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

The idea that young Australians should be able to dip into their super to help buy their first home keeps going round and round. The most recent iteration put forward by the Coalition’s Tim Wilson and a clutch of other backbenchers has the catchy slogan Home First, Super Second.

Wilson and co. are right in their diagnosis: Australia has a housing affordability problem. But they are wrong in their prescription: their proposal could actually make housing less affordable.

There are several much-better ways to revive the great Australian dream for young Australians.

Home ownership is plummeting

Home ownership rates are falling fast, especially among the young and poor.

In Australia today, fewer than half of 25-34 year-olds own their home.

Home ownership among the poorest fifth of that age group has fallen from 63% in 1981 to 23% today.

Today’s younger Australians are tomorrow’s retirees.

These trends suggest that by 2056 just two-thirds of retirees will own their homes, down from nearly 80% today.

The government’s Retirement Income Review showed most homeowners on track for a comfortable retirement. But Australians who rent are facing an increasingly bleak future.

Senior Australians who rent in the private market are much more likely to suffer financial stress than homeowners or renters in public housing.

Nearly one half of all retired renters are in poverty — with incomes below half the median — when housing costs are taken into account. Their numbers will only grow as fewer retirees in future own their homes.

Super can’t much help

Saving for a deposit is the biggest hurdle to home ownership. In the early 1990s it took six years to save a 20% deposit on an average home. Today it takes 10 years.

That’s why the Home First Super Second campaign is superficially attractive. It seems obvious that compulsory superannuation – forcing workers to save almost 10% of their wages for retirement – stops many from buying a home, especially poorer younger Australians without access to the Bank of Mum and Dad.

And it’s true that allowing people to dip into their super to help buy a house would certainly not leave Australians impoverished in retirement.

Read more: What matters is the home: most retirees well off, some very badly off

Grattan Institute research finds that most Australians would have a comfortable retirement even if they withdrew $20,000 early – because whatever they lost in super would largely be made up by a greater entitlement to the age pension.

But the problem for the Home First Super Second campaign is that allowing Australians to use their super to buy a home would do little if anything to increase home ownership rates.

The younger, poorer Australians who are increasingly being priced out of home ownership don’t have much in the way of superannuation.

Read more: Early access to super doesn’t justify higher compulsory contributions

The poorest 20% of households headed by a 35-44 year old – precisely the group for whom home ownership is falling fast – typically have no superannuation.

The next poorest 20% typically have only $15,000 in super.

It means allowing Australians to use their super for housing would mainly help wealthier people buy more expensive homes.

And there’s another problem: the more people you allow to use money from their super to buy a home, the more demand there is for housing.

Higher demand means higher prices, meaning the biggest winners would be the people who own homes already.

What can help is more homes

If Tim Wilson and the Morrison government really want to make housing affordable, they need to get more houses built.

Recent Grattan Institute research finds that relaxing planning rules to allow more homes to be built near the centres of Australia’s major cities would help.

Read more: RBA research shows that zoning restrictions are driving up housing prices

The federal government has no direct control over planning rules, but it can provide incentives for state and local governments to relax planning rules, similar to those put forward by President Joe Biden in the United States.

As hard as it is, increasing the supply of housing — rather than pumping money from super into an already rising market — is the smartest way to make housing more affordable. Maybe Tim Wilson could start a campaign.

– ref. Housing affordability is a problem. Here’s why super-for-housing isn’t a solution – https://theconversation.com/housing-affordability-is-a-problem-heres-why-super-for-housing-isnt-a-solution-158699

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Simon Quilty, Senior Staff Specialist, Alice Springs Hospital. Honorary, Australian National University

A sizeable chunk of Northern Territory’s doctors are thinking about leaving the territory because of climate change, our new research shows.

Our study, just published in The Lancet Planetary Health, shows for 34% of doctors in our survey, climate change is already, or is likely to, make them consider leaving the NT.

If they do, this would leave a large gap in the territory’s health-care system, which already suffers from a fast turnover of staff. These doctors would leave behind communities already suffering from the effects of climate change.

Read more: As heatwaves become more extreme, which jobs are riskiest?

Extreme heat and getting worse

The two summers of 2018-20 were the hottest ever recorded in the NT.

From December 2019 to January 2020, temperatures were about 4℃ above the long-term average. And in late 2019, it was so hot, remote kidney dialysis centres struggled to cool water for their life-saving dialysis machines.

Some of the hottest conditions in 2019 were in the Katherine region, which shattered previous records. However, this shouldn’t have been a surprise.

In 2004 the CSIRO reported the average number of days over 40℃ in the Katherine region would increase by up to 35 days a year by 2030, due to climate change.

In 2019 there were 54 days of 40℃ or above in Katherine. This surpassed CSIRO’s predictions more than a decade earlier than projected.

Climate change is predicted to affect the NT in other ways. According to the territory government’s own report, the NT can expect warmer spells to last longer, more frequent fire weather, to have more intense/heavy rainfall, more intense tropical cyclones, and rising sea levels.

NT has enough trouble retaining health workers anyway

Even without the effects of climate change, health workforce shortages in the NT have been significant challenges. The persistent challenges of attracting and retaining staff leads to high rates of churn. An entire clinic’s staff can turn over in just months, and the impacts can be shattering.

When Katherine’s only GP clinic closed last year, many people were forced to travel more than 300 kilometres to Darwin to see a family doctor.

For us doctors in the NT, knowing how hard it can be to recruit other doctors, summers like that of 2019-20 have raised the stakes. I’ve heard colleagues lament the impact of climate change and talk of moving south. Now we have the data to show how real this threat is.

We found out exactly the extent of the problem

We surveyed doctors working in the NT, with 362 responses, representing over 25% of the workforce.

Our study showed NT doctors believe climate change is a serious public health issue. A total of 85% indicated climate change is already or is likely to negatively impact their patients’ health; 74% believed climate change is already causing or likely to cause parts of the NT to become uninhabitable. And for 34%, climate change is already, or likely to, make them consider leaving the NT.

Read more: Climate change is resulting in profound, immediate and worsening health impacts, over 120 researchers say

Extreme heat poses real risks, especially to the elderly and those with chronic conditions. Extreme heat is associated with increased rates of illness and death. Hot weather exacerbates existing heart, lung and kidney disease, and compounds mental illness.

For people living in the NT, the reality of this new and predictably worsening heat is tangible. Weekend sports are being affected, the period of relief in the cooler months is becoming shorter, and it’s uncomfortable simply going outside on very hot days. It is hard to contemplate living in a future NT hotter than it already is.

Read more: How a rethink of emergency care is closing the gap, one person at a time

Why not move south?

One means of adapting to climate change is to move to cooler climates. But such migration is an option only for people with the means to move. People without such means will have no choice but to stay.

It is unlikely our findings about climate change affecting migration plans are confined to doctors, or to the NT. In Australia and globally, many regions are facing the dual burden of health workforce shortages and increasing exposure to climate risks.

Read more: ‘Climigration’: when communities must move because of climate change

In many of these regions, even small increases of out-migration could have significant impacts on health care.

It’s true most doctors in our survey did not think climate change would make them leave the NT, thought this unlikely, or were undecided. However, the 34% of our respondents who thought climate change might affect their plans represent 115 doctors, who we can’t afford to lose.

To address these issues, we need to urgently consider climate change when planning future health workforce needs. And we need to include health workers when Australia assesses the risk of climate change impacts.

These are vital if we are to ensure rural communities, in particular, have secure access to health care in the face of rapidly emerging climate threats.

– ref. Too hot, heading south: how climate change may drive one-third of doctors out of the NT – https://theconversation.com/too-hot-heading-south-how-climate-change-may-drive-one-third-of-doctors-out-of-the-nt-156959

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Luke Jeffrey, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Southern Cross University

Trees are the Earth’s lungs – it’s well understood they drawdown and lock up vast amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But emerging research is showing trees can also emit methane, and it’s currently unknown just how much.

This could be a major problem, given methane is a greenhouse gas about 45 times more potent than carbon dioxide at warming our planet.

However, in a world-first discovery published in Nature Communications, we found unique methane-eating communities of bacteria living within the bark of a common Australian tree species: paperbark (Melaleuca quinquenervia). These microbial communities were abundant, thriving, and mitigated about one third of the substantial methane emissions from paperbark that would have otherwise ended up in the atmosphere.

Because research on tree methane (“treethane”) is still in its relative infancy, there are many questions that need to be resolved. Our discovery helps fill these critical gaps, and will change the way we view the role of trees within the global methane cycle.

Wait, trees emit methane?

Yes, you read that right! Methane gas within cottonwood trees was first reported in 1907, but has been largely overlooked for almost a century.

Only in 2018 was a tree methane review published and then a research blueprint put forward, labelling this as “a new frontier of the global carbon cycle”. It has since been gaining rapid momentum, with studies now spanning the forests of Japan, UK, Germany, Panama, Finland, China, Australia, US, Canada, France and Borneo just to name a few.

