) of the 1945 Constitution which reads: “All persons have the right to freedom of expression, association and opinion”.
“So, this report can be seen as an effort to curb democracy,” said Ramadhana.
Second, Article 20 of the KPK Law states that the anti-corruption agency is accountable to the public.
So from this, according to Ramadhana, the laser painting action should be viewed as a response by the public to the problems within the KPK which should be responded to, not instead reported to the police.
Third, the person who made the report — who is strongly suspected to be a KPK employee — has violated the code of ethics, namely Article 7 Paragraph (2) d of KPK Supervisory Board Regulation Number 2/2020.
Meanwhile, it is stated that the Supervisory Boards, “In its implementation of the basic values of professionalism, all Commission members are prohibited from: responding to criticism and suggestions in a negative and excessive manner”.
“Because of this, the Supervisory Board must take immediate action in response to this report,” said Ramadhana.
Police report filed by KPK Earlier, KPK acting spokesperson Ali Fikri admitted that the police report over the laser painting was submitted by the KPK’s general bureau.
“Correct, the KPK through the general bureau has carried out coordination and made a report with the South Jakarta Polres,” said Fikri in a written release.
“It was in relation to the laser painting incident on the KPK building on June 28, 2021, at around 7.05 pm by an external party,” he said.
The KPK believes that the laser painting had the potential to intentionally disturb the operational order and comfort of the KPK offices. Moreover, the KPK’s red and white building is a vital object.
“We believe that they intentionally disrupted the operational order and comfort of the KPK offices as a vital national object,” said Fikri.
Fikri revealed that KPK security personnel and the South Jakarta district police who were on guard at the time had prohibited and warned the external party not to carry out the action.
The party which carried out the laser painting, however, continued with the action, even changing location.
No police permit Also, according to Fikri, the action was carried out outside of the times set for protest actions and did not have a permit from police.
Because of this, the KPK is leaving entirely up to the South Jakarta district police to follow up on the report.
“So now, we are leaving it entirely up to the South Jakarta Polres to follow up on it,” said Fikri. “We hope that all parties will always maintain order and comfort at the KPK offices.”
The laser painting action occurred on the evening of Monday, June 28, when protesters used a laser to write messages, one of which was “Brave, Honest, Sacked”. There was also a message which read: “Motion of No Confidence”, and “Save the KPK”.
The messages were part of an action by Greenpeace Indonesia in response to issues related to corruption eradication ranging from the sacking of 51 KPK employees for failing to pass the TWK to efforts to weaken the KPK.
About 35 people joined an Auckland rally last Sunday in solidarity with a Mā’ohi Nui Lives Matter demonstration by thousands of Tahitians happening in Pape’ete, the capital.
Ena Manuireva and colleague Tony Fala were the main organisers at AUT.
With the live feed from Tahiti in the background, the message was clear to those who attended:
French nuclear tests were wrong, killed people, and destroyed the environment; and
France must now pay reparations.
The organisers wanted to remind the audience about the important date of July 17, 1974, as the largest radioactive nuclear test named Centaur — a test that contaminated more than 100,00 people which was nearly the entire population of Mā’ohi Nui at the time.
Nine takeaways from the event
This rally is the start of more solidarity action for Mā’ohi Nui people. We hope to engage more members of the Mā’ohi Nui community living in Aotearoa in this work.
It is reassuring to have the support of rally speakers in Auckland who represent different peoples of Oceania.
The nuclear issue in Mā’ohi Nui is being commemorated in other ways in Aotearoa. The Auckland Museum launched an exhibition on Remembering Moruroa and the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū is celebrating the artistic vision of one of Aotearoa’s most significant artists, the late Ralph Hotere. His collection includes the Moruroa watercolours — which has a fitting title, Ātete! (to resist).
The organisers plan to have further meaningful discussions with the Green MPs concerning the Mā’ohi Nui issues. They hope to work with Green MPs to develop concrete proposals so that the issue of nuclear waste in Mā’ohi Nui can be tabled in Parliament.
The organisers intend to reach out to the Department of Disarmament and Arms Control. They plan to talk to Nuclear Disarmament Minister Phil Twyford about this issue.
In the same vein, the organisers will approach the Ministry of Education to propose changes to the new school curriculum emerging in 2022 — changes that would include the teaching of the history of the anti-nuclear stand that New Zealand took in Oceania.
Rally organisers Ena, David, James, Mua, and Tony acknowledge the support of Greenpeace, former members of NFIP, and Peace Movement Aotearoa.
The organisers thank Mahealani Coxhead, Tasha Dalton, Ma’ara Maeva, Sally Manuireva, and Jos Wheeler for their invaluable contributions to the rally.
The organisers thank the Auckland rally audience and express solidarity to Oscar Temaru over the continuing struggle in Mā’ohi Nui.
The MC and speakers
Reverend Mua Strickson-Pua. Image: Jos Wheeler
Reverend Mua Strickson-Pua is an activist, educator, and poet. He was the master of ceremonies for the rally and event co-organiser. He introduced all the speakers.
Ena Manuireva. Image: Jos Wheeler
Ena Manuireva is a Mangarevan-Tahitian, Mā’ohi Nui activist whose story started back on his native island of Mangareva. Mangarevans were the first people in French-occupied Polynesia to be used as guinea pigs and contaminated during the first so-called “clean” French nuclear tests on July 2, 1966. Ena narrated the personal story of how his mother became sick and vomited as her lips bled after she unknowingly ate contaminated fish; of how his older sister had weak bones as a baby, and how she developed a vulnerable body that forced his family to flee to Tahiti to save her life and find refuge. Manuireva challenged France to restore truth and justice through reparations and to return independence to Mā’ohi Nui.
The generation that paved the path for activism in Aotearoa and around the Moana-Nui-a-Hiva:
Hilda Halkyard-Harawira. Image: Jos Wheeler
Hilda Halkyard-Harawira is a distinguished Māori activist, community worker, educator, and founder of the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific Movement (NFIP). She shared some rich impressions regarding her work as a Māori activist working in the NFIP movement from 1980. Hilda told the moving story of travelling with Māori activists to Mā’ohi Nui in 1995; of witnessing the vibrant anti-nuclear struggle in Tahiti, and of meeting Mā’ohi anti-nuclear protest leaders Charlie Ching and Oscar Temaru. She read extracts from an important address she presented at a 1995 anti-nuclear activist gathering in Tahiti. Moreover, Hilda spoke of her great friendship with Oscar Temaru while expressing her abiding support for Mā’ohi Nui’s struggle for nuclear justice and for independence from France today. Hilda Halkyard-Harawira’s rich address reminded the audience of the profound whakapapa interlinking Māori activists with Mā’ohi Nui, the wider Pacific, and the NFIP Movement.
Maire Leadbeater. Image: Jos Wheeler
Maire Leadbeater is of Pākehā heritage. She is an activist, former Auckland city councillor, historian, and writer. Maire is a member of West Papua Action Auckland. Maire expressed solidarity with Mā’ohi Nui in her oration. She explained why West Papua is not on the United Nations list of territories to be decolonised. Maire provided an important update on the contemporary West Papua struggle. Maire Leadbeater’s speech allowed the rally audience space to consider the significance of the West Papua struggle alongside that of the noble Mā’ohi Nui resistance in wider Oceania.
David Robie. Image: Jos Wheeler
Dr David Robie is a Pākehā environmental activist, editor of Asia Pacific Report, and retired founding director of the AUT Pacific Media Centre. He sees events during his career around the Pacific, including French-occupied Polynesia, as a “game changer”. Those events include the publication of the book Moruroa Mon Amour in the 1970s by Bengt and Marie-Therese Danielsson, Tahiti-based activists, describing their outrage regarding the use of Moruroa as the testing site, leading up to the recent publication of the book Toxic and its damning revelations about France’s persistent lies over the nuclear tests. He also mentioned his Blood On Their Banner on Pacific independence struggles, first published in Swedish in spite of censorship thanks to the Danielssons’ contacts, and his inspiration from meeting Oscar Temaru which contributed to his commitment to the Mā’ohi Nui cause. David demands compensation for the harm done by the nuclear tests, a formal apology to the Mā’ohi Nui people, and a return of their independence.
Political support to the cause shown by the Greens:
Teanau Tuiono. Image: Jos Wheeler
Teanau Tuiono is of Māori and Atiu heritage. He is a member of parliament for the Green Party and a long time indigenous environmental activist. Teanau articulated the story of the abiding relationships interconnecting the peoples of Atiu and Mā’ohi Nui. He spoke powerfully about the visits of Atiu men to Mā’ohi Nui to work in the phosphate industry in years gone by. Teanau affirmed Oceanian solidarity towards the peoples of Mā’ohi Nui in his korero. Further, he acknowledged that Oceania’s peoples are bound together by the twin whakapapa of both genealogy and shared struggle. Teanau narrated the story of how he marched in support of the Mā’ohi Nui people as a student activist in 1995. Moreover, he spoke of being part of the group who hosted Oscar Temaru at Waipapa Marae at the University of Auckland after the march. Tuiono’s oration provided the audience opportunity to understand the solidarity Māori and Pacific Island peoples have extended to Mā’ohi Nui in Aotearoa since the 1990s.
Golriz Ghahraman. Image: Jos Wheeler
Golriz Ghahraman is of Iranian descent. She is a member of parliament for the Green Party, a lawyer, and a community advocate for migrants and refugees. Speaking as a former refugee to Aotearoa, Golriz extended her solidarity to Oscar and the Mā’ohi Nui people in her speech. She illuminated the connections between Mā’ohi Nui; struggles in the wider Pacific; refugees, and migrants. Golriz spoke of the importance of the Palestinian struggle in her labours. She provided the rally audience with the ability to reflect upon the interconnections between the Mā’ohi Nui struggle — and that of the Palestinian, refugee, and migrant communities within and beyond Oceania.
The emergence of the young generation of activists:
James Hita. Image: Jos Wheeler
James Hita is a Māori Greenpeace activist and coordinator for Greenpeace Deep Sea Mining. His message was unequivocal: nuclear tests are not isolated threats; they are part of the many perils that are directly impacting our Ocean. Climate change, nuclear tests, and deep-sea mining all negatively impact upon our most important natural food supply, Te Moana-Nui-a-Hiva. His message was a constant call to awareness for all of us that we must stand united and fight together against the many wrongdoings inflicted upon our Moana-Nui-a-Hiva.
Anevili. Image: Jos Wheeler
Anevili TS is a Samoan activist and media worker who represents Indigenous Pacific Uprising (IPU) and Te Ara Whatu activist organisations. A link for her oral presentation at the conference can be found here. Anevili critiqued French colonialism in Mā’ohi Nui. Further, she reminded her audience that the climate change and nuclear issues cannot be separated in Mā’ohi Nui or in wider Oceania. Anevili extended solidarity to Oscar and the Mā’ohi Nui people and invited the French to get out of the Pacific. Anevili’s powerful address articulated the message that younger people in the Moana in Aotearoa stand in solidarity with Mā’ohi Nui today.
India Logan-Riley. Image: Jos Wheeler
India Logan-Riley is a Māori climate change activist, an Indigenous rights campaigner, and a member of Te Ara Whatu. She talked about the whakapapa (genealogy) that the Mā’ohi Nui people have with their land and how France is trying to steal and destroy the land. She highlighted the difficult position New Zealand occupies at the UN- New Zealand is in alliance with other colonial powers such as France. However, she commended the resilience of the Mā’ohi Nui population after more than a quarter of a century since the last nuclear tests were done. She reiterated her support for justice and reparations for the Mā’ohi Nui people. India’s talk reminded the audience of the immensely strong relationships between indigenous Pacific peoples and their lands.
The panel of speakers included young activists as the organisers wanted to acknowledge the increasingly vital role that young people will play in the future by standing up to all kinds of challenges — while acknowledging the vital role of our activist elders who have come before us.
Emerging young activists will be the ones to hold the New Zealand government to account for their lack of action on environmental issues.
Younger activists will also have to stand up and reprimand other countries when other nations’ actions threaten the people and the planet.
Acknowledgements The Auckland rally was only one expression of solidarity for the Mā’ohi Nui people beyond Tahiti: Messages of solidarity from Fiji (Claire Slatter), Micronesia, and the wider ‘Sea of Islands’ were presented to the people of Mā’ohi Nui via video message and social media.
On behalf of all the organisers, Reverend Mua Strickson Pua:
Acknowledged the kinship linkages connecting all of the peoples of Oceania.
Affirmed the continuing struggles of the indigenous peoples of Aotearoa, Australia, Hawai’i, Kanaky, Mā’ohi Nui, Micronesia, Rapa Nui, West Papua, and others.
Upheld the work of tangata whenua protectors and supporters in Aotearoa in the struggles at Aotea Island, Ihumātao, Pūtiki, and Shelly Bay.
Affirmed the interconnections between climate change, nuclear issues, and deep-sea mining as oceanic issues requiring collective responses from all peoples of the “Sea of Islands” together.
Most of the participants at the Auckland solidarity rally for Mā’ohi Nui Lives Matter. Image: Jos Wheeler
Two Fijian pregnant women are among the 21 covid-19 deaths reported within a seven-day period from July 14.
Their babies, however, were saved via a caesarean operation by the obstetric team.
Health Secretary Dr James Fong revealed this in his covid-19 live update last evening as he announced the country’s 1091 positive cases recorded in the last 24 hours that ended at 8am yesterday.
He said the 21 covid-19 deaths were recorded from July 14-20.
He said both mothers had been unwell with covid symptoms at home before presenting to health facilities in severe respiratory distress.