In some cases, treethane emissions are significant. For example, the tropical Amazon basin is the world largest natural source of methane. Trees account for around 50% of its methane emissions.

Likewise, research from 2020 found low-lying subtropical Melaleuca forests in Australia emit methane at similar rates to trees in the Amazon.

Dead trees can emit methane, too. At the site of a catastrophic climate-related mangrove forest dieback in the Gulf of Carpentaria, dead mangrove trees were discovered to emit eight times more methane than living ones. This poses new questions for how climate change may induce positive feedbacks, triggering potent greenhouse gas release from dead and dying trees.

Treethane emissions most likely account for some of the large uncertainties within the most recent global methane budget, which tries to determine where all the methane in the atmosphere comes from. But we’re still a long way from refining an answer to this question. Currently, trees are not yet included as a distinct emissions category.

So where exactly is the treethane coming from?

Within wetland forests, scientists assumed most treethane emissions originate from the underlying soils. The methane is transported upwards via the tree roots and stems, then through to the atmosphere via their bark.

We confirmed, in other recent research, that wetland soils were indeed the source of methane emissions in lowland forest trees. But this wasn’t always the case.

Some lowland forest trees such as cottonwood can emit flammable methane directly from their stems, which is likely produced by microbes living within the moist trees themselves. Dry upland forest trees are also emerging as methane emitters too — albeit at much lower rates.

Discovering methane-eating bacteria

For our latest research, we used microbiological extraction techniques to sample the diverse microbial communities that live within trees.

We discovered the bark of paperbark trees provide a unique home for methane-oxidizing bacteria — bacteria that “consumes” methane and turns it into carbon dioxide, a far less potent greenhouse gas.

Remarkably, these bacteria made up to 25% of total microbial communities living in the bark, and were consuming around 36% of the tree’s methane. It appears these microbes make an easy living in the dark, moist and methane-rich environments.

Read more: Emissions of methane – a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide – are rising dangerously

This discovery will revolutionise the way in which we view methane emitting trees and the novel microbes living within them.

Only through understanding why, how, which, when and where trees emit the most methane, may we more effectively plant forests that effectively draw down carbon dioxide while avoiding unwanted methane emissions.

Our discovery that bark-dwelling microbes can mitigate substantial treethane emissions complicates this equation, but provides some reassurance that microbiomes have evolved within trees to consume methane as well.

Future work will undoubtedly look further afield, exploring the microbial communities of other methane-emitting forests.

A trillion trees to combat climate change

We must be clear: trees are in no way shape or form bad for our climate and provide a swath of other priceless ecosystem benefits. And the amount of methane emitted from trees is generally dwarfed by the amount of carbon dioxide they will take in over their lifetime.

However, there are currently 3.04 trillion trees on Earth. With both upland and lowland forests capable of emitting methane, mere trace amounts of methane on a global scale may amount to a substantial methane source.

As we now have a global movement aiming to reforest large swaths of the Earth with 1 trillion trees, knowledge surrounding methane emitting trees is critical.

Read more: Half of global methane emissions come from aquatic ecosystems – much of this is human-made

– ref. We found methane-eating bacteria living in a common Australian tree. It could be a game changer for curbing greenhouse gases – https://theconversation.com/we-found-methane-eating-bacteria-living-in-a-common-australian-tree-it-could-be-a-game-changer-for-curbing-greenhouse-gases-158430

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

Last week, people were falling over themselves to get vaccination appointments and had to be told, by their doctors and their government, to be patient.

Patience is still needed — indeed, more than ever — but now there’s rising vaccination hesitation and the message from the government is people should remain eager for the jab.

Conservative advice from the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI), recommending against the AstraZeneca vaccine for the under 50s (because of the very small danger of blood clots), has alarmed many people.

The danger is the advice has a knock-on effect, spooking people to whom it doesn’t apply.

Apart from younger frontline workers in health and aged care, those with underlying health conditions, and certain others, under 50s are not presently being vaccinated.

But with changing messages, some of the over 70s — the cohort now at the head of the vaccination queue — might start to have second thoughts, despite being told they shouldn’t.

They may or may not be reassured by Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Friday declaring his mother is lining up for her AstraZeneca shot soon. Or Commonwealth Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly sharing the fact he’s urging his 86-year-old father to do so.

Thursday’s unwelcome medical advice was just the latest setback to the rollout and the Morrison government.

There have been the blocks and delays imposed on supplies from Europe and CSL production (of AstraZeneca) has been slower than anticipated.

The logistics haven’t all gone smoothly. Despite protestations to the contrary, the Commonwealth’s distribution has been sub-optimal.

Some doctors have complained of getting inadequate supplies; the arrangements for nursing homes have had glitches.

The whole program is running massively behind the original schedule. The government on Friday was celebrating passing one million doses administered, when we should have been well past four million.

We’re marching at a much slower pace than the United States or the United Kingdom. In the UK, incidentally, the authorities are being less conservative about AstraZeneca — it’s the under 30s who are being offered an alternative.

One can only imagine Morrison’s reaction when he was delivered the ATAGI advice, which of course he had to follow (even though some experts disagree with it). As he said, “You don’t get to choose the medical advice that’s provided by the medical experts”.

One guide to the prime ministerial mood is the fact he stresses it’s only advice to avoid AstraZeneca if you are under 50. The decision is up to you, and your doctor (though you will be signing a rigorous consent form if you ignore it).

But that line just contributes to the muddled messaging many people will feel they’re receiving.

With an already disorderly program thrown into further disarray by the medical advice, the government on Thursday night and Friday went into overdrive.

Another 20 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine — now the one for the under 50s — were instantly procured (this is on top of the 20 million already purchased). This is good news, if you are patient. They are not due to land until the last quarter of the year.

Health Minister Greg Hunt says Pfizer doses scheduled to arrive in coming days will ramp up, but details are sketchy.

The government is anxious to say the immediate stage of the vaccination schedule should not be much delayed.

The elderly who are being vaccinated now are good to get AstraZeneca.

As for the health and aged care workers? Determinedly looking on the bright side, Morrison noted many are over 50. Pfizer vaccines will have to be arranged for the younger ones, however, which could involve some scrambling.

But the rollout generally has to be recalibrated and delays are expected to hit in coming months when the program gets to the younger section of the general population.

For these people, vaccination is not as critical in health terms as it is for those older. But for the economy, vaccinating them as soon as can be done is vital.

At one level, Australia is being protected by our previous (and continued) success on the health front, which has left us with little or no community transmission. The rollout problems would be a disaster if we had COVID raging.

But we are riding on our luck. There are no guarantees against serious outbreaks.

Even without those, the longer the rollout drags on, the more we have the disruption of small lockdowns, and the slower the re-opening of Australia’s international border, with all the consequences that brings.

Morrison, who recently talked so confidently about everyone who was eligible and willing receiving one vaccine shot by October, now won’t commit to any date.

It would be a nightmare for him if the rollout wasn’t finished by year’s end, and the international border remained substantially shut.

He’d be only months from an election campaign, and Australians would probably be suffering a bad dose of cabin fever.

Politically, state and territory leaders have reaped rewards in elections from being seen to handle COVID well. A few months ago the pundits predicted Morrison would do the same.

But if they come to believe he has comprehensively mishandled the vaccine rollout, the voters could wreak vengeance.

– ref. View from The Hill: Voters could wreak vengeance if Scott Morrison can’t get rollout back on track – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-voters-could-wreak-vengeance-if-scott-morrison-cant-get-rollout-back-on-track-158720

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

A week ago, people were falling over themselves to get vaccination appointments and had to be told, by their doctors and their government, to be patient.

Patience is still needed — indeed, more than ever — but now there’s rising vaccination hesitation and the message from the government is people should remain eager for the jab.

Conservative advice from the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI), recommending against the AstraZeneca vaccine for the under 50s (because of the very small danger of blood clots), has alarmed many people.

The danger is the advice has a knock-on effect, spooking people to whom it doesn’t apply.

Apart from younger frontline workers in health and aged care, those with underlying health conditions, and certain others, under 50s are not presently being vaccinated.

But with changing messages, some of the over 70s — the cohort now at the head of the vaccination queue — might start to have second thoughts, despite being told they shouldn’t.

They may or may not be reassured by Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Friday declaring his mother is lining up for her AstraZeneca shot soon. Or Commonwealth Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly sharing the fact he’s urging his 86-year old father to do so.

Thursday’s unwelcome medical advice was just the latest setback to the rollout and the Morrison government.

There have been the blocks and delays imposed on supplies from Europe and CSL production (of AstraZeneca) has been slower than anticipated.

The logistics haven’t all gone smoothly. Despite protestations to the contrary, the Commonwealth’s distribution has been sub-optimal.

Some doctors have complained of getting inadequate supplies; the arrangements for nursing homes have had glitches.

The whole program is running massively behind the original schedule. The government on Friday was celebrating passing one million doses administered, when we should have been well past four million.

We’re marching at a much slower pace than the United States or the United Kingdom. In the UK, incidentally, the authorities are being less conservative about AstraZeneca — it’s the under 30s who are being offered an alternative.

One can only imagine Morrison’s reaction when he was delivered ATAGI’s advice, which of course he had to follow (even though some experts disagree with it). As he said, “You don’t get to choose the medical advice that’s provided by the medical experts”.

One guide to the prime ministerial mood is the fact he stresses it’s only advice to avoid AstraZeneca if you are under 50. The decision is up to you, and your doctor (though you will be signing a rigorous consent form if you ignore it).

But that line just contributes to the muddled messaging many people will feel they’re receiving.

With an already disorderly program thrown into further disarray by the medical advice, the government on Thursday night and Friday went into overdrive.

Another 20 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine — now the one for the under 50s — were instantly procured (this is on top of the 20 million already purchased). This is good news, if you are patient. They are not due to land until the last quarter of the year.

Health Minister Greg Hunt says Pfizer doses scheduled to arrive in coming days will ramp up, but details are sketchy.

The government is anxious to say the immediate stage of the vaccination schedule should not be much delayed.

The elderly who are being vaccinated now are good to get AstraZeneca.

As for the health and aged care workers? Determinedly looking on the bright side, Morrison noted many are over 50. Pfizer vaccines will have to be arranged for the younger ones, however, which could involve some scrambling.

But the rollout generally has to be recalibrated and delays are expected to hit in coming months when the program gets to the younger section of the general population.

For these people, vaccination is not as critical in health terms as it is for those older. But for the economy, vaccinating them as soon as can be done is vital.

At one level, Australia is being protected by our previous (and continued) success on the health front, which has left us with little or no community transmission. The rollout problems would be a disaster if we had COVID raging.

But we are riding on our luck. There are no guarantees against serious outbreaks.

Even without those, the longer the rollout drags on, the more we have the disruption of small lockdowns, and the slower the re-opening of Australia’s international border, with all the consequences that brings.

Morrison, who recently talked so confidently about everyone who was eligible and willing receiving one vaccine shot by October, now won’t commit to any date.

It would be a nightmare for him if the rollout wasn’t finished by year’s end, and the international border remained substantially shut.

He’d be only months from an election campaign, and Australians would probably be suffering a bad dose of cabin fever.

Politically, state and territory leaders have reaped rewards in elections from being seen to handle COVID well. A few months ago the pundits predicted Morrison would do the same.

But if they come to believe he has comprehensively mishandled the vaccine rollout, the voters could extract vengeance.

– ref. View from The Hill: Voters could extract vengeance if Scott Morrison can’t get rollout back on track – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-voters-could-extract-vengeance-if-scott-morrison-cant-get-rollout-back-on-track-158720

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hassan Vally, Associate Professor, La Trobe University

Last night, the federal government announced substantially revised plans for the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine in Australia.

Due to concerns about the vaccine’s possible links to a rare blood-clotting disorder, and following advice from the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI), the Pfizer vaccine is now preferred for people under 50.

These developments raise questions about how authorities and individuals assess risk, and respond. Let’s try to make some sense of it.

Read more: New setback for vaccine rollout, with AstraZeneca not advised for people under 50

What’s happened?

Reports about rare blood clots possibly associated with the AstraZeneca vaccine have been floating around for a few weeks now.

So why has it taken so long for the government to clarify this relationship and make the recommendations? Authorities haven’t been keeping us in the dark.

When you have a new condition like this, and experts are examining data in real time, it takes a while to understand exactly what’s going on: to develop a clear case definition, to be confident what you’re seeing is a real phenomenon, and importantly, whether it’s likely to be caused by something in particular (in this case, the vaccine). It’s made more difficult when the event is very rare.

After reviewing a wide range of data relating to cases of this rare blood-clotting syndrome predominantly in the United Kingdom and Europe, Australian experts have now reached the threshold of evidence they needed to be satisfied there may well be a causal link between the AstraZeneca vaccine and this condition.

Understanding risk

It’s important to note every therapeutic agent (a drug or a vaccine, for example) carries the risk of unintended consequences. For most of us, most of the time, this will be minimal. This is a biological reality reflecting the interconnectedness and complexity of the human body.

So like for any other therapeutic agents, there are risks as well as benefits we have to accept in taking COVID vaccines. What we need to do is to weigh up these risks against the benefits.

We make these sorts of calculations every day in all aspects of our lives. When we decide to get in the car, we know there’s a risk associated with driving. But we assess the risks are worth taking as the benefits of getting where we want to go quickly are worth it.

Mostly, we make these calculations without being consciously aware we’re doing it. Sometimes the parameters underlying these calculations are easy to grapple with — but sometimes they’re more nebulous.

Read more: Australia’s bungled COVID vaccine rollout suffers another setback. Here’s how we can get it back on track

Weighing up the risks and benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine

We know the vaccine offers near-complete protection against severe disease and death from COVID-19.

We also know severe side effects from the vaccine, in particular vaccine induced prothrombotic immune thrombocytopenia (VIPIT, the blood-clotting disorder in question), are extremely rare. But the condition is serious and around 25% of people have died after developing VIPIT.

There are a range of estimates of how often this syndrome occurs. But it’s generally accepted its incidence is about 4-6 cases per million doses of vaccine.

To put it in perspective, this puts the risk in the same order of magnitude to the average risk of dying if you complete a marathon, go scuba diving, or rock climbing.

It’s also important to note that we’ve started to see a pattern in that those who are at higher risk of this syndrome tend to be younger and tend to be women. We don’t have a clear understanding of why this is, but recognising this is really helpful in terms of making decisions about how to mitigate this risk.

Why the balancing act isn’t so easy

Although we have a pretty good understanding of the rate of severe outcomes from COVID-19, since we have over 12 months’ experience now of this illness, context is important. There are different levels of risk depending on where you live and what the rate of transmission in the community is.

While it’s all well and good in some countries to say you’re more likely to get very sick with or die from COVID than experience a complication from the vaccine, in Australia we have next to no COVID, so the risk of adverse outcomes from COVID is much lower. This needs to be factored into the equation.

We also have different strains of the virus, which can vary in how infectious they are and how sick they might make you. This also needs to be added to the mix.

In acknowledging the difficulty in completing these risk-benefit analyses, it’s really helpful to use a visualisation the University of Cambridge has put together based on UK data, which we’ve adapted here, comparing the risks and benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

It depicts the risk of adverse effects from COVID (being in ICU) against adverse outcomes from the vaccine, based on an assumed incidence of COVID in the community of two in 10,000 people. Although the incidence rate in Australia is lower than this, this visual is extremely useful in conveying the nature of the relationship between the risks and benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine in Australia.

What this visual shows clearly is that the benefits of the vaccine increase the older you are, because the risk of severe disease is higher the older you get.

It also shows that although the risks of side effects from the vaccine are relatively small regardless of age, the gap between risks and benefits narrows the younger you are. This is in part due to the reduced benefit of the vaccine for younger people who are less likely to have severe symptoms from COVID, and in part due to the increased risk of serious side effects, such as blood clots, for younger adults.

This visual clearly communicates the rationale for the changes announced yesterday. Where the risk-benefit becomes marginal, it makes sense to use other vaccines for younger adults — the Pfizer vaccine and possibly the Novavax vaccine down the track. The recommendations are both cautious and sensible.

Read more: What you need to know to understand risk estimates

– ref. A balancing act between benefits and risks: making sense of the latest vaccine news – https://theconversation.com/a-balancing-act-between-benefits-and-risks-making-sense-of-the-latest-vaccine-news-158634

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katherine Aigner, PhD candidate Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy, Australian National University

On Saturday at the Adelaide Festival there will a public showing of Australian Atomic Confessions, a documentary I co-directed about the tragic and long-lasting effects of the atomic weapons testing carried out by Britain in South Australia in the 1950s.

Amid works from 20 artists reflecting on nuclear trauma as experienced by Indigenous peoples, the discussion that follows will focus on the ways in which attempts at nuclear colonisation have continued in South Australia, and are continuing right now.

For the fourth time in 23 years South Australia is being targeted for a nuclear waste dump — this time at Napandee, a property near Kimba on the Eyre Peninsula.

The plan is likely to require the use of a port, most probably Whyalla, to receive reprocessed nuclear fuel waste by sea from France, the United Kingdom and the Lucas Heights reactor in NSW via Port Kembla.

The waste will be stored above ground in concrete vaults which will be filled for 100 years and monitored for a further 200-300 years.

Nuclear waste can remain hazardous for thousands of years.

The Barngarla people hold cultural rights and responsibilities for the region but were excluded from a government poll about the proposal because they were not deemed to be local residents.