“In both cases, our physicians made the decision to conduct emergency caesarean operations to rescue the new-borns and assist with the care of the mothers,” Dr Fong said.
“Sadly, despite the best efforts of their attending physicians, both mothers passed away.”
Deaths a tragedy Dr Fong said maternal deaths at any time were a tragedy and maternal deaths due to covid-19 were a clear indication of the severity of this outbreak.
He said the present outbreak was contained to Viti Levu, and primarily in the Lami-Suva-Nausori corridor.
And over the last week, he added that an increasing number of cases had been reported in the Western Division.
Dr Fong also announced 317 new recoveries with more than 4550 total recoveries from the virus.
“Recovery is possible. In fact, most patients will recover.
“The sooner those most at-risk are identified and treated, the more likely they will be to recover as well. Many of those recoveries will continue to come out of our field hospitals,” he said.
Timoci Vulais a Fiji Times reporter. This article is republished with permission.
The umbrella term Pacific Islander or Polynesian has been criticised as degrading and insensitive.
Researcher Dr Seini Taufa, who is a New Zealand-born Tongan, said the names were not indigenous terms and were insulting.
Dr Taufa is research lead for Moana Research and Senior Pacific Advisor for the Growing up in New Zealand Longitudinal Study.
She has given evidence to the Royal Commission into Abuse in Care’s Pacific inquiry being held in South Auckland.
Dr Taufa quoted author Albert Wendt:
”I am called a Pacific Islander when I arrive at Auckland Airport. Elsewhere I am Samoan.”
Dr Taufa said lumping everyone together robbed people of their true identity.
‘Constructed by palagi’ ”We did not name ourselves Pacific Islanders, we did not name ourselves Polynesian. These are terms that were constructed by palagi within a colonial context.”
She said preconceived ideas around being called a Pacific Islander or Polynesian influenced the way Pacific people self identify.
”While the umbrella term Pacific is useful when making global comparisons, it’s futile when applied to actual people and groups of people who consider themselves not Pacific or Polynesian, but Samoan, Tongans, Fijians, Cook Islanders and so on.”
Researcher Dr Seini Taufa … preconceived ideas around being called a Pacific Islander or Polynesian. Image: UOA
Dr Taufa said that in a New Zealand context Pacific people had been marked for as long as they had settled in Aotearoa whereby the Pacific embodiment was interpreted differently from context to context.
”On the rugby field and among the All Blacks, Pacific male bodies are celebrated. In a crime and punishment context, Pacific male bodies are associated with racist discourses of violence, rape, gangs, fear and danger,” she said.
”Pacific people thus construct their identities and live their lives at the intersection of positive histories, language and culture and negative and stereotypical ideas and beliefs produced by the dominant group.”
Dr Taufa said many abuse survivors experienced racism and discrimination first hand.
Told he wasn’t Samoan “One young man asked about his ethnic background responded with Samoan, but was told by someone in authority that he wasn’t, as he was born in New Zealand.
”As a young boy who relates being Samoan to Christianity, to family and to his mother, he is forced to adopt an identity that doesn’t belong to him — a New Zealander — and, with it, the trauma of what he was exposed to in state care as a New Zealander.”
She said it spoke to the power held by a dominant group.
”To label another with little consideration of the detrimental nature of such actions.”
Dr Taufa said the importance of ones ethnicity should never be doubted.
”I hope that it raises questions amongst those in the system to be more cautious of how they record, how they document and the fact that it can and has, through our survivor voices, had an impact on their well being.”
Dr Taufa said there were inadequacies of ethnic classification and data collection in New Zealand, both past and present.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
University of Canberra Professorial Fellow Michelle Grattan and University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Paddy Nixon discuss the week in politics.
This week Michelle and Paddy discuss the proposed changes to the vaccine rollout announced by Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Thursday, which would allow regional pharmacies to apply to distribute the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Also discussed is the upcoming vote by the UNESCO World Heritage Commitee to label the Great Barrier Reef as “in danger”, and the Summer Olympics and Paralympics to take place in Brisbane in 2032.
Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steven Freeland, Professorial Fellow, Bond University / Emeritus Professor of International Law, Western Sydney University, Western Sydney University
Blue Origin/AP
It’s been a momentous month for space-faring billionaires. On July 11, British entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson’s Unity “rocket-plane” flew him and five fellow passengers about 85 kilometres above Earth. And this week, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ New Shepard capsule reached an altitude of 106km, carrying Bezos, his brother, and the oldest and youngest people ever to reach such a height. Passengers on both flights experienced several minutes of weightlessness and took in breathtaking views of our beautiful and fragile Earth.
Both flights created an avalanche of media coverage and brand recognition for Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Bezos’s Blue Origin. There is renewed anticipation of a lucrative commercial space tourism industry that could eventually see thousands of paying passengers journey into space (or not quite into space, depending on your preferred level of pedantry).
This year marks 60 years since Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space. Since then, almost 600 trained astronauts have gone into outer space, but very few people have become space tourists.
The first, US engineer Dennis Tito, paid a reported US$20 million to spend six days orbiting Earth in the Russian section of the International Space Station in April 2001, after three months’ training at Russia’s Star City complex. He was followed by a handful of other very wealthy “orbital tourists”, most recently Cirque de Soleil founder Guy Laliberté in 2009, whose ticket reportedly cost US$35 million.
Unlike their predecessors, Branson’s and Bezos’ flights were suborbital – they didn’t reach the velocity needed to orbit Earth. Bezos’s entire flight lasted just over 10 minutes. Suborbital flights are much less technically complex, and in theory cheaper (although one seat on the New Shepard flight was auctioned for US$28 million).
You expect a luxurious interior when you pay this much. Michael Craft/Blue Origin/AP
While they might quibble over billionaire bragging rights, there’s no denying that suborbital “space” flights have the potential to be less eye-wateringly expensive than going into orbital outer space and beyond.
But before you sign up – assuming you’re lucky enough to afford it – here are a few things to consider.
Where does space start, anyway?
Despite assertions to the contrary, there is no legal definition of “outer space”, and thus no official boundary where airspace ends and outer space begins. In the past, the International Aeronautical Federation has looked to the von Karman line, but this does not coincide with the boundary of any of the atmosphere’s scientifically defined layers, and the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, which deals with such issues, has not yet resolved the question.
Conveniently for Branson, 80km has been proposed by some experts as an appropriate boundary.
Outer space is undeniably influenced by Earthly geopolitics. Essentially, the larger space-faring countries see no need to legally define a boundary that would clearly demarcate the upper limits of their sovereignty.
Will you be an ‘astronaut’?
The 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty designates astronauts as “envoys of (hu)mankind in outer space”. Certainly, that seemed to be the case as the world watched the historic Apollo 11 Moon landing and prayed for a safe return of the stricken Apollo 13 capsule. However, the 1968 UN Rescue Agreement refers to “personnel of a spacecraft”, which may imply not everyone on board should be considered a fully fledged astronaut.
Of course, these legal niceties won’t deter space tourism companies from awarding “astronaut wings” to their passengers.
What laws apply when things go wrong?
The 1986 Challenger and 2003 Columbia shuttle disasters are stark reminders of the dangers of space travel. Human space travel has always involved determining acceptable levels of risk for trained astronauts. But commercial space tourism is different to state-sponsored space programs, and will need the highest possible safety standards.
Commercial space travel will also require a system of responsibility and liability, for cases in which a space tourist suffers injury, loss or damage.
Space tourists (or their families) can’t claim for compensation under the 1972 UN Liability Convention which, in terms of space, applies only to collisions between space objects such as satellites and space debris. While there may be scope to take legal action under national laws, it is likely space tourists will be asked to sign carefully worded waivers of liability.
The same is probably true of international air law, which applies to “aircraft” — a designation space tourism operators will understandably be keen to avoid.
Ultimately, we may need to develop a system of “aerospace law” to govern these suborbital flights as well as “transorbital” transport such as the keenly envisaged flights that might one day take passengers from Sydney to London in just a few hours.
What activities should be allowed in space?
The advent of space tourism will give rise to some interesting ethical questions. Should there be advertising billboards in space? What about casinos, or brothels? On what legal basis should these things be restricted?
How does tourism fit with the underlying philosophy of space law: that the exploration and use of outer space “shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries”?
Will space tourism harm the environment?
Space tourism will inevitably put pressure on Earth’s environment – there are claims that space vehicles may one day become the world’s biggest source of carbon dioxide emissions. We will need to manage space traffic carefully to avoid disastrous collisions and steer clear of space debris.
If tourists go to the Moon, they may cause pollution or damage the heritage of earlier exploration, such as Neil Armstrong’s footprints.
Do not disturb. NASA
Will tourism workers have to live in space?
If space tourism does become truly widespread, it will need infrastructure and perhaps even staff. People may end up living permanently in space settlements, perhaps having children who will be born as “space citizens”. What legal rights would someone have if they were born at a Moon base? Would they be subject to terrestrial laws, or some version of current international legal rules for outer space?
These are obviously questions for the future. But given the excitement generated by the brief journeys of a couple of wealthy entrepreneurs, we should start contemplating them now. Outer space is the new frontier, but it is not — and must not — be a lawless one.
Steven Freeland is a Director of the International Institute of Space Law
Extreme floods this month have been crippling cities worldwide. This week in China’s Henan province, a year’s worth of rain fell in just three days. Last week, catastrophic floods swept across western Germany and parts of Belgium. And at home, rain fell in Perth for 17 days straight, making it the city’s wettest July in 20 years.
But torrential rain isn’t the only cause of floods. Many coastal towns and cities in Australia would already be familiar with what are known as “nuisance” floods, which occur during some high tides.
A recent study from NASA and the University of Hawaii suggests even nuisance floods are set to get worse in the mid-2030s as the moon’s orbit begins another phase, combined with rising sea levels from climate change.
The study was conducted in the US. But what do its findings mean for the vast lengths of coastlines in Australia and the people who live there?
A triple whammy
We know average sea levels are rising from climate change, and we know small rises in average sea levels amplify flooding during storms. From the perspective of coastal communities, it’s not if a major flood will occur, it’s when the next one will arrive, and the next one after that.
But we know from historical and paleontological records of flooding events that in many, if not most, cases the coastal flooding we’ve directly experienced in our lifetimes are simply the entrée in terms of what will occur in future.
Flooding is especially severe when a storm coincides with a high tide. And this is where NASA and the University of Hawaii’s new research identified a further threat.
Researchers looked at the amplification phase of the natural 18.6-year cycle of the “wobble” in the moon’s orbit, first identified in 1728.
The orbit of the moon around the sun is not quite on a flat plane (planar); the actual orbit oscillates up and down a bit. Think of a spinning plate on a stick — the plate spins, but also wobbles up and down.
When the moon is at particular parts of its wobbling orbit, it pulls on the water in the oceans a bit more. This means for some years during the 18.6-year cycle, some high tides are higher than they would have otherwise been.
This results in increases to daily tidal rises, and this, in turn, will exacerbate coastal flooding, whether it be nuisance flooding in vulnerable areas, or magnified flooding during a storm.
The moon’s orbit isn’t on a flat plane. It oscillates up and down, like a plate would when it spins on a stick. Shutterstock
A major wobble amplification phase will occur in the mid-2030s, when climate change will make the problem become severe in some cases.
The triple whammy of the wobble in the moon’s orbit, ongoing upwards creep in sea levels from ocean warming, and more intense storms associated with climate change, will bring the impacts of sea-level rise earlier than previously expected — in many locations around the world. This includes in Australia.
So what will happen in Australia?
The locations in Australia where tides have the largest range, and will be most impacted by the wobble, aren’t close to the major population centres. Australia’s largest tides are close to Broad Sound, near Hay Point in central Queensland, and Derby in the Kimberley region of Western Australia.
However, many Australian cities host suburbs that routinely flood during larger high tides. Near my home in Meanjin (Brisbane), the ocean regularly backs up through the storm water drainage system during large high tides. At times, even getting from the front door to the street can be challenging.
Derby, WA, has one of the biggest tidal ranges in Australia. Shutterstock
Some bayside suburbs in Melbourne are also already exposed to nuisance flooding. But a number of others that are not presently exposed may also become more vulnerable from the combined influence of the moon wobble and climate change — even when the weather is calm. High tide during this lunar phase, occurring during a major rainfall event, will result in even greater risk.
In high-income nations like Australia, sea-level rise means increasing unaffordability of insurance for coastal homes, followed by an inability to seek insurance cover at all and, ultimately, reductions in asset values for those unable or unwilling to adapt.
The prognosis for lower-income coastal communities that aren’t able to adapt to sea-level rise is clear: increasingly frequent and intense flooding will make many aspects of daily life difficult to sustain. In particular, movement around the community will be challenging, homes will often be inundated, unhealthy and untenable, and the provision of basic services problematic.
What do we do about it?
While our hearts and minds continue to be occupied by the pandemic, threats from climate change to our ongoing standard of living, or even future viability on this planet, haven’t slowed. We can pretend to ignore what is happening and what is increasingly unstoppable, or we can proactively manage the increasing threat.
Some coastal communities, such as in Melbourne’s bayside suburbs, may experience flooding, even if they never have before. Shutterstock
Thankfully, approaches to adapting the built and natural environment to sea-level rise are increasingly being applied around the world. Many major cities have already embarked on major coastal adaptation programs – think London, New York, Rotterdam, and our own Gold Coast.
However, the uptake continues to lag behind the threat. And one of the big challenges is to incentivise coastal adaptation without overly impacting private property rights.