The 734 locals who took part backed the proposal 61.6%

The Barngarla people are far from the first in South Australia to be excluded from a say about proposals to spread nuclear materials over their land.

It’s not the first such proposal

Australian Atomic Confessions explores the legacy of the nine British atomic bombs dropped on Maralinga and Emu Field in the 1950s, and the “minor trials” that continued into the 1960s.

After failed clean-ups by the British in the 1960s followed by a Royal Commission in the 1980s, the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency conducted a cleanup between 1995 and 2000 it assures us was successful to the point where most of the contaminated areas at Maralinga fall well within the clean-up standards applied for unrestricted land use.

But experts remain sceptical, given the near-surface burial of plutonium and contamination remaining across a wide area.

The Tjarutja people are allowed to move through and hunt at the Maralinga site with their radiation levels monitored but are not permitted to camp there permanently.

We are told that what happened in the 1950s wouldn’t happen today, in relation to the proposed nuclear waste dump. But it wasn’t our enemies who bombed us at Maralinga and Emu Field, it was an ally.

In exchange for allowing 12 British atomic bombs tests (including those at the Monte Bello Islands off the northern coast of Western Australia), the Australian government got access to nuclear technology which it used to build the Lucas Heights reactor.

It is primarily the nuclear waste produced from six decades of operations at Lucas Heights that would be dumped onto Barngarla country in South Australia, closing the links in this nuclear trauma chain.

Read more: Sixty years on, Maralinga reminds us not to put security over safety

Nuclear bombs and nuclear waste disproportionately impact Indigenous peoples, yet Australia still has not signed up to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The declaration requires states to ensure there is no storage or disposal of hazardous materials on the lands of Indigenous peoples without their free, prior and informed consent.

Nor has Australia shown any willingness to sign up to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons which came into force on January 22 this year after a lobbying campaign that began in Australia and was endorsed by Indigenous leaders worldwide.

Aboriginal people have long known the dangers of uranium on their country.

Water from the Great Artesian Basin has been extracted by the Olympic Dam copper-uranium mine for decades. Fragile mound springs of spiritual significance to the Arabunna People are disappearing, posing questions for the mining giant BHP to answer.

Australian uranium from BHP Olympic Dam and the now-closed Rio Tinto Ranger mine fuelled the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.

Senior traditional custodian of the Mirrar people, Yvonne Margarula, wrote to the United Nations in 2013 saying her people feel responsible for what happened.

It is likely that the radiation problems at Fukushima are, at least in part, fuelled by uranium derived from our traditional lands. This makes us feel very sad.

The Irati Wanti (The Poison, Leave It!) campaign led by a council of senior Aboriginal women helped defeat earlier proposals for nuclear waste dumps between 1998 and 2004.

There remains strong Indigenous opposition to the current nuclear waste proposal.

Over the past five years, farmers have joined with the Barngarla People to protect their communities and the health of the land.

Read more: Friday essay: the silence of Ediacara, the shadow of uranium

In 2020 the government introduced into the Senate a bill that would do away with traditional owners’ and farmers’ rights to judicial reviews and procedural fairness in regard to the use of land for the facility.

Resources Minister Keith Pitt is deciding how to proceed.

– ref. There’s a long and devastating history behind the proposal for a nuclear waste dump in South Australia – https://theconversation.com/theres-a-long-and-devastating-history-behind-the-proposal-for-a-nuclear-waste-dump-in-south-australia-158615

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Hanly, Research Fellow, UNSW

Australia’s vaccine rollout is due to be reset after the news last night the AstraZeneca vaccine would not be recommended for people under 50. Instead, this age group will be offered the Pfizer vaccine, with the federal government today announcing it had secured an additional 20 million doses.

Although details of the redesigned rollout have yet to be released, our new modelling, which has yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, shows how this might work under a range of scenarios, including the logistical requirements of different vaccines, and different vaccination venues.

Once a steady stream of locally manufactured AstraZeneca vaccine is available in Australia, the bottleneck in the vaccine rollout will shift from supply to administration. That’s when expanded GP vaccination clinics and mass vaccination hubs will be needed to deliver these jabs to nine million people over 50 in phases 1b and 2a of the rollout.

Read more: New setback for vaccine rollout, with AstraZeneca not advised for people under 50

Here’s what we did and what we found

We used mathematical simulations of waiting in line, known as stochastic queue network models, to model the process of running a vaccination clinic.

Queue models allow us to assess the daily vaccination capacity for different venues, taking into account available staff numbers and estimated times to complete each stage of the vaccination process.

The two key venues we looked at were mass vaccination hubs — which could be large venues such as halls, parks or stadiums — and GP clinics.

Mass vaccination hubs and GP clinics lay out their vaccine clinics differently. Hubs with larger premises and more staff can adopt an assembly line approach to vaccination. They can divide the tasks of registration, clinical assessment, vaccine preparation and administration across a series of stations. Smaller clinics are likely to have fewer people available, each performing multiple tasks. We developed two distinct models to reflect these different set-ups.

Read more: Australia urgently needs mass COVID vaccination hubs. But we need more vaccines first

We used these models to estimate how many vaccines could be delivered in an eight-hour clinic based on a range of staffing levels, within an average overall waiting time of under an hour.

We estimate a small general practice could administer 100 doses, rising to 300 doses for a large practice. Mass vaccination clinics could deliver 500-1,400 doses in the same period, depending on staff numbers.

We also used our models to test how clinics would perform under service pressures, including increased vaccine availability and staff shortages.

For both delivery modes, sites with more staff were better able to keep waiting times under control as system pressures increased. Unsurprisingly, mass vaccination hubs were more robust compared to GP clinics.

Read more: 4 ways Australia’s COVID vaccine rollout has been bungled

We can test different scenarios

Our models rely on subjective assumptions about the time needed to complete different stages in the vaccination process. In reality, these timings will vary in different contexts.

For instance, the Pfizer vaccine takes longer to prepare than the AstraZeneca vaccine. Our models can account for this by increasing the expected preparation time and seeing how many extra staff would be needed to run a vaccine clinic with the same number of appointments. When the Novavax or other vaccines come on board, we can re-run the model with updated preparation times.

In fact, we have developed an an app that allows anyone to re-run our simulations based on their own assumptions about service times, appointment schedules and staffing availability.

This can support policymakers, individual GPs and community pharmacies to plan vaccination delivery, as the quantity and type of available vaccine varies throughout the rollout.

However, there are some aspects of vaccine rollout our models do not account for. This includes essential support staff, such as administrators, cleaners and marshals.

Neither do our models address the logistics of distributing vaccines to vaccination centres, which is a separate challenge.

Read more: How the Pfizer COVID vaccine gets from the freezer into your arm

One isn’t ‘better’ than the other. We need both

Our models suggest mass vaccination hubs and GP clinics are equally efficient in terms of the number of doses delivered per staff member. This supports distribution through both modes, provided GPs are enabled to vaccinate at their peak capacity.

These two approaches offer distinct advantages. Older people or clinically vulnerable patients may benefit from attending their local GP, who will be familiar with their medical history.

Younger males, busy working people and marginalised populations are less likely to have a regular GP and may be easier to reach through mass vaccination hubs. The rollout of phase 2 to adults under 50 may require expansion of the hubs, as not all GPs may be able to store the Pfizer vaccine.

A diverse profile of vaccination sites, drawing on the benefits of different distribution modes, will help maximise the daily vaccination rate and vaccinate the Australian population against COVID-19 as quickly as possible.

– ref. Australian vaccine rollout needs all hands on deck after the latest AstraZeneca news, mass vaccination hubs included – https://theconversation.com/australian-vaccine-rollout-needs-all-hands-on-deck-after-the-latest-astrazeneca-news-mass-vaccination-hubs-included-158519

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Esterman, Professor of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, University of South Australia

Australia’s vaccine rollout is in chaos. The news last night the AstraZeneca vaccine, the only one Australia has guaranteed supply of, would not be recommended for people under 50 due to safety concerns has prompted an urgent rethink of how we get vaccines into people’s arms.

Rather than the AstraZeneca vaccine being the mainstay of our vaccination effort, as planned, the preferred shot for the under 50s will now be the Pfizer vaccine. People under 50 can still choose to receive the AstraZeneca vaccine when the benefits clearly outweigh the risks, and if they have already safely had their first dose.

After the announcement I was initially concerned there wouldn’t be enough Pfizer doses for everyone that needs one. But today Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced Australia has secured an extra 20 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine, bringing the total number of doses expected to arrive in the country to 40 million.

This is enough to vaccinate 20 million people, which is more than enough to cover the around 11 million Australians aged between 18 and 50.

The prime minister said the extra 20 million would arrive in the fourth quarter of this year. Only around one million Pfizer shots are currently in the country.

This latest news follows analysis by the European Medicines Agency concluding there was a “possible link” between receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine and very rare but serious blood clots.

Read more: New setback for vaccine rollout, with AstraZeneca not advised for people under 50

This shift in focus, away from the AstraZeneca vaccine that biotech company CSL can make in Australia, to the Pfizer vaccine which has to be imported, has serious impacts on the timing of the rollout and public confidence in the AstraZeneca vaccine.

So, what can the federal government do?

Many people over 50 will now be concerned about the safety of the AstraZeneca vaccine and may be more hesitant to get vaccinated without an alternative. Therefore, the government needs to reinstate confidence and convince over 50s the AstraZeneca vaccine is safe. This will require a major effort using Australia’s best marketing brains.

The government also needs to facilitate the approval and rollout of the Novavax vaccine. Australia has a signed deal for 51 million doses of Novavax. An application for provisional approval is currently under evaluation by our drug regulator the TGA, and it’s estimated to be available within months. This would safeguard us against any further issues with the AstraZeneca vaccine, and the Novavax could eventually replace AstraZeneca because of its much higher efficacy.

Phase 3 trials are showing the Novavax shot has 96% efficacy against the original virus and 86.4% against the UK variant. By contrast, AstraZeneca’s vaccine has an efficacy somewhere between 63%, with a standard two dose schedule according to the World Health Organisation, and 76% according to phase 3 trials in the United States, Chile and Peru. Longer intervals between AstraZeneca’s doses, up to 12 weeks, seems to be linked with increased efficacy.

Although the federal government had no way of predicting these problems with the AstraZeneca vaccine, they have been too reliant on it, especially after the University of Queensland vaccine had to be abandoned last year.

Eventually, Australia may have several times our requirement for vaccines. We should think about donating vaccines to our close Pacific and Asian neighbours who have much more difficulty in purchasing vaccines.

Read more: 3 ways to vaccinate the world and make sure everyone benefits, rich and poor

Finally, Australia really must develop our own capacity to manufacture mRNA vaccines like Pfizer and Moderna — not just for SARS-CoV-2, but to future-proof us against the next pandemic.

How did we get here?

It was all going so well. Australia, along with only a handful of other countries, was the envy of the rest of the world in its response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

But Australia didn’t feel in a particular rush to roll out the vaccination program, and didn’t start vaccinating until the end of February. To date, Australia has vaccinated only around one million people, about 5% of our adult population, with their first dose.

Read more: 4 ways Australia’s COVID vaccine rollout has been bungled

The rollout has nowhere near achieved the federal government’s own stated targets, with problems emerging due to interrupted supply, logistical issues, poor communication between the federal government and GPs, and a booking system that is just not working.

By contrast, some countries were very quick off the mark in their purchase and rollout of vaccines. Israel started its vaccination program in December, and has now given at least one dose of a COVID vaccine to 61% of its population, leading the world. The UK, which has been severely affected by COVID-19, also acted very quickly, and has now given at least one dose to 46% of its population.

Unfortunately, Australia’s slow and problematic vaccine rollout has somewhat taken the shine off our enviable reputation for managing COVID-19.

Read more: Vital Signs: Israel shows how to do vaccinations right. It’s a race, and we’re behind

– ref. Australia’s bungled COVID vaccine rollout suffers another setback. Here’s how we can get it back on track – https://theconversation.com/australias-bungled-covid-vaccine-rollout-suffers-another-setback-heres-how-we-can-get-it-back-on-track-158656

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jan Golembiewski, Researcher, University of Technology Sydney

The Royal Commission into Aged Care left organisations that provide housing for aged care wondering how they will put its recommendations into effect. Most of these recommendations relate to the models of care and levels of staffing in homes. Put simply, in the architectural rabbit warrens that typify aged-care facilities, there can never be enough staff to manage every nook.

Models of care are also difficult to change when the architecture is obsolete. Yet these difficulties aren’t detailed in the report. It barely mentions architecture. Only two of the 148 recommendations relate specifically to architecture, numbers 45 and 46: to improve the design of residential care accommodation; and to provide “small household” models of accommodation.

But don’t be mistaken. Architecture has a profound impact on how we live our lives, work and respond socially.

Read more: 4 key takeaways from the aged care royal commission’s final report

If architects are able to work with some basic design rules – to design to a vision, with simplicity and a non-institutional design language – architecture can play a role in implementing the bulk of the recommendations. But, if the importance of design is neglected, obsolete architectural models will undermine the best efforts to reform the models of care.

We can design to remove restraint

Architecture is a critical element of “embedding a human rights-based and human-centred approach to care”, the focus of chapter 3 of the royal commission’s report. To understand the relationship between architecture and human rights, consider how human rights are taken away: look at prisons, detention centres, mental health facilities and even the residences where we care for our elderly citizens. Invariably, it’s architecture that stifles the freedom of movement, the dignity, the freedom of association, choice and other rights.

Read more: The bad buildings scream – lessons from Don Dale and other failed institutions

The commission estimates architectural solutions to seclusion and other forms of physical restraint are used on 25-50% of all residents of high-care residences. These restraints can look innocuous – including “seating residents in chairs with deep seats, or rockers and recliners, that the resident cannot stand up from”. But for residents who can’t get up on their own, deep seats restrict their freedom of movement and ability to make their own choices about as much as handcuffs do.

The forms of restraint (including in high-care aged-care residences) are increasingly disguised, but a locked door remains impenetrable even if it’s made of clear glass. Along with fences and high walls, such features are designed to keep some people in and others out.

Read more: Retire the retirement village – the wall and what’s behind it is so 2020

Or we can design for quality of life

If people fail to see how the design of a prison is the primary instrument for imprisonment, then it’s also hard to comprehend just how much good architecture improves people’s circumstances and well-being. But a well-designed aged-care building is replete with wholesome invitations to do such things as explore gardens without putting residents at undue risk.

In turn, spending time outdoors helps prevent “sundowning” – people with dementia may become more confused, restless or insecure late in the afternoon or early evening. It also improves the resident’s experience (personal well-being and satisfaction). Recent unpublished data (in review) shows time outdoors even protects against viral flu-like infections.

And that’s just one example of the benefits of good design. All good architectural choices have similarly positive effects.

3 principles for human-centred design in aged care

Principle 1: projects are driven by a vision that maintains and enables human dignity, even for people with cognitive impairment.

A vision includes a single, well-articulated concept that cannot be dismissed or ignored. The vision creates a hierarchy in which important things are valued more than anything else. A vision that makes human dignity a priority ensures other functional or pragmatic concerns do not lead to human rights being deprioritised.

A good vision isn’t just words or intentions. It involves concrete decisions that are armed with bravery and honesty. Bravery because a good vision always aspires beyond known benchmarks and guidelines. Honesty, because a good vision isn’t shy about speaking the truth.

The diagram below shows an example of a vision in which high-care aged-care residences were to be incorporated into a new precinct for the University of Woolongong. The vision prioritised human centredness – a human-centred workplace, a student-centred learning environment, patient-centred aged-care residences and a person-centred environment overall.

The above vision led to this conceptual diagram.

The conceptual diagram was developed as a masterplan.

In this concept, the educational, residential (non-aged-care) and health facilities make natural walls around a shared village. Car-free streets, cafes, shops, parklands and a distributed residential aged-care facility create a pleasant and safe environment for everybody. The exterior buildings are accessible from both sides for students and staff, but not for high-care residents unless they are accompanied.

Read more: Aged care isn’t working, but we can create neighbourhoods to support healthy ageing in place

Principle 2: keep it simple.

As cognitive abilities decline, this reduces people’s capacity to deal with complexity. So keep design simple, with destinations that are visible and clear.

Think about turning all bedrooms inwards to provide immediate access to common spaces, activities and gardens. The reception, all offices and commercial facilities can face outwards, and be invisible to residents.

Simplifying the layout also aids staff. Hidden spaces and doors to unsafe places cause anxiety for residents and staff alike, adding to the staffing burden.

Simple design doesn’t mean plain. It means keeping plans simple – especially for the residents, who have all they might need (and all they want) immediately visible. All no-go areas are hidden.

Principle 3: Residential means non-institutional.

Much as they assist with routines of care, residences are residences. They are ruined by staff stations and institutional touches like vinyl flooring, strip lighting and furniture lined up against the walls.

Residents’ bedrooms must be customisable – meaning people should be able to hang their own art, listen to their own music, and have their own furniture and belongings. After all, these rooms are where people live. And how can people feel at home, unless they are allowed to feel at home with their surroundings?

The left image shows a relatively typical scene in an Australian residential-care facility. The details are institutional – the windows, the lighting, the residents lined up along a wall. The opposite (right) is a residential milieu. Which one would you choose?