Perhaps the best approach to learning to live with water is led by the Netherlands. Rather than relocating entire communities or constructing large barriers like sea walls, this nation is finding ways to reduce the overall impact of flooding. This includes more resilient building design or reducing urban development in specific flood retention basins. This means flooding can occur without damaging infrastructure.
There are lessons here. Australia’s adaptation discussions have often focused on finding the least worst choice between constructing large seawalls or moving entire communities — neither of which are often palatable. This leads to inaction, as both options aren’t often politically acceptable.
The seas are inexorably creeping higher and higher. Once thought to be a problem for our grandchildren, it is becoming increasingly evident this is a challenge for the here and now. The recently released research confirms this conclusion.
Professor Gibbs is a Non-Executive Director of the Gold Coast Waterways Authority, Green Cross Australia, The Moreton Bay Foundation and Reef Check Australia. Mark co-leads the Australian Government and GBRF-funded Reef Resilience and Adaptation Program (RRAP).
In a small, isolated village in southern Sydney, the local sulphur-crested cockatoos are particularly clever. Once a week, when the neighbours roll their wheelie bins to the kerb, cockies fly over and, with skillful dexterity, open the lids in search of food.
It may seem as though cockatoos opening a curb-side bin lid is a simple action.
But our research, published today in Science, discovered this behaviour is far more significant than you may have first thought.
Sulphur-crested cockatoos are copycats. After one solves the lid-flip puzzle, other birds nearby imitate the new foraging behaviour in a stunning display of “social learning”.
For decades, scientists believed humans were the only animals capable of culture. Now, thanks to the community’s observations, we can add parrots to this small (but growing) list, which also includes chimpanzees, humpback whales and New Caledonian crows.
Clever, mischievous cockies
In Australia, sulphur-crested cockatoos (Cacatua galerita) are often thought of as being in your face, full of attitude and mischief. But if we take the time to observe them, we can see they’re also intelligent, curious and adaptable.
You might have seen a variety of their social interactions, such as play. Have you watched cockies hanging on powerlines like a trapeze artist?
Cockatoos are also highly dexterous, holding food with their foot and manipulating it with their beak and tongue. This includes skillfully eating the seeds from a gardener’s mortal enemy — the bindii weed — and lessor foes, such as onion grass.
Cockatoos love to play, and swing on powerlines like trapeze artists. Shutterstock
But bin opening is a new foraging behaviour that hadn’t been observed until recently. Thankfully, one member of our research team lives in the local area, and saw cockatoos opening bins firsthand in 2014.
This kicked off our bin-opening survey in 2018, where we asked community members to report if they “have” and, importantly, “have not” observed bin opening across the greater Sydney region and beyond.
Thanks to these reports and our own observations, we soon discovered this behaviour spread to neighbouring suburbs over the following years.
We also found that between suburbs, where the birds’ social networks were separated, there were subtle differences in bin-opening styles, and these became increasingly different between suburbs further apart.
Only around 10% of birds in each flock learned how to open bins. The rest benefit from the behaviours of these pioneers. Interestingly, we found adult males were most likely to know how to open bins. Adult females and juveniles also displayed this behaviour, but to a lesser extent.
Cockatoos use their feet and beak to lift open the the wheelie bin lid. Barbara Klump, Author provided
What’s all the fuss about, anyway?
To many of us familiar with the cleverness of cockatoos, it might come as no surprise they can learn by watching each other. So in case you aren’t as fascinated as we are by this discovery, here are a couple of reasons to get excited.
First, it shows we can all make interesting scientific observations in our everyday lives — even in the suburbs where we live.
Second, only 70 odd years ago, humans started questioning the idea only human society was culturally complex. Humans are masters of social learning. From an early age, we copy skills from other children and adults.
But this study helps reaffirm that a range of other animals are also culturally complex.
There are three main traits associated with so-called “cultural animals”: larger brain size, living in social groups, and being long lived. This is known to scientists as the “cultural intelligence hypothesis”.
And when lands change, for example, for urban growth or agriculture, it stimulates the emergence and spread of adaptive behaviours. This creates new opportunities for cultures to develop.
Chimpanzees and other primates are among the few animal groups known to be capable of social learning. Now, we can add parrots to this list. Shutterstock
Cities and urban areas provide fertile grounds for this, as animals that live there often have to change their behaviours to exploit different foods and shelter options, and to survive new threats — think cats, rats, and cars.
It’s likely most of us have observed animals adapting to new environments. A classic example from Sydney is the bin-chicken — aka Australian white ibis. These birds also forage in bins (but not opening the lids) and now nest in urban palm trees rather than their traditional flooded wetland reed beds.
Another fascinating example is grey-headed flying-foxes. Despite being vulnerable to extinction due to population decline and habitat loss, these bats have become more common in urban areas over recent decades. This has required adaptation to lights, noise, humans, and the different flowers and fruits we grow in our gardens, parks and streets.
Adaptive behaviours like these are assumed to be the result of genetic change, or innovations. The challenge is to confirm if these innovations spread via social learning through the population, resulting in new, adaptive cultures emerging.
You may find bin chickens annoying, but they are incredibly resilient, adaptive birds. Shutterstock
How you can make a difference
Cities are also full of people who can share observations of innovative behaviours, and we encourage you to get involved in citizen science.
A major benefit of community participation in science is increased geographic coverage in a short amount of time. Individual scientists can only survey a small number of sites, but by involving the community, we can cover large parts of a suburb, city, or a country at the same time.
There are dedicated citizen science projects you can participate in, such as our Big City Birds research. We use this app to learn about nesting, foraging, nocturnal roosts, and adaptive behaviours of birds across Australia (and not just in the big cities).
Other recommended projects include eBird, iNaturalist, DigiVol, FrogID, and Urban Field Naturalist. It even helps to share any interesting observations through social media, an indirect way to inform scientific research. To help us, you can tag @Big_City_Birds or use this hashtag: #BigCityBirds.
With a range of similar studies underway, it’s likely scientists will discover more evidence of culturally complex behaviours in other species, continuing to challenge our idea of what it means to be human.
John Martin receives funding from the ARC.
Barbara Klump receives funding from Max Planck Society (Max Planck Society Group Leader Fellowship to Lucy Aplin), National Geographic Society (Early Career Grant).
Lucy Aplin 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.
Quotes in this research are from participants who cannot be named due to research ethics requirements.
Pandemic-induced lockdowns have provided stories of both hardship and resilience. This extends to families in the community caring for children in out-of-home care, a group which has weathered unique challenges as children are physically and sometimes virtually cut off from contact with their biological families.
A team of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal researchers from the University of Sydney’s Research Centre for Children & Families have launched a new report which sheds light on these experiences and on some unexpected positives that emerged for Aboriginal communities in New South Wales.
The research was focused on organisations working with children placed in foster or relative Kinship care (where a child lives with extended family) across the state. And the researchers heard differing accounts of how carers were faring throughout 2020.
A standout message was that caring for children within Kinship networks kept older Aboriginal people connected during lockdowns, as summed up by one Aboriginal worker:
The government’s telling everyone to isolate away from Elders. Ours was the complete opposite where our families join together. Family is the most important. Family is what keeps us together and keeps us going.
Added stress for carers and children in out-of-home care
In general, out-of-home care services painted a grim picture, with over 220 carers contacting the statewide carer support line throughout the year. Many of the state’s accredited out-of-home care service providers reported that carers were struggling to cope with the loss of children’s normal routines like school, therapy and visits with family members.
One organisation explained:
Overall stress levels appear higher for some carer families which has impacted the capacity to deal with existing complex issues.
Having already faced significant trauma and loss, children in out-of-home care need predictability even more than other children.
The uncertainty of COVID-19 often led to increased anxiety levels and emotional imbalance for children and left many foster carers stressed and in desperate need of time out from caring responsibilities.
In contrast, stories emerging from community services working with Aboriginal families in one part of the state suggested that caring for children protected Elders against social isolation during the lockdown.
A standout message was that caring for children within Kinship networks kept older Aboriginal people connected during lockdowns. Jodie Griggs/Getty Images
Community representatives explained that caring – both for children and for Elders – was a cultural obligation that was mutually beneficial. Kinship not only kept families connected across generations but eased the burden and stress on individuals. A community Elder reflected on this, saying:
I think it was a positive thing with our seniors having the kids because they thought – you know, it was going to be so overwhelming, but they got through it.
Research shows that Aboriginal families were already doing it tough before the pandemic, with many of their Kinship carers live on the wrong side of the digital divide.
For some carers, there was no working computer at home and they were based outside big cities without reliable internet. Some older carers also have low technology literacy. These factors all had the potential to become critical barriers when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
Judging from accounts shared with our Aboriginal research team, what happened for many Kinship carers was a far cry from this, as noted by this community worker:
They sort of went into [the lockdown] really nervous, but they’ve come out of it knowing new skills, being better with technology.
Our research showed that trusted, well-connected and localised services rallied to support their most vulnerable families during the lockdown, drawing on the strengths of Kinship networks and resilience in the face of enormous change.
An Aboriginal worker from one such service stated:
We were the only ones that were answering phones and being operational because of the stigma that was put on the COVID and going out.
In some cases, help took the form of delivering art supplies to Kinship carers of younger children or applying for financial aid to purchase a computer so children could learn from home. For others, it involved finding community members who could drive older carers to see doctors if they were not able to access e-health services.
As one community worker explained:
It was then coming up with creative ideas to keep in contact because we didn’t just want to shut the doors and lose those connections that we’ve built up over many years.
As New South Wales is enduring an extended lockdown and the latest COVID-19 outbreak spreads to other states such as Victoria, lessons from Aboriginal communities should be heeded to ensure lockdowns do not cause further harm to our most vulnerable children and families.
This applies not just to statutory out-of-home care services, but to health, education and other state and Commonwealth-funded services. Non-Aboriginal workers and their organisations have much to learn from the cultural protocols and strategies used by Aboriginal workers.
These show that what works is yarning together, doing whatever it takes to stay connected to families, and drawing on local knowledge and community strengths.
Susan Collings receives funding from the New South Wales Department of Communities and Justice.
Irene Wardle is a Board member for Narang Bir-rong and Need a Tutor.
John Gilroy 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.
The Olympic Games are often hailed as a neutral celebration of athletic achievement. “The Olympic Games are not about politics,” wrote the International Olympic Committee president, Thomas Bach, in the Guardian last year.
In reality, the games have long been a platform for soft power: the use of culture and values to shape people’s opinions in order to achieve political outcomes — particularly internationally.
Regardless of how many medals are won or lost, this is the real game of the Olympics.
And for the host country, the opening ceremony offers an unparalleled platform for building soft power.
The biggest artistic event in the world
Included in the Olympic Games since 1906, the opening ceremony combines pageantry, ritual and performance. With key components mandated by the Olympic Charter, including an artistic program and a parade of nations, the ceremony offers a unique opportunity for the host country to frame a cultural narrative about itself.
No other artistic event in the world offers immediate access to such a large audience of global viewers. In 2016, 3.6 billion viewers watched Rio de Janeiro’s opening ceremony on television.
Accordingly, the opening ceremony has increased in size, scope and expense in recent years. Demonstrations of dance, music and theatre are explicitly designed to dazzle spectators while also presenting a politically strategic image to the world.
Beijing’s opening ceremony in 2008 framed China as a model of spectacle and national collaboration. Directed by filmmaker Zhang Yimou at a cost of US$100 million (A$135 million), the event lasted over four hours and featured 15,000 performers. In one jaw-dropping sequence, 2,008 Chinese drummers performed in perfect unison.
For the 2004 opening ceremony in Athens, Greece endeavoured to highlight its heritage and connection to the Olympic Games of antiquity. The program included projections of the stadium used in the original games, a blazing comet that outlined the Olympic rings in fire, and an abstract reenactment of the progression of Greek civilisation.
At the opening of the 2012 London Games, Britain elected to emphasise its national musical legacy, with performances by Paul McCartney, the Sex Pistols and Arctic Monkeys. In a further nod to British popular culture, Queen Elizabeth II and James Bond actor Daniel Craig appeared to jump from a helicopter.
Broadcasting the perfect image
The last time Japan hosted the Summer Olympics was in 1964, and the stakes were unusually high. After the shame of the second world war and Japan’s subsequent exclusion from the 1948 games, Tokyo 1964 was key to its efforts to re-establish a positive international reputation.
The opening ceremony of the 1964 Olympic Games was the first to be live-broadcast around the world. Kyodo via AP Images
With the development of satellite technology, the 1964 games were also the first to be live broadcast. The opening ceremony was suddenly a chance to showcase Japan at its best to a worldwide audience.
Symbolising Japan’s new era, the Olympic torch was carried into the ceremony by Yoshinori Sakai, born in Hiroshima on the day the city was bombed in 1945.
Because of the opportunity to access millions of international viewers at once, opening ceremonies have become a powerful tool of cultural diplomacy.
But such a public platform also has its risks, and the diplomatic cost of any incident that contradicts a country’s carefully curated image can be extreme.
Consider the dove debacle of Seoul’s opening ceremony in 1988, when dozens of doves were accidentally incinerated by the Olympic flame on live television.
Counting losses
Japan has already faced difficulties that threaten to tarnish its Olympic image. After a one-year postponement, the costs of this year’s games may exceed US$26 billion (A$35 billion).
With significant restrictions on spectators, Japan will not benefit from the typical boost from international tourists. This makes the country’s potential soft power gains from the televised opening ceremony all the more crucial in order to justify the financial investment.
But even the televised spectacle will be taking place amid controversy. Only a day before the Opening Ceremony, the event’s director Kentaro Kobayashi was fired over a 1998 video in which he joked about the Holocaust.
Kobayashi is the third high-profile artist associated with the Ceremony to leave. Creative Director Hiroshi Sasaki resigned in March after calling a plus-sized celebrity an “Olympig,” while composer Keigo Oyamada left on Monday over historic bullying.
Japan’s success at building soft power will also be unavoidably lessened by the pandemic. The Opening Ceremony’s artistic program will take place in a largely empty arena — a reminder of the cost of the pandemic in terms of both lives and our ability to come together.
Each smiling team of internationally competitive athletes during the Parade of Nations will similarly be viewed against their nation’s efforts (and failures) to manage COVID-19.
Meanwhile, the Olympic Committee is maintaining a running list of athletes and staff who have been infected while in Japan. Even before the Opening Ceremony, the list stands at over 100.
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.
Edward Jenner vaccinating his son, held by Mrs Jenner; a maid rolls up her sleeve, a man stands outside holding a cow. Coloured engraving by C. Manigaud after E Hamman. The Wellcome Collection.
As the roll-out of COVID vaccines proceeds, it’s worth looking back on the challenges and successes of the early global spread of smallpox vaccination.
Smallpox (also known by its scientific name, variola) was a horrible, highly infectious disease, with a case fatality-rate of 30%. In 1798, Edward Jenner, an English country doctor, published data on cowpox (or “vaccine”, a term derived from the Latin for cow and increasingly preferred by Jenner; modern scientific name vaccinia). His data suggested this pustular disease found on dairy cows protected people from smallpox.
He detailed experiments in which he inoculated children with cowpox (usually by nicking the arm and inserting cowpox pus under the skin), and presented the inoculation of cowpox as a safe and effective way to prevent smallpox.
Jenner’s claims were initially met with scepticism. Even in Britain, vaccination was not taken up on any scale until 1800. By this time, though, cowpox samples were being dispatched overseas and attracting great interest as a way to protect people against smallpox. By 1805, at the height of the Napoleonic Wars, people were already being vaccinated all around the world. By 1815, several million people, half of them outside Europe, had been vaccinated.
Sadly, however, the global eradication of smallpox was not achieved until the late 1970s.
Smallpox was universally feared but people had learned to live with it. It was easy enough to recognise; victims became visibly ill before they became infectious. Crucially, people knew that if they survived the attack, they could be confident of lifelong immunity.
Learning to live with smallpox sometimes involved deliberately exposing children to the disease in the hope of a mild outcome. In Britain, it was found smallpox inoculation — that is, making a light cut in the arm and applying smallpox pus to the wound — resulted in far fewer deaths than in cases of naturally acquired smallpox.
It was as a practitioner of smallpox inoculation (which was also known as variolation) that Jenner found evidence people who had been casually infected with cowpox appeared to be immune to smallpox infection.
He put the theory to the test by inoculating a boy with cowpox lymph — taken not from the cow but from a vesicle or blister on a milkmaid’s hand — and demonstrating his resistance to smallpox by variolation.
Jenner’s presentation of cowpox as a safe and effective substitute for smallpox found corroboration in trials in London in 1799. It wasn’t easy to allay doubts among parents. Still, people were even more scared of smallpox, and recognised smallpox inoculation involved significant risk to the patient and the community. Cowpox was a game-changer.
More diaspora than roll-out
Although hailed as a boon, the new approach got off to a shaky start. Cowpox was rare, appearing only sporadically in dairy farms. The supply of vaccine depended from the outset on its propagation on human bodies. If the vaccine “took” on the child’s arm then, nine or ten days later, the ripe pustule was pricked to provide fresh vaccine.
Children of the poor were immunised at no charge and, on returning to clinics for examination, were put arm-to-arm with the next batch of children. Some vaccine was dried, often on cotton threads, as a future supply. Quality control was a major problem. In 1800, a cowpox institute was set up in London to propagate and distribute vaccine and in 1803 the Royal Jenner Society was established to promote the practice.
Cowpox was a rare disease, appearing only sporadically in dairy farms. J. Pass, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The spread of the first vaccine was more diaspora than roll-out. Samples of cowpox on cotton threads were sent in the post, in Britain and overseas, rather in the manner of plant seeds.
Many samples proved useless on arrival, but by sending them in some profusion, it proved relatively simple to seed the practice in Europe and North America. Improvements in packaging even made it possible to send vaccine from Vienna to Baghdad, where it was propagated for onward transmission to India in 1802. Viable vaccine was even delivered, after a 154-day voyage, to Sydney in 1804.
The world arm-to-arm
Another approach to conquering the tyranny of distance was to move patients under vaccination. Early in 1802, Tsar Alexander approved an expedition to establish vaccination through Russia in which children vaccinated in one province were escorted to go “arm-to-arm” with children in the next. In 1803, King Carlos of Spain launched an even grander expedition that, by vaccinating a succession of children, delivered live vaccine to Spanish America and then across the Pacific to Manila and Macao.
Vaccination literally brought the world arm-to-arm. The rapid global spread of the vaccine itself owed a lot to the universal dread of smallpox but also to humanitarian enthusiasm and international collaboration.
A range of measures were used to embed the practice. In Berlin, children were given trinkets and medals. Poor mothers in Mexico and India were bribed to have their children vaccinated. In Austria, mothers whose children died of smallpox were named and shamed.
Some states moved rapidly along the road to compulsion. In France, where Napoleon was a great advocate of the practice, vaccination was urged as a civic duty but not made mandatory. In Denmark, a vaccination certificate was rapidly made a requisite for schooling, public employment and even marriage.
Complacency and lack of resolve
Aware of vaccine’s global success, Jenner and his colleagues deplored the loss of momentum in Britain itself. In London, the practice was under challenge from a noisy anti-vaccination lobby led by old-style inoculators.
A smallpox epidemic in 1805, while showing the value of vaccination, disclosed some failures arising from poor early practice. In claiming vaccination was for life, Jenner had set the bar too high. To the end of his life in 1823, he was reluctant to concede the need for periodic re-vaccination.
The major problem in Britain and elsewhere was complacency. The early success in suppressing smallpox, and indeed eliminating it in some places, led parents to neglect vaccination.
Outbreaks in the 1830s were a major shock and pushed the British government to fund vaccination in 1840 and to make it mandatory in 1853. Victoria — though not New South Wales — followed this lead. Although it was controversial and fuelled anti-vaccination sentiment, compulsory vaccination, with some provision for conscientious objection, played a vital role making the practice routine. This kept smallpox at bay, prompted improvements, and helped inspire the development of new vaccines.
From the outset, vaccination was seen as a means of eradicating smallpox. It saved countless lives, kept communities safe for as long as vaccination was maintained, and limited the severity of outbreaks.
The permanent elimination of smallpox required governments to provide the infrastructure and resources, and show the political will to incentivise if not mandate vaccination.
Although the disease was largely brought under control in the West, millions were still dying from smallpox elsewhere in the middle of the twentieth century when the World Health Organization committed itself to the global eradication of smallpox.
When the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games officially begin on Friday night, they will do so with the host city under a state of emergency due to COVID-19.
For the first time in history, all Olympic events will take place in empty venues, with recordings of stadium noise from previous games and video celebrations among the innovations in place of crowds.
Meanwhile, sponsors, broadcasters and the host nation are all approaching the Olympics with less than the normal anticipation. What will this mean for fans?
How is this different from other sporting events?
Since COVID, sporting competitions, including European football leagues and the NBA in North America, have seen fans adapt to not being able to be there in person. This has included cardboard cut-outs in stadiums, apps to broadcast fans cheering from home into virtual audience walls, and supportive messages.
The 2000 Sydney Olympics were embraced by local and international spectators. Tokyo will be a very different games. Dean Lewins/AAP
This is something Olympics organisers will be hoping to capitalise on, despite polls showing fans find sport during the pandemic to be less enjoyable.
Normally, visible crowds provide points of connection and community, while crowd noise draws attention to what is happening on field and enhances excitement. Obviously, simulated crowd sounds and cardboard cut-outs are no substitute for the real thing.
The Olympic connection
At least for the Olympics, attendance for fans is the exception. The vast majority of the global audience would expect to rely on broadcast and digital media to experience the games anyway.
We also know sports fans place great importance on the games. This week, a new report by True North Research found of all our national teams, Australians had the highest emotional connection to the Olympic team — above the Matildas, cricket teams and Wallabies.
The Olympics normally stimulate immense levels of national pride and connection.
One argument for those wanting to support the Olympics is that they showcase sports, teams, athletes and nations “who don’t otherwise enjoy the international platform that mega events afford”. They also showcase human achievement — and people striving and sacrificing to chase their dreams and represent their country. It is easy to be drawn to the story of the games.
This year’s team — our second-largest ever, with 472 athletes from 33 sports — provides plenty of scope for fans to connect. Fans may not just feel the usual obligation to support our national athletes, but an extra sense of duty given the with significant challenges and setbacks of a pandemic Olympics.
How can fans support the Olympics in a country that doesn’t want it?
Despite the hype and the history, the Olympics are not an essential service. The lack of atmosphere, ceremony and celebration, alongside the uncomfortable reality of the event occurring in a pandemic, have the potential to complicate how fans enjoy and experience the games.
COVID-19 cases are growing once more in Japan and public sentiment in the host nation has been against the Olympics for months. The country has seen volunteers quit, hospitals display “Stop Olympics” messages on their windows and a petition in protest of the games.
However, despite many Japanese citizens calling for the cancellation of the games, Tokyo’s hands are tied. Under the terms of the contract, only the International Olympic Committee has the power to terminate the Olympics. If Tokyo cancelled the games, Japan risks lawsuits, financial loss, as well as a damaged reputation.
The instability due to the pandemic has also allowed protesters to draw attention to broader societal, economic and environmental impacts of the games in hopes to shut down the Olympics beyond Tokyo.
There is already an established “NOlympics” campaign against the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, arguing the games exacerbate inequality and over-policing.
What does it all mean?
So, does victory in Toyko mean more or less than previous games?
For athletes, victory is victory. After a gruelling five years of training, qualifying and dreaming, it may in fact mean a whole lot more in a pandemic environment.
But for fans, the political distancing of key Japanese officials, citizens and brands and a global health crisis confronts them with a decision. Do they enjoy the Olympics as they usually might have, or do they turn away in support of issues that go well beyond sport?
There are no easy answers, but for fans it means Tokyo may be a more complex — and morally challenging — Olympics than they had anticipated. While Australia’s Seven Network has high expectations for broadcast numbers, it could prompt fans to re-evaluate how they connect with the Olympics beyond the pandemic.
Adam Karg consults to and conducts research for a number of organisation across Australia and globally. His research has received funding from organisations including the Australian Research Council, the Victorian Government, leisure and sport technology companies and professional leagues and/or teams spanning the Australian Football League, Big Bash League, National Rugby League, National Basketball League and the A-League.
Emma Sherry consults to and conducts research for a number of organisation across Australia. Her research has received funding from organisations including the Victorian Government, and national and state sport governing bodies including the Australian Football League and its clubs and the National Rugby League. Emma is a director with Tennis Victoria.
Kasey Symons consults to and conducts research for a number of organisation across Australia. Her research has received funding from organisations including the Victorian Government, and national and state sport governing bodies including the Australian Football League and its clubs and the National Rugby League. Dr Symons is also one of the co-founders of Siren: A Women in Sport Collective.
Sam Duncan 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.
When the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games officially begin on Friday night, they will do so with the host city under a state of emergency due to COVID-19.
For the first time in history, all Olympic events will take place in empty venues, with recordings of stadium noise from previous games and video celebrations among the innovations in place of crowds.
Meanwhile, sponsors, broadcasters and the host nation are all approaching the Olympics with less than the normal anticipation. What will this mean for fans?
How is this different from other sporting events?
Since COVID, sporting competitions, including European football leagues and the NBA in North America, have seen fans adapt to not being able to be there in person. This has included cardboard cut-outs in stadiums, apps to broadcast fans cheering from home into virtual audience walls, and supportive messages.
The 2000 Sydney Olympics were embraced by local and international spectators. Tokyo will be a very different games. Dean Lewins/AAP
This is something Olympics organisers will be hoping to capitalise on, despite polls showing fans find sport during the pandemic to be less enjoyable.
Normally, visible crowds provide points of connection and community, while crowd noise draws attention to what is happening on field and enhances excitement. Obviously, simulated crowd sounds and cardboard cut-outs are no substitute for the real thing.
The Olympic connection
At least for the Olympics, attendance for fans is the exception. The vast majority of the global audience would expect to rely on broadcast and digital media to experience the games anyway.
We also know sports fans place great importance on the games. This week, a new report by True North Research found of all our national teams, Australians had the highest emotional connection to the Olympic team — above the Matildas, cricket teams and Wallabies.
The Olympics normally stimulate immense levels of national pride and connection.
One argument for those wanting to support the Olympics is that they showcase sports, teams, athletes and nations “who don’t otherwise enjoy the international platform that mega events afford”. They also showcase human achievement — and people striving and sacrificing to chase their dreams and represent their country. It is easy to be drawn to the story of the games.
This year’s team — our second-largest ever, with 472 athletes from 33 sports — provides plenty of scope for fans to connect. Fans may not just feel the usual obligation to support our national athletes, but an extra sense of duty given the with significant challenges and setbacks of a pandemic Olympics.
How can fans support the Olympics in a country that doesn’t want it?
Despite the hype and the history, the Olympics are not an essential service. The lack of atmosphere, ceremony and celebration, alongside the uncomfortable reality of the event occurring in a pandemic, have the potential to complicate how fans enjoy and experience the games.