– ref. Design makes a place a prison or a home. Turning ‘human-centred’ vision for aged care into reality – https://theconversation.com/design-makes-a-place-a-prison-or-a-home-turning-human-centred-vision-for-aged-care-into-reality-156937

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nikki Turner, Professor, University of Auckland

From next week, unvaccinated staff working at managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) facilities will be moved to low-risk jobs, following a case of a worker who missed vaccination appointments and then tested positive for COVID-19.

The recently announced ban on arrivals from India underscores an important point: even once all border and health staff have been vaccinated, vaccination does not provide 100% protection.

Last month, a MIQ worker tested positive almost a week after receiving their second vaccine dose. This case shows that, occasionally, even fully vaccinated people can still carry the virus in their throats and therefore potentially spread it.

Small risk of infection remains

Clinical trials of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine show 90-97% efficacy which means most fully vaccinated people will not get sick, and the small number who do are very unlikely to develop serious disease.

The vaccine reduces the ability to contract and pass on the virus, but not always completely. It takes the sting out of COVID-19’s tail, because it particularly reduces its ability to cause serious illness or death.

In last month’s case, the vaccinated worker remained asymptomatic, which likely reduced the spread of the virus to others. The risk of spread is higher from sick people because they have a higher load of the virus, and therefore more to spread, and they are more likely to spread it, particularly with coughing.

Data from use in several countries suggests the vaccine has some effect in reducing an infected person’s ability to pass the virus on to others, but as this example shows, vaccinated people can still carry and spread the virus, albeit at much lower rates.

Herd immunity feasible, but challenging

The combination of a vaccine’s ability to reduce illness — and therefore spread of the disease — is good news, but it’s not fool proof. Should New Zealand consider opening its borders beyond the current travel bubble with Austalia (due to start on April 19), it’s likely this would allow people with COVID-19 into the country.

Read more: A quarantine-free trans-Tasman bubble opens on April 19, but ‘flyer beware’ remains the reality of pandemic travel

If the majority of New Zealanders are vaccinated, we can be confident that very few people will get sick. But whether this would be enough to stop spread through the community remains unclear.

New Zealand could aim for herd immunity, which would mean vaccinating enough of the population to stop the virus from spreading, should it enter a community. The ability to stop spread would depend on the proportion of the population that is immune (either following infection or through vaccination), whether immunity is spread evenly across the population, and the infectivity of the virus.

With measles, for example, a population requires up to 95% immunity before the virus can stop spreading. But measles is more highly infectious compared to COVID-19 so the level of immunity required to achieve herd immunity would likely be lower.

New variants complicate the picture

While it is possible to calculate a magic number needed for herd immunity for COVID-19, there are several variables that prevent us from doing so accurately. These include the recent more contagious mutations and the lack of data on precisely how effective the vaccine is against asymptomatic spread.

Also unhelpful in a quest for herd immunity is that we cannot yet vaccinate children under 16. Clinical trials are underway to determine the efficacy of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for children and preliminary results are promising. But until trials are completed and the data scientifically reviewed, New Zealand’s vaccination programme excludes just under a quarter of New Zealand’s population.

Even with an excellent vaccination programme, vaccination is not evenly distributed. There are groups and communities with lower coverage, which means there will be gaps across the population.

We have seen this with the 2019 measles outbreak in New Zealand. Even with high vaccination rates of over 90% across most of the population, and a highly effective vaccine, the disease affected communities or age groups with lower immunisation coverage.

Disease control instead of elimination

As long as COVID-19 continues to spread internationally, further border openings would import new cases and challenge New Zealand’s ability to maintain its elimination status.

A partial response may lie in aiming for the highest possible rates of immunisation, alongside ongoing public health measures that have worked well so far, including contact tracing.

One possible option would be to only allow vaccinated people into the country, because they are less likely to be carrying disease. But are we going to wait until vaccination gets to all countries, and to all age groups, before opening our borders?

Another option is to open the borders and support the vaccination of any unvaccinated people on arrival in New Zealand. This could be a feasible strategy once children are able to be vaccinated.

Another path is to let go of the concept of elimination and focus instead on disease control. We know with great confidence that this vaccine is effective at stopping severe disease and death.

I recommend we put all our efforts into vaccinating everyone we possibly can, particularly more vulnerable individuals and communities. Then, when we do open the borders and the disease comes into New Zealand, we will see predominantly mild and asymptomatic disease. This will be manageable.

This strategy will require an effective vaccination coverage that doesn’t leave out those most in need. We must offer the vaccine equitably to everyone, with the best possible informed consent approaches, care and thought. There will still be those who choose not to vaccinate, but with a well communicated immunisation programme, this group should be a very small percentage of the population.

If we have a high rate of immunisation coverage, alongside traditional contact tracing, we can minimise the risk to these individuals and maintain an approach that relies on education and support rather that the heavy hand of mandatory vaccination.

– ref. Vaccination alone will not provide full protection. When borders open, NZ will still be managing COVID-19 – https://theconversation.com/vaccination-alone-will-not-provide-full-protection-when-borders-open-nz-will-still-be-managing-covid-19-158414

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Benjamin Reilly, Professor, University of Western Australia

Could a change be afoot in the way Australians vote in federal elections?

The Coalition government may be eyeing a shift to optional preferential voting — as used in New South Wales — which allows voters to simply vote “1” or allocate only a partial list of preferences on their ballot, instead of a full ordering of preferences for every candidate.

The proposal was included in a series of potentially revolutionary changes to our electoral system that were quietly released by a parliamentary committee in December, when few people were paying attention.

The joint standing committee on electoral matters claimed a shift to optional preferential voting would help address rising rates of “informal voting” in NSW caused by the differences between the state and federal systems. The reason: a valid vote at the state level with less than a full list of preferences would be invalid if repeated at a federal election.

What the committee did not say is that based on current voting patterns, a shift to optional preferencing could also cement the Coalition in government.

As a follow-up to a newly published study, we have modelled how recent federal elections would have changed if an optional preferential system had been used. We found the results would have been devastating for Labor.

Read more: Parliamentary electoral committee floats bigger parliament, longer terms and no byelections

Labor supported by Greens preferences

The reason the Coalition would benefit from an optional preferential voting system is simple.

In recent decades, Labor’s primary vote has slumped in federal elections, but full preferential voting has kept its two-party preferred vote high.

This is because LaborL benefits from consistent preference flows from parties to the left, in particular the Greens. Approximately 80% of Greens preferences at federal elections go to the ALP at present.

A significant proportion of this preference flow is the result of Greens voters being forced to choose between Labor and the Coalition at some point – even in their final preference markings on the ballot – so their votes are valid.

Labor and the Greens oppose changing the current voting system, but the proposal from the joint standing committee reportedly has support from some Senate cross-benchers.

Read more: With One Nation on the march, a change to compulsory voting might backfire on Labor

How Labor would have fared under optional preferences

Data collected by the ABC’s election analyst, Antony Green, at the 2015 NSW election shows the rate of Greens preferences transferring to Labor declines precipitously from 82.7% under full preferential voting to just 37.4% under optional preferential voting.

In our study, we extrapolated how past election outcomes would have been affected if this was repeated nationally. We were conscious of the challenges that come with generalising in this way, and comparing one state’s data to the country as a whole.

We found that in most seats, switching to optional preferential voting would have partisan effects that are sharply skewed to the right.

This is best illustrated by looking at the seats Labor has won in recent elections by overtaking the Coalition after trailing on first preferences. These would be the seats most affected by a shift from full to optional preferential voting.

These “come-from-behind” victories would become much rarer under optional preferential voting. By our calculations, Labor would have won somewhere between five and eight fewer seats at each recent federal election, as the graph below shows.

This means Labor would have lost the 2010 election outright and suffered heavier defeats in the 2013, 2016 and 2019 elections if optional preferences had been in use. Labor would also have lost the byelections in 2018 and 2020.

In 2010, the fragile Labor minority government would have likely won independent Andrew Wilkie’s and The Greens’ Adam Bandt’s seats under optional preferential voting, but would have lost four others to the Liberals, including Treasurer Wayne Swan’s seat of Lilley. Labor would not have had enough seats to form government.

Labor won a total of 36 come-from-behind seats in the 2013, 2016 and 2019 elections. Our analysis suggests Labor would have won less than half (17) of these seats under optional preferencing.

Minor parties and independents would also be shut out

Our model also suggests minor parties and independents would struggle to win under optional preferential voting.

As mentioned before, Labor would have won the seats of Melbourne and Dension from Bandt and Wilkie in 2010.

And the Liberals would have triumphed over Cathy McGowan (independent), Clive Palmer (Palmer United Party) and Bob Katter (Katter’s Australian Party) in 2013; Rebekha Sharkie (Nick Xenophon Team/Centre Alliance) in 2016 and 2019; Kerryn Phelps (independent) in 2018 and Helen Haines (independent) in 2019.

With fewer independents and minor parties, the House of Representatives would be a less diverse and colourful place, and the crossbench less politically influential.