COVID-19 cases are growing once more in Japan and public sentiment in the host nation has been against the Olympics for months. The country has seen volunteers quit, hospitals display “Stop Olympics” messages on their windows and a petition in protest of the games.
However, despite many Japanese citizens calling for the cancellation of the games, Tokyo’s hands are tied. Under the terms of the contract, only the International Olympic Committee has the power to terminate the Olympics. If Tokyo cancelled the games, Japan risks lawsuits, financial loss, as well as a damaged reputation.
The instability due to the pandemic has also allowed protesters to draw attention to broader societal, economic and environmental impacts of the games in hopes to shut down the Olympics beyond Tokyo.
There is already an established “NOlympics” campaign against the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, arguing the games exacerbate inequality and over-policing.
What does it all mean?
So, does victory in Toyko mean more or less than previous games?
For athletes, victory is victory. After a gruelling five years of training, qualifying and dreaming, it may in fact mean a whole lot more in a pandemic environment.
But for fans, the political distancing of key Japanese officials, citizens and brands and a global health crisis confronts them with a decision. Do they enjoy the Olympics as they usually might have, or do they turn away in support of issues that go well beyond sport?
There are no easy answers, but for fans it means Tokyo may be a more complex — and morally challenging — Olympics than they had anticipated. While Australia’s Seven Network has high expectations for broadcast numbers, it could prompt fans to re-evaluate how they connect with the Olympics beyond the pandemic.
Adam Karg consults to and conducts research for a number of organisation across Australia and globally. His research has received funding from organisations including the Australian Research Council, the Victorian Government, leisure and sport technology companies and professional leagues and/or teams spanning the Australian Football League, Big Bash League, National Rugby League, National Basketball League and the A-League.
Emma Sherry consults to and conducts research for a number of organisation across Australia. Her research has received funding from organisations including the Victorian Government, and national and state sport governing bodies including the Australian Football League and its clubs and the National Rugby League. Emma is a director with Tennis Victoria.
Kasey Symons consults to and conducts research for a number of organisation across Australia. Her research has received funding from organisations including the Victorian Government, and national and state sport governing bodies including the Australian Football League and its clubs and the National Rugby League. Dr Symons is also one of the co-founders of Siren: A Women in Sport Collective.
Sam Duncan 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.
Teeth can tell us a lot about the evolution of prehistoric humans, and our latest study of one of our species’ close relatives may finally resolve a long-standing mystery.
The genus Paranthropus is closely related to ours, Homo, and lived about one to three million years ago. Both Paranthropus and Homo are often considered to have evolved from Australopithecus, represented by the famous fossils Lucy and Mrs Ples.
The Paranthropus group stands out in our family tree because of their massive back teeth, several times the size of ours, and their extremely thick enamel (the outer-most layer of our teeth). This prompted the hypothesis that they ate mostly hard foods, and one of the most complete Paranthropus specimens was dubbed the Nutcracker Man.
But our study shows Paranthropus had very low rates of enamel chipping (a common type of tooth fracture), comparable to living primates such as gorillas and chimpanzees, which rarely eat hard foods. This supports other recent research about the diet of this group and should finally put to rest the nutcracker hypothesis.
Reconstructing diet from teeth
Our understanding of diet and behaviour during human evolution has changed markedly over the last decades — partly due to new technologies but also because of some spectacular fossil discoveries.
Teeth are often at the forefront of this research. They are by far the most abundant resource because they survive fossilisation better than bones. This is a fortunate circumstance because teeth also offer other information that helps us to reconstruct the environment of our fossil ancestors and relatives.
We can glean a lot of information from the microscopic scratches created by foods scraping along the tooth surface during chewing, the tiny particles preserved in dental plaque and the chemical composition of the teeth themselves.
Before such techniques were developed and refined, researchers relied on looking at the overall shape and size of teeth, as well as wear and chipping visible with the naked eye. Small sample sizes and a lack of comparative material hampered these studies, but they provided some bold claims about the diet of our fossil ancestors.
For most techniques, we need large data sets from both extinct and living species for comparison. For example, a species that commonly eats lots of hard seeds and nuts should theoretically show high rates of tooth chipping. But without a large database of species, we wouldn’t know if 10% of teeth displaying fractures is normal for a hard object feeder, or simply an expected percentage caused by other factors.
Tooth chipping
In our recent research, we have studied a broad range of living primates and compared that information with data on fossil species. The results were surprising, with our species Homo sapiens and fossil relatives in our genus commonly showing high rates of chipping, similar to living primates that eat hard foods habitually.
Earlier studies regularly suggested humans evolved smaller teeth in the last couple of million years in response to cooking and processing foods and eating more meat, while Paranthropus evolved large robust teeth in repose to eating lots of hard foods.
This baboon tooth, an upper molar, has been chipped on the outside. Author provided
But teeth can evolve in more ways than simply the overall size or the thickness of the enamel. The microscopic structure and composition of dental tissue can also vary among species. Could such variation explain chipping and wear differences among species?
If so, this could explain why small-toothed humans have lots of chipping on their teeth while the big-toothed Paranthropus has barely any.
Mechanical and structural properties of teeth
To address these questions, we sectioned teeth of several living primate species, including humans, to look at variation in mechanical and structural properties across tooth crowns. We collected non-human primate teeth from museums. Human teeth were donated by patients during routine dental treatments.
The mechanical testing involved a tiny diamond-tipped probe, which produced readings of the hardness and elasticity of enamel. We used high-powered microscopes and micro-CT scans to analyse the structure and mineral density of enamel.
Detail of the microscopic structure of a baboon’s molar enamel. Author provided
The results show mechanical and structural properties are uniform among primate groups. The surfaces most prone to fracture in primates – the inner side of lower, and outer side of upper back teeth – have significantly harder enamel.
These patterns are similar regardless of the diet of the primates. This suggests the inner structure of enamel plays a crucial role in protecting the tooth, but these patterns have remained remarkably stable during primate evolution.
We argue that other tooth properties, including the overall size and shape of teeth, evolve quicker to cope with changes in diet. Therefore, the evidence from chipping patterns and tooth structure of living primates suggest Paranthropus rarely ate hard foods and their enormous back teeth likely evolved for other purposes, likely to chew large quantities of very tough leafy material.
Why fossil humans have such high rates of chipping requires further research, but we propose several explanations, including accidental ingestion of grit and using front teeth as a “third hand” to hold non-food items. For example, large fractures on the front teeth of Neanderthals may be due to this tool-use behaviour, and small chips on the back teeth of Homo naledi likely relate to chewing grit-laden foods.
But it goes against the neat idea that we evolved smaller teeth when we started using fire and processing more high-quality foods, since heavy wear and fractures remained. The notion of nutcracker and cooking/meat-eating groups was appealing in its simplicity. Based on the changing shape and size of teeth through time, it seemed a reasonable hypothesis. But the actual wear and tear of fossil teeth tells a very different story that is slowly coming to light.
Carolina Loch receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust, Colgate, MedTech Core and the University of Otago. She is affiliated with the NZ Association for Women in the Sciences, Society for Marine Mammalogy, Latin American Society of Experts in Aquatic Mammals, Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, International Association for Dental Research and American Association of Biological Anthropologists.
Ian Towle and Thomas Loho 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.
It’s nearly a week since the “Howl of a Protest” took place throughout the country, and we’re still talking about the rural revolt. What are the farmers’ concerns? Are they legitimate? Has the rural-urban divide has become too deep, and will any of this have an impact on politics in Wellington?
What’s behind the rural revolt?
One of the best pieces on what’s behind the rural revolt is today’s article by Laura Walters: How real is the rural-urban divide?. She argues division is being stoked between farm and town, including by the media and those who wish to explain the protests as farmers being out of touch. Instead, she paints a picture of farmers who are on board with environmental issues but have problems with a government that they believe isn’t listening.
Walters reports Federated Farmers national president Andrew Hoggard saying: “Everyone agrees with the big picture direction, but these policies, regulations and legislation are coming out in random orders. It’s like there’s not a workplan behind it.” And given that his own organisation wasn’t behind the protests, but instead focused on behind-doors talks in Wellington, Hoggard concedes: “Maybe we’ve just been a little too polite. Maybe we need to be blunter.”
He starts out by explaining his aversion to such protests: “I’ve never made a secret of the fact I’m no fan of farmer protests; there had never been a successful one in my living memory and there has been a tendency recently for them to backfire and paint farmers in a bad light, usually as ignorant racist misogynists.” But last week was different, as “the sheer volume of frustrated and disillusioned farmers drowned out the minority of fringe idiots, turning them into an irrelevant sideshow.”
Here’s his summary of farmer feeling: “The common theme was that the pace and change of Government reform has been overwhelming and is taking its toll. A relentless tidal wave of change that often seems to occur with little consultation and without any clue as to how they will be practically implemented, and no comprehension of the flow on effects they will have. It was a collective outpouring of anger at being constantly painted as convenient villains for political gain.”
Farmer complaints
Groundswell New Zealand, who organised the protests, has published a list of seven concerns, including policies on freshwater management, the “ute tax”, the lack of overseas workers, changes to the Emissions Trading Scheme, the Significant Natural Areas programme, new rules about indigenous biodiversity, and the high country land reforms. This is explored in depth by Georgia Forrester in her article:What are Aotearoa’s farmers actually protesting about this Friday?.
Farmer Shelley Krieger has usefully outlined Why farmers protested in NZ towns and cities. She explains that some of the more prominent issues aren’t actually so central to concerns: “The ute tax was just an add-on. It was new legislation that came out after the protest had already been organised.”
For Krieger, the Significant Natural Areas rules are a particular concern: “These are areas of people’s farm land or lifestyle blocks that the Government is getting the councils to survey. This is native blocks of land that have wild flora and wild animals that pass through it. Once parts of land are classified as an SNA you lose your rights to that land, cannot farm it or build on it. You have to fence it off at your own cost and still pay the rates on it but you can no longer use it. In some instances it is 80-90 per cent of people’s land.”
Looking at the complaints of farmers, Herald political editor Claire Trevett writes: “The ute tax came to be seen as the main thrust of the protest. But for the farmers at least, it was not about the ute tax. The ute tax was simply the salt being rubbed into the wound. It would not have escaped them that the Prime Minister said Cabinet considered exempting farm and work utes from the fee, but decided it was too complicated. Farmers will not have the luxury of opting out of Government regulations because they are too complicated. And that is why the farmers protested. The protest was the rural sector making it clear they felt besieged by the pace and scale of Government reforms” – see: Dismiss protesting farmers as rednecks at your peril, Prime Minister (paywalled).
Trevett explains that farmers aren’t opposed to the Government’s land reform and environmental goals, but rather, some of the details and process: “Farmers have accepted the need for some reform, and have worked with the Government on it. But farmers are caught up in almost all of the various streams of reform on the environment and climate change. They will be hit by moves to reduce transport emissions, pricing on agricultural emissions, higher environmental standards on water, and protection of sensitive land. No matter how well signalled much of it has been, it is now all hitting at once. It is hitting at the same time as other reforms in workplace relations, immigration, the Resource Management Act and local government, all of which also impact on farmers.”
The Herald also ran an editorial explaining that farmers feel they are having to carry too much of the environmental reform effort, while others face fewer sacrifices: “Most of the protesters – likely to number thousands – will be farmers, coming in force to town because they’re fed up with being targeted for spiralling environmental compliance costs and taxes – and as they see it, doing the heavy lifting for New Zealand’s climate change response… They feel dumped on as easy targets and an unappreciated minority” – see: All is not well down on the farm as city people will find out today (paywalled).
Writing in the Herald on Sunday, columnist Kerre McIvor also explained the long list of farmer complaints – from the “ute tax” through to a feeling that the Government is prioritizing other voters in its spending decisions: “It’s the Ashburton Bridge being out of commission with no plans to build a better, safer link to the rest of the South Island, when $785 million has been announced for the Boomers’ Bike Bridge to Birkenhead” – see: Farmers are riled up over everything – and they’ve got a point (paywalled).
Environmentalist rebuttals
There has been some strong pushback against the farmer protests, mostly from those advocating that more needs to be done for the environment, and farmers need to accept the reality of the urgency the country faces on issues like climate change and water reform.
Broadcaster Jack Tame challenged what he sees as farmers being ungrateful for the special treatment they get, given that they are protesting about the lack of government support: “did those protesting farmers feel the same way when their industry received the best part of a billion dollars in support for Mycoplasma Bovis? Did they take to the streets to protest hundreds of millions of dollars they received in irrigation subsidies? Did protestors turn out in anger at drought relief packages, or flood relief, or the Covid-19 wage support? If the agriculture sector is concerned about special treatment, just wait until it hears about the Emissions Trading Scheme” – see: Protesting farmers are hypocrites – but so am I.
He concludes: “the sector has been well-supported for a very long time. I don’t think a few thousand extra dollars for a ute and some environmental compliance expenses are going to be so devastating that they fundamentally threaten farming communities’ way of life.”
He argues the Government is going very easy on farmers: “Water reforms have been amended and so have the plans for wetlands. Targets for biogenic methane, aka the belching of ruminant animals, are much softer than they are for carbon emissions. It does rather seem both the Government and the Climate Change Commission have decided the rural sector can’t be asked to carry the main weight of our environmental goals.”
For Wilson, the farmer revolt is simply down to the National Party irresponsibly fostering backward attitudes in the rural communities. Because this has created resistance to change for so long, the Government now has to move more quickly on environmental issues.
Newsroom political journalist Marc Daalder makes some similar arguments, saying that in terms of climate change what the Government is asking of farmers is “no different from the sacrifices that everyone will have to make to decarbonise” – see: Feebate won’t bankrupt farmers, but climate change might. In fact, compared to urban dwellers, Daalder says “farmers, whose footprint is partly made up of biogenic methane from livestock, face a more lenient target.”
Writing in Stuff newspapers today, centre-right political commentator Ben Thomas asks how much impact the protests will have on the Labour Government: “The demonstrations, in themselves, will not cause the Beehive undue worry. The makeup of the protests (however well attended) suggested few disgruntled Labour voters. And the question of how the organisers, after a logistically impressive first effort, can maintain momentum remains up in the air” – see: Will a winter of discontent prove glorious summer for Judith Collins?. But Thomas concludes that other Government reforms might also start to bite.
Other commentators believe Labour have a lot to lose if they ignore the messages from the protests. In Claire Trevett’s column (cited above), she says that although Labour might hope that the public see the farmers as cranks, this isn’t necessarily happening. What’s more, the farmers might just be the first part of society to start revolting against the Government’s bigger reforms: “Labour has stood accused of failing to deliver in some policy areas, most notably housing and transport. But it is driving ahead with major reforms programmes in almost every sphere of government – and local government. That is now starting to have a cumulative effect. The farmers are simply the first to break.”
Similarly, Kerre McIvor suggests Labour would be “very foolish” to ignore these protests, and she draws a comparison with the “nanny state” messages, especially over the “shower regulations” that helped bring to an end Helen Clark’s government.
For a similar argument in more detail, see Karl du Fresne’s prediction of a provincial backlash where at the next election Labour loses the blue seats it won when the red-tide swept through at last year’s contest: An early prediction for 2023.
The Otago Daily Times’ Mike Houlahan also says Labour should be very concerned about the farmer protests: “the party would be wise not to ignore these rumblings of discontent. The mood of unity engendered by the ‘team of five million’ was never going to endure, but phenomena like Groundswell chip away at the carefully nurtured popularity of the prime minister, and given there are two years before the next election that offers ample time for Labour’s regional party vote to be erode” – see: Labour cannot afford to ignore rural concerns.
Houlahan points to a dangerous tendency of Government ministers to be dismissive of rural concerns, which was epitomised by Climate Change Minister James Shaw dismissing the Groundswell protester organisers as “a group of Pakeha farmers from down south who have always pushed back against the idea that they should observe any kind of regulation about what they can do to protect the environmental conditions on their land”. Houlahan suggests that this comment has only helped drive rural concerns about the orientation of the Beehive, and he argues that Labour can’t afford to be as flippant as Shaw.
The Herald’s David Fisher has also reported on the protests, arguing that Shaw’s words against the protestors have “deepened the divide” between farmers and the Government – see: Howl of a Protest as town and country talk past each other (paywalled). He also argues that Labour isn’t persuading these rural voters about its reforms: “What it signals, though, is that The Great Communicator – Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern – really needs to work on her communication, or have her Cabinet do so.”
And for another example of how Labour’s dismissive attitude to farmers could alienate rural votes – see the rather patronising blog post by party activist Greg Presland on the pro-Government blog The Standard: Mother Nature gives Groundswell NZ the middle finger. In this, he portrays the recent protest as just a “grumpy” National Party attempt to “disrupt” the country, saying that the farmers just “need to get over it”.
So, what happens next? Officially, the Groundswell protest organisers have given the Government a month to respond to their demands. After that, more protest action is planned. For a useful report on what this might involve, it’s worth reading a media report from one of the early organisational meetings – see Natasha Holland’s Is anyone actually listening to the farmers?.
In this, other protest actions are discussed: “some farmers may boycott rates and or not apply for resource consents”. A mention is made of the 1978 “Bloody Friday”, “when farmers, in protest, ran 1300 ewes down Dee St, Invercargill, before slaughtering them on a Victoria Ave section.”
Finally, for some poetry about the politics of the apparently growing urban-rural divide, see Victor Billot’s An ode for the farmers’ protest.
Finland and Greece are in the East of Europe, but generally thought of as western countries, having not been behind the ‘Iron Curtain’ during the Cold War. They can be seen as a benchmark to help understand the other Eastern European countries. And, like other eastern countries, they had low levels of Covid19 in the first European death wave (April to Jun 2020) of the pandemic. In that quarterly period, nevertheless, Finland has more excess deaths than – about eight percent – than any of the other countries shown below.
Greece had negative excess deaths in that first death wave. In particular, Greece managed to protect its elderly population. In subsequent waves, Greece had covid mortality lower than in many West European countries, though well in excess of Finland. As we will see for Eastern Europe, its excess mortality, predominantly in 2021, significantly featured the ‘younger’ age groups. In the year to June 2021, Greece had excess mortality of 10 percent, which compares with 2 percent in Finland and 2.5 percent in New Zealand (noting that, in New Zealand, excess mortality was not due to Covid19).
(Note that the word ‘adjusted’ in the title is a best attempt to correct for discrepancies in the age structures of the populations, noting that World War 2 (WW2) had a significant impact on post-war demography.)
Chart by Keith Rankin.
Estonia is an ex-Soviet neighbour of Finland, as is ethnically related to Finland. It is unusual in that it shows a generally upwards trend in excess mortality; most countries show clear ‘waves’ of covid impact. The predominance of baby boomer deaths probably reflects much larger numbers of people in this age group in the population. Ideally, we would be looking at excess deaths by ‘year of birth’ rather than by ‘age in years’. In 2015, a significant minority of the 65-74 age group was born in the war years. By 2021, none were. Nevertheless, it is clear that much of the mortality burden was born by people born in the decade after WW2. Excess mortality in Estonia in the year to June 2021 was 12 percent.
Chart by Keith Rankin.Chart by Keith Rankin.
Hungary had two severe waves of Covid19 mortality. In its second wave, for several weeks in 2021 its official covid death statistics were the highest in the world. We see that younger people died as a result of Covid19 in much greater number’s in that second wave. This will reflect in large part the vaccination of the older population.
Bulgaria shows the same waves as Hungary, but consistently higher excess deaths for post-war baby boomers. Lower life expectancy in Bulgaria will mean that 65-74 year-olds there will have been subject to more comorbidities, so will have been more likely to die than in many other countries.
Chart by Keith Rankin.Chart by Keith Rankin.
Poland has even higher mortality than Bulgaria, mainly because of covid’s greater impact on the oldest segment of the population. For the European Union, Poland has the highest overall excess deaths for the year to June 2021, at 34 percent.
Czechia was similar to Poland, with excess deaths for 75-84 year olds reaching a three-month high of 90 percent in the New Year; that means that half of all deaths for that age group, then, were due to Covid19. In its second wave, Czechia had particularly high death rates of younger people.
Chart by Keith Rankin.Chart by Keith Rankin.
Finally, Slovenia had a particularly high peak in the first East European wave, especially affecting older people; as in western Europe (especially Switzerland), a case of failure to protect those in nursing homes and the like.
On the other hand, Slovakia was among the last to see the rampages of the pandemic. In its case, the disease was not checked at the point that it was in most other European countries. Baby boomers reached 100 percent excess deaths in the first quarter of 2021. You can see the two East European waves by looking at the oldest group (red) and the youngest group (yellow). For the other two age groups the two waves merged into one viral tsunami.
Reflection
My general impression is that the ‘fortunate’ avoidance of Covid19 in its first European wave was a significant determinant in the death rates of the younger elderly (say, people aged 60-80). The problem is likely to be that Eastern Europe had less community immunity to Covid19 at the onset of winter, and also had reduced immunity to respiratory viruses in general, given the reduced opportunity for common colds and the like to transmit throughout 2020.
Also, we note that the ‘delta variant’ has never been a factor (so far) in Eastern Europe. The near-forgotten ‘Kent variant’ may have played a role in East Europe’s second wave. Yet clearly Eastern Europe suffered from both high transmissibility rates, and death rates only matched in South America (which also was not affected by ‘delta’). Rather than being a worse variant of Covid19, East Europe seems to have become unusually vulnerable to any variant, a ‘perfect storm’ of lesser general immunity to respiratory infections, a regular cold winter, and poor defences at its borders to the west.
Note: Sweden
In the quarter to June 2020, Sweden had excess deaths of 25 percent, with over 30 percent for people aged over 75. However, in the year to June 2021, Sweden’s excess deaths are 1.5 percent, compared to 2.5 percent in New Zealand. There is no sign’, so far, of a ‘delta’ outbreak in Sweden. (Netherlands, however, a country with a similar experience to Sweden, does have widespread delta, though not as yet many arising deaths.)
To win swimming gold in Tokyo, swimmers not only have to generate incredible power with their arms and legs to propel themselves through the water; they also have to overcome the relentless pull of the water’s drag while doing so.
Without being able to don special low-drag suits or use technologies to help them fly over the water, how can swimmers make the effect of the water’s drag as small as possible?
The best athletes in this year’s Olympics will do it by swimming under, rather than on top of, the water – at least as far as the rules allow.
Water is much denser than air, so you might assume swimmers would benefit from using a technique that allows them to sit high in the water, with as much of their body out of the water as possible.
But there are two problems with this strategy.
First, it costs energy to produce the forces needed to lift the body, which would be better spent propelling the swimmer forwards towards the finishing wall.
Second, when we travel on the water’s surface we waste energy making waves. During fast swimming, such as in the sprint freestyle events or during starts and turns (where speeds exceed 2 metres per second, or about 7 kilometres per hour), wave generation slows the swimmer down more than any other factor. Reducing wave formation is therefore vital to swimming success.
Waves are produced as the pressure exerted by the swimmer on the water forces the water upwards and out of their path. Other pressure changes around the swimmer’s body also cause waves to form behind them, and sometimes to the side.
The energy required to generate waves comes from the swimmer themselves, so a lot of the power generated by the swimmer’s muscles is used in wave generation rather than moving the swimmer forwards.
But waves aren’t formed when we (or fish, dolphins or whales) swim under the water, because waves only form when an object (like us) moves at the boundary between two fluids of different densities, such as water and air during swimming. And this fact hints at an intriguing solution to the drag issue.
Swimmers had noticed the benefits of staying underwater from at least the 1950s.
The breaststroke event was the cause of major controversy in the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games as swimmers experimented with staying underwater for much of their races. The winner of the men’s 200-metre event, Masaru Furukawa of Japan, swam underwater for most of the first three laps of the four-lap race. This practice was swiftly outlawed after the games; swimmers were forced to surface before they could start to swim.
But the practice of swimming underwater in freestyle (front crawl), butterfly and backstroke events only took off after swimmers mastered the “underwater undulatory technique”, better known as the dolphin kick.
Here, the swimmer propels themselves underwater by undulating the lower body in a wave-like manner while maintaining a rigid and streamlined upper body position with arms stretched overhead.
The amplitude of the lower body undulation increases from the hips to the feet so the “wave” produced by the body is much greater down towards the feet, creating a whip-like effect. This pushes water rapidly backwards, propelling the swimmer forwards according to Newton’s law of action and reaction.
Using this technique, swimmers in the backstroke events gained a significant advantage from the 1980s onwards, and from the 1990s it was also common in freestyle and butterfly events.
Underwater swimming speeds can far exceed normal swimming speeds.
The technique was so effective that swimming’s governing body, FINA, limited its use to only the 15-metre segment after starts and turns. Swimmers are now disqualified if they swim too far underwater.
Yet the benefits of improving the underwater undulation technique are so great that swimmers still spend hours each week in training improving this part of the race.
Keys to underwater swimming success
Although an ongoing research effort aims to find the optimum technique for different swimmers, a few practices seem to be commonly associated with underwater success.
First, swimmers who stay underwater for the full 15 metres will have faster starts, turns and overall race times. This effect is particularly strong in backstroke events, and when swimmers make the most of the final turn in a race (when swimmers usually surface quicker because they are growing tired).
Second, staying deeper underwater is important. Wave drag is slightly reduced by swimming just below the surface, but swimming 40–60 centimetres underwater can reduce drag by 10–20%. And there are further benefits when swimming a metre or more under the water, especially when start and turn push-off speeds are fast (as in most shorter races).
Third, the best swimmers will likely display a faster kick frequency, although each kick is no bigger than those of slower swimmers. In particular, a fast extension of the knee in the downbeat of the kick that occurs at the end of the wave-like motion may separate the faster from slower underwater swimmers.
And finally, although it will be hard to spot in the underwater camera shots at the Olympics, the feet of the faster underwater swimmers may rotate inwards during the downbeat of the kick, rather than staying rigidly in line with the leg. This rotation allows the top surfaces of the feet to orient horizontally to the swimming direction, just like the flute (tail) of a dolphin or whale lies horizontal to their swim direction, producing more propulsion at the feet.
Foot rotation during underwater swimming may be key to power production (clear example at 5:00 minutes).
Submarining towards gold
So, at the Tokyo Olympic Games, look for the swimmers who stay underwater as long as allowed in starts and turns, and check the techniques they use when the director cuts to the underwater shots.
The swimmers who make the most of these parts of the race might just propel themselves to Olympic gold.
Anthony Blazevich 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.
History shows there nothing in sport quite like an Olympics. Equally, there is nothing in Olympic history quite like what is happening now in Tokyo at the most expensive — and likely the most fraught — summer games of all time.
When Tokyo bid for the games a decade ago, many of the political elite saw the Olympics as a way to promote Japan 2.0. The games would reinvigorate a country beset by nuclear and natural disasters, economic stagnation and geopolitical concerns about China’s rise.
Japan’s leaders were part of its post-second world war generation. They witnessed the benefits in hosting the 1964 Tokyo Games, and thought the same could happen in 2020.