Given this, it is striking that both Centre Alliance and One Nation will reportedly back the government in the Senate if it decides to push for a change to optional preferential voting.

Read more: Explainer: how does preferential voting work in the House of Representatives?

Whether the government pursues reform before the next election probably comes down to the Senate numbers, given Labor and the Greens will bitterly oppose any change.

It will also depend on internal Coalition management considerations, with the National Party traditionally opposed to optional preferences, and the government’s more precarious numbers in the House since Craig Kelly’s move to the crossbench.

The government response to the joint standing committee’s report is currently being prepared by the assistant minister for electoral matters, Ben Morton, a former party secretary.

While tightly guarded, we can say with confidence that the reason advanced by the committee for the change – that it will reduce informal voting – is unlikely to feature highly in his calculations. Instead, raw political calculations must make this a highly tempting reform for the government.

Jack Stewart, a Bachelor of Philosophy (Hons) student at the University of Western Australia, compiled the data for this study.

– ref. Here’s why the Coalition favours optional preferential voting: it would devastate Labor – https://theconversation.com/heres-why-the-coalition-favours-optional-preferential-voting-it-would-devastate-labor-155640

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ritesh Chugh, Senior Lecturer – Information Systems and Analysis, CQUniversity Australia

If you’ve ever gotten your phone wet in the rain, dropped it in water or spilt liquid over it, you’re not alone. One study suggests 25% of smartphone users have damaged their smartphone with water or some other kind of liquid.

Liquid penetrating a smartphone can affect the device in several ways. It could lead to:

• blurry photos, if moisture gets trapped in the camera lens
• ruffled audio, or no audio
• liquid droplets under the screen
• an inability to charge
• the rusting of internal parts, or
• a total end to all functionality.

While new phones are advertised as “water resistant”, this doesn’t mean they are waterproof, or totally immune to water. Water resistance just implies the device can handle some exposure to water before substantial damage occurs.

Samsung Australia has long-defended itself against claims it misrepresents the water resistance of its smartphones.

In 2019, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) took Samsung to Federal Court, alleging false and misleading advertisements had led customers to believe their Galaxy phones would be suitable for:

use in, or exposure to, all types of water (including, for example, oceans and swimming pools).

Samsung Australia subsequently denied warranty claims from customers for damage caused to phones by use in, or exposure to, liquid.

Similarly, last year Apple was fined €10 million (about A$15.5 million) by Italy’s antitrust authority for misleading claims about the water resistance of its phones, and for not covering liquid damage under warranty, despite these claims.

How resistant is your phone?

The water resistance of phones is rated by an “Ingress Protection” code, commonly called an IP rating. Simply, an electrical device’s IP rating refers to its effectiveness against intrusions from solids and liquids.

The rating includes two numbers. The first demonstrates protection against solids such as dust, while the second indicates resistance to liquids, specifically water.

A phone that has a rating of IP68 has a solid object protection of 6 (full protection from dust, dirt and sand) and a liquid protection of 8 (protected from immersion in water to a depth of more than one metre).

Although, for the latter, manufacturers are responsible for defining the exact depth and time.

The popular iPhone 12 and Samsung Galaxy S21 phones both have a rating of IP68. However, regarding exposure to water, the iPhone 12 has a permissible immersion depth of a maximum of 6m for 30 minutes, whereas the Galaxy 21’s immersion limit is up to 1.5m, also for 30 minutes.

While IP ratings indicate the water-repellent nature of phones, taking most phones for a swim will land you in deep trouble. The salt content in oceans and swimming pools can corrode your device and cost you a hefty replacement.

Moreover, phone manufacturers carry out their IP testing in fresh water and Apple recommends devices not be submerged in liquids of any kind.

Luckily, water resistant phones are generally able to survive smaller liquid volumes, such as from a glass tipping over.

Read more: Screwed over: how Apple and others are making it impossible to get a cheap and easy phone repair

Checking for liquid damage

Exposure to water is something manufacturers have in mind when designing phones. Most Apple and Samsung phones come with a liquid contact/damage indicator strip located inside the SIM card tray.

This is used to check for liquid damage that may be causing a device to malfunction. An indicator strip that comes in contact with liquid loses its usual colour and becomes discoloured and smudgy.

A discoloured strip usually renders your phone ineligible for a standard manufacturer warranty.

If you have any of the more recent smartphones from Apple or Samsung, then your device will be able to detect liquid or moisture in its charging port and will warn you with an alert. This notification only goes away once the port is dry.

But what should you do if this dreadful pop-up presents itself?

Fixing a water-logged phone

Firstly, do not put your phone in a container of rice. It’s a myth that rice helps in drying out your phone. Instead, follow these steps:

1. Turn off the device immediately and don’t press any buttons.

2. If your phone is water resistant and you’ve spilt or submerged it in a liquid other than water, both Apple and Samsung recommend rinsing it off by submerging it in still tap water (but not under a running tap, which could cause damage).

3. Wipe the phone dry with paper towels or a soft cloth.

4. Gently shake the device to remove water from the charging ports, but avoid vigorous shaking as this could further spread the liquid inside.

5. Remove the SIM card.

6. Use a compressed aerosol air duster to blow the water out if you have one. Avoid using a hot blow dryer as the heat can wreck the rubber seals and damage the screen.

7. Dry out the phone (and especially the ports) in front of a fan.

8. Leave your phone in an airtight container full of silica gel packets (those small packets you get inside new shoes and bags), or another drying agent. These help absorb the moisture.

9. Do not charge the phone until you are certain it’s dry. Charging a device with liquid still inside it, or in the ports, can cause further damage. Apple suggests waiting at least five hours once a phone appears dry before charging it (or until the alert disappears).

If the above steps don’t help and you’re still stuck with a seemingly dead device, don’t try opening the phone yourself. You’re better off taking it to a professional.

Read more: Upgrade rage: why you may have to buy a new device whether you want to or not

– ref. Phone wet and won’t turn on? Here’s how to deal with water damage (hint: soaking it in rice won’t work) – https://theconversation.com/phone-wet-and-wont-turn-on-heres-how-to-deal-with-water-damage-hint-soaking-it-in-rice-wont-work-158633

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Macaulay, Professor of Public Administration, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

Following a number of high-profile inquiries into workplace misconduct — including within parliament, the police and fire service — it became clear people who report such behaviour in the first place need greater legal protection.

The commonly used term “whistleblower” is simplistic and emotive, but it remains true that speaking up can cause enormous emotional strain, as well as legitimate fear of retaliation or reprisal.

Unfortunately, based on the recently released report from the Education and Workforce Select Committee on the Protected Disclosures (Protection of Whistleblowers) Bill, attempts to strengthen the current law do not look promising.

While the report does recommend ways to strengthen the bill, it fails to endorse some of the more far-reaching suggestions from a public consultation process earlier this year.

The bill itself is partly a response to the case of Joanne Harrison, jailed in 2017 for defrauding the Ministry of Transport of over NZ$700,000.

Colleagues who had reported their suspicions about her behaviour later lost their own jobs. And while a subsequent inquiry concluded this wasn’t a direct result of their reporting, they were still paid undisclosed sums in compensation.

If nothing else, however, the case forced the issue of reporting workplace misconduct into the open.

It is a shame, therefore, that the select committee report doesn’t go further towards creating a more robust piece of legislation, one that significantly increases the protections for people reporting misconduct.

Not enough protection

In the past few years Aotearoa New Zealand has been at the centre of research into workplace misconduct and organisational reporting. This has included our own research project, the biggest of its kind across public, private and not-for-profit sectors in New Zealand and Australia.

This was more than just an academic exercise. We partnered with the Public Service Commission and Ombudsman in New Zealand, as well as numerous central, state and local agencies in Australia. We investigated who comes forward with reports, what happens to those reports, what support people needed and received, and what processes achieve the most positive results for reporters and organisations.

Largely because of this research we can say with confidence that, despite some strengths, this bill does not go far enough to protect people who speak up.

Read more: Whistleblowing: athletes shouldn’t have to choose between their careers and the truth

To be fair, it does clarify how people can be expected to report their concerns, and when they qualify for a protected disclosure. The select committee’s recommendations also appear more respectful towards [tikanga Māori]organisations(https://maoridictionary.co.nz/search?keywords=tikanga) and alternative processes.

But the proposed bill still lacks clarity in its definitions of what constitutes “serious wrongdoing” and the actions or omissions that pose a “serious risk”.

Determining just how “serious” something is might be difficult for someone wishing to make a protected disclosure. The final legislation should offer specific examples in a schedule to its main provisions.

A best practice checklist

The select committee report also proposes section 12 of the bill, covering what should happen when an allegation is reported, be flagged as “guidance” only. At the same time, section 26 of the proposed bill requires all agencies to have internal processes for reporting that correspond to section 12.