But COVID-19 has seen the anticipation and feel-good factor of the Olympics replaced by anxiety and fear. The city’s stadiums and train lines are empty, as are its coffers, with the lack of ticket sales and tourism income.
Any diplomatic or soft power advantage Japan might have sought over China will be offset by the fact the next Olympics to be held in front of cheering crowds will likely be the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing.
The most expensive Summer Games on record
Now that attention is about to shift to the spectacle of the opening ceremony and athletic competitions, it’s worth keeping in mind the enormous cost of these games to the Japanese public.
When it won the bid for the games in 2013, Tokyo said they would cost US$7.3 billion (A$9.9 billion). In 2019, a report by Japan’s national auditor said the costs would be nearly twice that amount.
Then, in December 2020, the organisers admitted the official spend would be closer to US$15.4 billion (A$20.9 billion) after factoring in the costs of the COVID postponement. Government audits over the past several years suggest the true cost, however, will actually be US$25 billion (A$33.9 billion).
Egregious cost overruns have been a feature of most Olympics, but as COVID-related precautions continue to bloat its budget, Tokyo has already surpassed the London games of 2012 as the most expensive summer games on record, according to one study. It is the one gold medal the International Olympic Committee did not want to award.
Under the terms of the host city contract between the Tokyo Organising Committee and the IOC, the costs of hosting the games and underwriting all associated contingencies — including their abandonment, which is still a possibility — lie with the hosts.
This diversion of resources — both in terms of money and healthcare personnel — has annoyed the Japanese public. And yet, the oft-quoted polls suggesting three-quarters of the Japanese public do not want the games to take place should not be taken as anti-sport in sentiment.
In a new survey, only 21% of Japanese respondents said they believe the games can be held safely. Hiro Komae/AP
Indeed, well-attended sports events continue to take place in Japan despite various states of emergency, rising COVID infections and sluggish vaccination rates. The polls on the Olympics are an expression of understandable unease among the Japanese public about hosting a global sporting event during a global pandemic and the considerable costs they’ve had to bear.
Unease over the costs is not unusual for Olympic hosts. In the past, this has been quickly tempered by the games themselves. The atmosphere invokes a national pride as the host nation’s best athletes compete against the world and the host city gets to show off its iconic landmarks and newly minted sporting and urban infrastructure.
The tangible benefits promised to the hosts are then realised in the millions spent by visitors on hotels, restaurants, bars and most importantly tickets.
Ticketing is one of the few areas of economic value in an Olympics that the IOC leaves exclusively to the host to exploit. With no tourists or spectators permitted for the Tokyo Games, the organisers will miss out on an estimated US$800 million (A$1.08 billion) in revenue.
Most events at the games will be held in empty stadiums and arenas. Keita Iijima/AP
Reputational damage to the IOC
The impact of COVID, of course, could not be helped by the IOC. But the IOC has not helped itself in how it has managed the postponed games. Its adamant insistence that the Olympics go ahead has been seen as arrogant and unsympathetic to Tokyo. The host city contract and insurance policies may mitigate any economic risks to the IOC of pressing ahead, but neither will do much to repair the reputational damage.
Public disquiet over the games has already led Toyota, one of the Olympics’ most important global sponsors, to cancel its Olympic television advertising and decide against sending its executives to the opening ceremony.
Its stance may have a domino effect and see other corporate sponsors follow suit. Approximately 60 Japanese companies have paid a record US$3 billion (A$4.08 billion) to sponsor the games. This had to be topped up by another US$200 million (A$272 million) to extend contracts after the Olympics were postponed. Goodwill among such sponsors towards the IOC is running low.
The vast bulk of the revenue generated by the IOC is not from sponsorship, but television broadcasting deals. In the last Olympic cycle (2013-16), broadcasting rights raised four times more in revenue (US$4.1 billion or A$5.6 billion) than the IOC’s official sponsorship program.
The importance of the broadcasters, especially the US television networks, is reflected by the fact that in making the decision to postpone the games, little to no consideration was given to the option of spreading it out over a longer period of time. This would have provided scheduling flexibility to allow for COVID-related spikes (like the one Japan is currently experiencing).
But this has not happened. The games are only viable (financially) if they fit a tight window dictated by the US networks. And given the fact crowds have now been banned at most events in Tokyo, this means the games will now almost exclusively be a made-for-TV event.
The main bulk of those allowed to attend events will be members of the IOC executive elite. The image of such executives looking down on competing athletes may reinforce the view that, while the predominately amateur participants have had to endure disruptions to their lives and training schedules and isolate for weeks in order to get to the Olympics, the IOC elite lives in a permanent bubble.
Moreover, as the number of COVID infections among athletes and officials increases, the risks and responsibilities that the IOC has assumed in pushing ahead with the games become more onerous.
Getting athletes to sign waivers may absolve the IOC from its narrow legal responsibility to ensure the health and safety of athletes, but not its moral obligations.
Where does the Olympic movement go from here?
In the longer term, the legacy of the Tokyo games may be quite complex for the IOC. International sports federations will surely have to rethink whether it is wise to rely so heavily on the redistribution of revenue generated by one event every four years and controlled by one dominant, highly political entity – the IOC.
As for future games — even for Brisbane in 2032 — who knows what impact climate change will have on a country’s capacity or willingness to host an event that is responsible for large amounts of carbon emissions through air travel, energy use and construction.
As the games begin, the spotlight rightly focuses on the diverse array of talented athletes from around the globe. For many of us, our love of sport began by watching an Olympics. As a 10-year-old, I sat transfixed when John Treacy of Ireland won silver in the marathon at the 1984 Los Angeles games. As he entered the final straight, the local commentator listed Irish medallists of the past. I still know them by heart.
But if the Tokyo games have made clear, the IOC’s slogan of “Citius, Altius, Fortius” is no longer as potent as it once was. For future hosts, there might be an alternative version to reflect the rather more circumspect view of the IOC and its games – “caveat emptor”, or buyer beware.
Jack Anderson 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.
The Tokyo Olympics officially open on July 23 – one year later than originally planned and in an Olympic stadium that will be empty of spectators thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic.
While Tokyo is not the first Olympics to have been rescheduled or cancelled – the Olympics did not run during either of the world wars, and the Antwerp Olympics in 1920 were a modest affair – it is the first to have been postponed just months out from the opening ceremony.
And postponing and rejigging such a large event is expensive.
The initial estimated cost was US$7.3 billion, which was revised up to $15.4 billion in December 2020, but some estimates now indicate it has blown out to US$25 billion.
But it’s not all bad news. Despite a lack of spectators, the Olympics will have about the same amount of competitors (and nations) that were expected before the pandemic.
The games will also have the highest ratio of female competitors in the history of the Olympics.
While it’s not yet parity, this is a long way from the avowedly all-male Athens Olympics in 1896.
With the introduction of several new sports, these games will also have the highest number of events in the history of the Olympics.
Focus on swimming
With 49 events, aquatics is the number one sports category in the Olympics.
And as a nation known for its beaches, swimming is also the sport where Australia has taken the most gold medals in the modern Olympics.
Australia is one of only four countries (the others are Greece, the UK and France) to officially compete in every modern Olympic Games. (Switzerland could also be included on this list. It boycotted the 1956 Melbourne Games, but had taken part in the equestrian events a year earlier in Sweden.)
Australia has been well-represented in both gold medal tallies and world records for swimming over that time.
Click through three of the major swimming events below to explore how times have come down since the first modern Olympics.
Higher, better, faster… longer?
While most swimming events focus on short to mid-length distances (from 50m to 1,500m) or relays, the marathon swimming event puts competitors through their paces with a 10km open-water course.
The marathon swim debuted at the 2008 Beijing Olympics and is somewhat unique in swimming events because it is held in open water, with the course and conditions changing for each Olympics.
This means it’s much harder to compare records over time, but it does make it interesting to compare with other famous long-distance swimming courses – many of which are much longer.
It’s going to be a hot one
Another major factor that sets Tokyo apart from other Olympics is how hot it will be. When Tokyo last hosted the games in 1964, they were held in October to avoid the city’s hot and humid summer.
The concern over the heat and its impact led the IOC to order the marathon and distance walking events to be moved 800km north to Sapporo.
More than 200 nations are represented at the Tokyo 2021 Olympics. As ever, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) asserts the games are a means of unifying humanity through elite sport. At the same time, though, IOC president Thomas Bach concedes:
The Olympic Games cannot prevent wars and conflicts.
Instead, he says, the games are unifying by way of symbolism:
[…] they can set an example for a world where everyone respects the same rules and one another.
The inference here is that the Olympics, with a rule-based platform for nations and athletes to come together respectfully and cohesively, provide an opportunity for dialogue and friendship that resonates beyond sport.
The confluence of nations at the Olympics also underscores the IOC’s much-vaunted position that the games must be politically neutral. Indeed, as a practical demonstration of that aspiration, both the IOC and the United Nations promulgate the goal of an Olympic Truce for a period of seven days before the Olympics until seven days after the Paralympics.
Thus, there is an expectation that UN member states will “cease hostilities”, ostensibly to protect athletes competing at the Tokyo games.
However, that anti-political idealism is confounded by a sobering reality: nations and athletes come together to compete at the Olympics, but they can hardly leave behind a range of tensions and conflicts in global geopolitics.
Indeed, beneath the hubris of Olympic evangelism, the realpolitik of corruption, conflict, domination or genocide permeate numerous countries that are an integral part of the so-called “Olympic family”. Among them, Myanmar and Iran provide compelling examples.
Myanmar
The Facebook site of the Myanmar Olympic Committee highlights an invitation to athletes at Tokyo to sign the Olympic Truce Mural. However, this hardly seems a straightforward matter for the three qualified athletes from Myanmar.
Back home, the country’s military dictatorship has shown genocidal intent against the (largely) Muslim Rohingya community, while Myanmar’s armed forces, reacting against pro-democracy activists, have reportedly “killed more than 900 people since the coup and detained thousands”.
The IOC, meanwhile, will welcome to Tokyo 2021 Myanmar’s deputy minister for health and sports, U Myo Hlaing, thereby providing sanction to the country’s repressive regime.
For Win Htet Oo, an expatriate swimmer living in Melbourne with his family from Myanmar, the hypocrisy of representing a country that is wantonly killing its own people proved too much to bear. Win Htet initially wrote to the IOC with a request that he be allowed to swim as a “neutral athlete”, independent of any country.
But this was denied, presumably because he was not a refugee. The “politically neutral” IOC was not about to allow a citizen-athlete to claim neutrality from their country. Unable to disassociate himself from a murderous regime, Win Htet withdrew from selection for the Tokyo games, declaring: “I shall not march in the parade of nations under a flag steeped in my people’s blood.”
Rohingya refugees at the border of Myanmar and Bangladesh in 2020. Nyein Chan Naing/EPA/AAP
By contrast, Thet Htar Thuzar, a badminton player, is committed to representing Myanmar at the Tokyo Olympics. In a social media post, she wrote that her “long-cherished dream has come true”. Thet Htar was not merely self-absorbed: she hoped to “make her compatriots smile even for just a moment amid the hardships they are facing”.
However, many respondents on social media were unimpressed, seeing “participation in the games by local athletes as a gesture of subservience to the Myanmar military”.
Unlike Win Htet, though, Thet Htar and her family live in Myanmar under a dictatorship. With the military regime talking up her role in the Olympics, she may have been in no position to talk it down.
Iran
Wrestling is a sport in which Iranians have performed extremely well. The country’s official news agency reports that six wrestlers will represent the republic at Tokyo 2021.
However, champion Greco-Roman wrestler Navid Afkari cannot be among them. In September 2020, he was executed by the Iranian government. The execution was widely seen by critics as retribution for Navid’s high-profile participation in mass protests against an oppressively authoritarian regime.
The IOC was deeply disappointed that its diplomatic representations to the Iranian government, seeking clemency for Navid, were ignored. Capital punishment is, of course, part of state power in many countries that take part in the Olympics. But critics contended that Navid’s trial was a sham. For them, this punishment amounted to a political execution.
Champion Iranian wrestler Navid Afkari had hoped to compete in Tokyo. However, he was executed in September 2020. AAP/EPA/NWRI handout
Navid had aspired to be at the Tokyo Olympics. Exiled Iranian activists argued that, in the wake of this athlete’s execution, the IOC should ban their country from the 2021 games.
Yet this did not happen. Discussing the case, the IOC vice president, John Coates, personified the IOC’s naïveté when he noted:
The difficulty for us is this execution didn’t relate to a sporting event.
However, he pointed out that when Iranian athletes refused to compete against Israeli athletes, a suspension ensued. In terms of Navid, though, Coates sat firmly on the IOC’s neutrality fence:
We’ve been getting two sides to the story as to whether he got a fair go or didn’t get a fair go.
Gaming the Olympics
Although the Olympic Truce is a public relations metaphor rather than a declaration with practical salience, the games environment may inadvertently provide safe haven opportunities for athletes from countries with repressive political regimes.
The best-known example of this was the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, which featured the defection of some 55 Hungarian athletes to the West in the wake of the Soviet invasion of Hungary. However, political asylum at the Olympics is relatively uncommon and, in the context of the Tokyo games, unlikely. The Japanese government has no appetite for political refugees, with long-term detention the norm.
The IOC, meanwhile, has conceived its own safe haven for a small number of Olympic athletes who have fled conflict and assumed the status of refugees. The IOC Refugee Olympic Team, which began at the Rio Olympics of 2016, has now been selected for Tokyo. It features 29 athletes, of whom four are originally from Iran. The best known of the Iranians is taekwondo star Kimia Alizadeh, who absconded during athletic competition in Europe.
Notwithstanding the IOC’s commitment to “political neutrality”, Kimia’s claims of oppression by the Iran regime are manifest in their profile of her as a “refugee Olympian. So, in a decidedly political pivot, the IOC welcomes Iran to the Tokyo Olympics, along with four Iranian athletes who fled to seek political asylum.
Notwithstanding the Olympic ideals of friendly dialogue during the games, the schism between political refugees and their original countries is hardly going to evaporate.
More generally, the IOC’s selectively applied position of political neutrality is certain to provide ongoing consternation given that the world’s most repressive regimes are welcomed into the Olympic family. Arguably, the IOC’s apolitical position actually emboldens dictatorships and human rights abuses. It offers no consequences except in the case of athletes prevented from playing sport.
Daryl Adair 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.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By C Raina MacIntyre, Professor of Global Biosecurity, NHMRC Principal Research Fellow, Head, Biosecurity Program, Kirby Institute, UNSW
Joel Carrett/AAP
The Greater Sydney lockdown began on June 26 and almost a month later, New South Wales is recording around 100 new COVID cases a day. We are also seeing the virus spread well beyond the initial eastern suburbs cluster. The virus then spread from NSW to Victoria resulting in a lockdown there too, followed by South Australia.
Delta is the most contagious of all variants known. The original Wuhan strain was overtaken by the more contagious D614G strain by March 2020, and that virus was responsible for the Victorian second wave.
One study found the amount of virus shed from people infected with Delta to be over 1,000 times greater than from the original 2020 strain identified in Wuhan. Another study, which hasn’t yet been peer reviewed, showed Delta is more than twice as likely to cause hospitalisation, ICU admission and death.
So, the successful test and trace strategy of NSW, which controlled the Crossroads Hotel outbreak a year ago without needing a stringent lockdown, has not worked as well against Delta.
Delta makes the job so much harder
In the absence of enough vaccines for everyone, control of the epidemic requires:
identifying all new cases by testing and isolating them to prevent further transmission
tracing all contacts and quarantining them for the incubation period, so they don’t cause further transmission. SARS-CoV-2 is highly infectious in asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic people, so without contact tracing these people would carry on, unaware they are infected, and may infect many others. Retrospective contact tracing is also important to make sure you find from whom each person caught their infection
masks to reduce inhaled virus for well people and also exhaled virus from infected people
social distancing measures to reduce contact between people and thereby reduce transmission. Lockdown is the most extreme of these measures.
The struggle with the Sydney outbreak doesn’t mean contact tracing and testing are not working. In fact, until about July 16, measures were working — as reflected in an increasing “doubling time” (the time taken for case numbers to double). We want to see the time taken for case numbers to double increasing — that means spread is slowing.
However after the outbreak spread to Southwest Sydney, it began growing again, prompting an extended and stricter lockdown.
Contact tracing, quarantine of contacts and case finding by mass testing remain the cornerstones of epidemic control, especially when we remain largely unvaccinated.
But Delta makes the job so much harder.
One detailed study showed the average time from exposure to becoming infected was six days in 2020, but four days with Delta. This makes it harder to identify contacts before they’re infected.
So what can we do other than lock down every time there’s an outbreak?
First, we need vaccines urgently. Only just under 12% of the population are fully vaccinated. The fact we’re largely unvaccinated leaves us vulnerable to severe outbreaks, especially with the more severe Delta variant. In countries like Israel, which has fully vaccinated over 60% of its population, although Delta is causing outbreaks, people are largely protected from hospitalisation and death.
We need to invest in more vaccine manufacturing capacity, including for mRNA vaccines, think ahead and start ordering booster vaccines to match variants such as Delta and another variant Epsilon now. If we don’t do this we could be experiencing “groundhog day” again next year, locked down and yet again waiting for vaccines.
Meanwhile, we cannot give up and let Delta spread just because we yearn for our old lives. Delta sweeping the nation will not give us what we desire — it will bring the dark hand of the pandemic into our homes, causing illness and death in loved ones and much worse economic loss. In a largely unvaccinated population, this more deadly virus will be catastrophic.
For now the strategy pioneered by Victoria last year may help — tracing contacts of contacts to be one step ahead. If the time to becoming infected is too short to catch contacts before they are contagious, then this is a good strategy. NSW has started doing this, so hopefully this will make a difference in Sydney’s ongoing outbreak.
C Raina MacIntyre receives funding from NHMRC and the Medical Research Futures Fund.
In a small, isolated village in southern Sydney, the local sulphur-crested cockatoos are particularly clever. Once a week, when the neighbours roll their wheelie bins to the curb, cockies fly over and, with skillful dexterity, open the lids in search of food.
It may seem as though cockatoos opening a curb-side bin lid is a simple action.
But our research, published today in Science, discovered this behaviour is far more significant than you may have first thought.
Sulphur-crested cockatoos are copycats. After one solves the lid-flip puzzle, other birds nearby imitate the new foraging behaviour in a stunning display of “social learning”.
For decades, scientists believed humans were the only animals capable of culture. Now, thanks to the community’s observations, we can add parrots to this small (but growing) list, which also includes chimpanzees, humpback whales and New Caledonian crows.
Clever, mischievous cockies
In Australia, sulphur-crested cockatoos (Cacatua galerita) are often thought of as being in your face, full of attitude and mischief. But if we take the time to observe them, we can see they’re also intelligent, curious and adaptable.
You might have seen a variety of their social interactions, such as play. Have you watched cockies hanging on powerlines like a trapeze artist?
Cockatoos are also highly dexterous, holding food with their foot and manipulating it with their beak and tongue. This includes skillfully eating the seeds from a gardener’s mortal enemy — the bindii weed — and lessor foes, such as onion grass.
Cockatoos love to play, and swing on powerlines like trapeze artists. Shutterstock
But bin opening is a new foraging behaviour that hadn’t been observed until recently. Thankfully, one member of our research team lives in the local area, and saw cockatoos opening bins firsthand in 2014.
This kicked off our bin-opening survey in 2018, where we asked community members to report if they “have” and, importantly, “have not” observed bin opening across the greater Sydney region and beyond.
Thanks to these reports and our own observations, we soon discovered this behaviour spread to neighbouring suburbs over the following years.
We also found that between suburbs, where the birds’ social networks were separated, there were subtle differences in bin-opening styles, and these became increasingly different between suburbs further apart.
Only around 10% of birds in each flock learned how to open bins. The rest benefit from the behaviours of these pioneers. Interestingly, we found adult males were most likely to know how to open bins. Adult females and juveniles also displayed this behaviour, but to a lesser extent.
Cockatoos use their feet and beak to lift open the the wheelie bin lid. Barbara Klump, Author provided
What’s all the fuss about, anyway?
To many of us familiar with the cleverness of cockatoos, it might come as no surprise they can learn by watching each other. So in case you aren’t as fascinated as we are by this discovery, here are a couple of reasons to get excited.
First, it shows we can all make interesting scientific observations in our everyday lives — even in the suburbs where we live.
Second, only 70 odd years ago, humans started questioning the idea only human society was culturally complex. Humans are masters of social learning. From an early age, we copy skills from other children and adults.
But this study helps reaffirm that a range of other animals are also culturally complex.
There are three main traits associated with so-called “cultural animals”: larger brain size, living in social groups, and being long lived. This is known to scientists as the “cultural intelligence hypothesis”.
And when lands change, for example, for urban growth or agriculture, it stimulates the emergence and spread of adaptive behaviours. This creates new opportunities for cultures to develop.
Chimpanzees and other primates are among the few animal groups known to be capable of social learning. Now, we can add parrots to this list. Shutterstock
Cities and urban areas provide fertile grounds for this, as animals that live there often have to change their behaviours to exploit different foods and shelter options, and to survive new threats — think cats, rats, and cars.
It’s likely most of us have observed animals adapting to new environments. A classic example from Sydney is the bin-chicken — aka Australian white ibis. These birds also forage in bins (but not opening the lids) and now nest in urban palm trees rather than their traditional flooded wetland reed beds.
Another fascinating example is grey-headed flying-foxes. Despite being vulnerable to extinction due to population decline and habitat loss, these bats have become more common in urban areas over recent decades. This has required adaptation to lights, noise, humans, and the different flowers and fruits we grow in our gardens, parks and streets.
Adaptive behaviours like these are assumed to be the result of genetic change, or innovations. The challenge is to confirm if these innovations spread via social learning through the population, resulting in new, adaptive cultures emerging.
You may find bin chickens annoying, but they are incredibly resilient, adaptive birds. Shutterstock
How you can make a difference
Cities are also full of people who can share observations of innovative behaviours, and we encourage you to get involved in citizen science.
A major benefit of community participation in science is increased geographic coverage in a short amount of time. Individual scientists can only survey a small number of sites, but by involving the community, we can cover large parts of a suburb, city, or a country at the same time.
There are dedicated citizen science projects you can participate in, such as our Big City Birds research. We use this app to learn about nesting, foraging, nocturnal roosts, and adaptive behaviours of birds across Australia (and not just in the big cities).
Other recommended projects include eBird, iNaturalist, DigiVol, FrogID, and Urban Field Naturalist. It even helps to share any interesting observations through social media, an indirect way to inform scientific research. To help us, you can tag @Big_City_Birds or use this hashtag: #BigCityBirds.
With a range of similar studies underway, it’s likely scientists will discover more evidence of culturally complex behaviours in other species, continuing to challenge our idea of what it means to be human.
John Martin receives funding from the ARC.
Barbara Klump receives funding from Max Planck Society (Max Planck Society Group Leader Fellowship to Lucy Aplin), National Geographic Society (Early Career Grant).
Lucy Aplin 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.
Global developments in tertiary education suggest the critical scientific study of religion is endangered. One of the departments slated for extinguishment amid the pandemic-related upheavals was my own at the University of Sydney. This reflects a trend that has captured the academy in Australia and worldwide.
If we take South Australia as an example, over the past decade programs for the critical study of religion at the University of South Australia have been almost completely extinguished, while programs in theology, such as at Flinders, find their future assured. On the east coast, studies of religion programs at the universities of Queensland, Monash, Deakin and Newcastle have been wound back greatly, bled into “multidisciplinary” programs, or closed. Departmental identities have been terminated. What isolated staff are left teach just a handful of electives.
Part of this move to kill the academic study of religion comes from ignorance of what it entails. It is generally accepted that an historian studies history because they want to know what really happened. In contrast, the general assumption is that if a scholar studies religion, then it can only be because they have motives that are only partly scholarly. This is untrue, but the long shadow of theology unhelpfully hangs over us.
Once theology was seen in the Western academy as the “queen of the sciences”. The study of Christianity and its philosophies was considered the keystone of all other knowledge.
The legacy of the time when theology was ‘queen of the sciences’ can clearly be seen in King’s College at the University of Cambridge. Shutterstock
Theology was further removed from its queenly status when geologists showed us the age of the planet was many millions rather than thousands of years old. Then, of course, came Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in 1859. A few decades later Friedrich Nietzsche finally declared God dead.
Yet Christian theology was deeply embedded in the university system. Despite a revolution in faith, the development of the secular state and rising adherence to atheism, theology still influences our understanding of how scholars study religion today. Partly this is because many age-old theology departments continue to survive in the academy.
Their primary aim is to make Christianity fit for purpose in modernity (and therefore to stem the flow of apostates and retain its power in the public sphere). This is not an ideal nor inclusive academic aim in our multicultural, multifaith world. These centres will continue to survive because of church and other external funding as much as by the force of tradition.
Additionally, the uneasy relationship between religion and secularism makes cutting the scholarly examination of religion the lazy go-to for management in their present war against humanities education. They see it as not being industry-focused nor turning out “job-ready” graduates.
Religion isn’t going away
During the 20th century, the badly evidenced “secularisation” theory posited that religion would eventually die out as our states became more secular and scientific. This is clearly not happening – although it might seem to some that it is.
Inside modern multifaith democracies, religions honour an unstated social contract by mostly keeping themselves away from our public spaces. This curated invisibility does not mean religions are ceasing to exist. It also means their influence on public policy can be much more discrete. Unless these influences and behaviours are critically examined by experts trained in religious literacy, they can go unseen.
Religions have shaped and will continue to shape our social, cultural and political structures. We have a Pentecostal prime minister, and faith-based lobby groups are constantly vying for our politicians’ ears. We have new religions constantly coming into being.
And religions can, on rare occasions, threaten our security. Yet a careful examination of our suburbs will demonstrate the significant contributions a wide range of global religious communities make to social cohesion and community prosperity. The facts of these developments will go uncharted if theology is the only academic paradigm for examining the spirituality of our nation.
What happens if we lose religious studies?
The consequences of the closures of religious studies programs are clear: in a world that ceases to be critically aware of religion, religious authority is strengthened through an ignorance that can be shrouded in mysticism. If the only chance we have to study religion at the tertiary level is through a Christian, theological viewpoint, then Western universities are returned to shoring up the high status of one religious tradition over all others.
While theology continues to focus strongly on the faith study of Christianity, at Sydney we find one of the last departments in Australia where the critical investigation of all religions still takes place. It is a necessary part of the academy and yet its closure is quite possible.
Abolishing what is left of the critical study of religion on our campuses will allow theology, biblical studies and other faith-focused fields to determine how our graduates examine religion. This will not be through the scholarly tools of science, sociology or history, but through close study of scripture and church philosophy.
University campuses more generally will be affected, too. Students and staff will become less critical of religious claims when they see no scholarly force with the religious literacy and confidence required to seriously question those claims.
I am a senior lecturer in the Department of Studies in Religion – and so have some vested interest in keeping the critical study of religion alive.