But if section 12 is now a guide rather than a full legal requirement, there is a potential loophole: an organisation could argue its systems relate only to this guidance, rather than concrete legal obligations.

Read more: Intelligence whistleblowers often pay a severe price

Even more importantly, section 26 ignores years of research into good practice for internal reporting. The bill makes no statements about what kinds of processes are required, even though these are well understood and were shared with the select committee. At the very least, organisations should have:

• dedicated support persons for all people making reports

• risk assessment practices (which should also be specified in section 12) to help protect the reporter and ensure natural justice

• appropriate triage for reports so they are processed fairly and efficiently

• consistent investigative protocols

• a communication strategy that helps build transparency and accountability: how many reports have been offered, what have they been about, how many have led to investigations, and so on

• mandatory education and training for all staff

• an appropriate and transparent remediation strategy so people are not only protected, but may be rewarded for identifying serious misconduct in the workplace.

Read more: Troublemakers and traitors – it’s no fun being a whistleblower

Firmer foundations needed

The Green Party, which supported a number of these provisions, also proposes another major improvement: an independent body to oversee the new regime.

This need not necessarily be an investigatory body. It could provide strategic direction, promote good practice, develop consistent training and development for organisations, act as a store of information, and collate and publish data.

It may, under certain circumstances, take on an investigative role to protect independence and mitigate possible conflicts of interest in internal processes.

Similar bodies worked in English and Welsh local government, where a national oversight body was established to end the kind of serious corruption and fraud scandals prevalent in the 1980s and 1990s.

Since the agency was abolished by the Conservative-led coalition government in 2014 we’ve seen more scandals, including a massive corruption case in Liverpool right now.

It’s clear people who want to report misconduct need better protection. And while legislation cannot be the only solution, it acts as a foundation for organisational and cultural change.

The current Protected Disclosure Bill, even following the select committee’s report, does not yet provide that firm foundation.

– ref. Workplace whistleblowers deserve more protection than NZ’s new law will deliver – https://theconversation.com/workplace-whistleblowers-deserve-more-protection-than-nzs-new-law-will-deliver-158207

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jacob Deem, Lecturer – Law, CQUniversity Australia

The deaths in custody of five Indigenous Australians since March highlight the treatment of First Nations peoples as one of the most pressing policy issues facing the Australian government.

They also come at a time when recognition of First Nations peoples in the Constitution faces many barriers, including diminishing support from within the government.

Despite this, our research reveals substantial public support for a First Nations Voice to parliament, pressing the case for action.

A First Nations Voice to parliament has been the focus of the push for constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians since 2015. After being endorsed by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders in the Uluru Statement from the Heart in 2017, the proposed Voice has also become the centre of efforts to give Indigenous Australians a permanent say in decisions affecting them, and progress meaningful reconciliation.

There are two different ideas for a Voice. The first is to enshrine it in the Constitution, as outlined in the Uluru Statement; the second is simply to legislate it.

Our research shows greater support for the former, which would require a national referendum. It would also require a change in the government’s current preference for a legislated Voice.

Politically, there is a long history of resistance to First Nations people having a voice in parliament. Recently, there has also been debate over whether enough Australians would support this reform.

Read more: Indigenous recognition is more than a Voice to Government – it’s a matter of political equality

Substantial support for a First Nations Voice

In 2017, Griffith University’s Australian Constitutional Values Survey showed solid public support from the start, contrary to the fears of many leaders.

Now, the 2021 Australian Constitutional Values Survey by CQUniversity and Griffith University shows over 60% of Australians remain in favour of a First Nations Voice to parliament in some form.

The nationally representative online survey of over 1,500 Australians was conducted in February. While a quarter of Australians remain undecided, most of those had not heard of the proposal. Only one in eight respondents (12%) was opposed to the idea of a First Nations Voice.

The feedback on why Australians do or don’t value the reform comes at a crucial time, as submissions are being gathered by the federal government’s co-design process on what the Voice should look like.

Asked why they were in favour, most respondents said establishing a First Nations Voice would be the “right thing to do”, including as a step towards reconciliation. Many respondents also acknowledged the Voice’s role in addressing the ongoing effects of European colonisation.

Respondents also viewed the Voice as an important way of listening to First Nations peoples, improving policies and making a practical difference. Others saw the Voice as a way to recognise the special status of First Nations peoples as the country’s traditional owners.

These objectives and principles also have an impact on the form most Australians think the Voice should take.

Read more: Proposed Indigenous ‘voice’ will be to government rather than to parliament

Preference for constitutional rather than legislated Voice

Voice proposals began as the pathway to meaningful recognition of Indigenous peoples in Australia’s Constitution, described by Indigenous leader Noel Pearson as our “longest standing and unresolved project for justice”.

However, some leaders still question the constitutional goal, fearing a lack of public support.

Constitutional recognition would require a strong vote in a national referendum, similar to the historic result in 1967 that allowed government to make laws for Aboriginal people and include them in the census.

A predictable “fallback” is to simply legislate the Voice rather than enshrine it in the Constitution. This strategy was reinforced by Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s insistence that constitutional change is not on the agenda, claiming a lack of any

clear consensus proposal at this stage, which would suggest mainstream support in the Indigenous community or elsewhere.

But our survey indicates this fallback option would fall short of public expectations. Over half of all respondents (51.3%) said they would be in favour of enshrining the Voice via constitutional change. Only a quarter (26.3%) said they would still be in favour of the Voice as only a legislated reform, with no constitutional recognition.

Read more: Lessons of 1967 referendum still apply to debates on constitutional recognition

Many Australians are still undecided, but the results show that if the plan is said to be supported by Indigenous Australians, this would make a difference for many of those on the fence.

The scope for a positive 1967-style result, therefore, remains substantial and real.

Compared to a legislated Voice, a constitutional Voice would benefit from greater stability because its existence would be guaranteed. A constitutional Voice would also deliver recognition called for by many Indigenous Australians.

The low public support for a legislated option also reinforces arguments that successful constitutional change would give more popular legitimacy than a legislated Voice, directly engaging the entire community and making the reform part of Australian history.

The results also indicate Australians see the practical value of making the Voice permanent by putting it in Australia’s founding document. This means it could not be simply abolished by future parliaments.

With only 21% of Australians against a constitutional Voice – as opposed to 34% against a purely legislated one – there is wide opportunity to pave the way to successful constitutional recognition once the co-design process has resolved questions of the Voice’s functions and form.

Creating a First Nations Voice to parliament is now the obvious way forward. The government is committed to establishing it, and general public support is solidifying. This is a remarkable testament to how the idea has resonated with people.

But the important lesson to consider is that the core of public support lies in establishing the Voice in the Constitution as a step on the journey towards reconciliation.

– ref. Most Australians support First Nations Voice to parliament: survey – https://theconversation.com/most-australians-support-first-nations-voice-to-parliament-survey-157964

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Holly Seale, Associate professor, UNSW

This year is shaping up as the year of the COVID-19 vaccination photo, with the pandemic providing seemingly endless photo opportunities. We’ve seen stock photos of people getting vaccinated in news reports, images of the prime minister receiving his shot and health workers posting #vaxxies on social media.

But evidence shows the wrong images can make some people reluctant to get vaccinated. So our well-meaning efforts to use images to help demystify the vaccination process or share our pride in getting a COVID-19 vaccine can backfire.

Here’s what we can all do to choose and share vaccination images responsibly.

Read more: Posting COVID-19 vaccine selfies on social media can cause anger, frustration

Images are powerful

Communicating public health strategies like vaccination can be challenging. There can be complex and unfamiliar technical terms and health concepts, and not everyone can understand them. So pictures play an essential role.

Pictures can draw attention to the message, help people relate to and remember what is being said, and may nudge people to act on a health recommendation. People also rate brochures with pictures more positively than ones with just text.

Pictures not only provide meaning, they have an emotional impact. Images we see on social media can also shape our perception of social norms (what we believe others are thinking or doing) and our behaviour.

Read more: Friday essay: COVID in ten photos

But what happens when the picture is a giant needle, or a needle poked into someone’s arm? We have all seen these images to illustrate media articles about COVID-19 vaccination.

In addition to being a bit gruesome, stock photos commonly used in stories about vaccination are often inaccurate. The needle might be in the wrong position, the health worker may be wearing gloves when they are not needed or the liquid inside the needle seems coloured rather then clear.

Do vaccination images really matter?

Yes, vaccination images matter. A study looking at vaccine-related news coverage found nearly one in eight images contained something negative, such as the classic “crying baby”.

This may lead new parents, who have yet to really experience the vaccination process, to become anxious. And this negative photo may override any positive vaccination messages accompanying it.

This issue is especially important because when a photo is of someone’s face, it can trigger an emotional response, making it easier for someone to have a strong reaction to that communication.

We know images can help people remember health messages. But if we use an inappropriate photo, such as the wrong needle size or someone looking anxious, this is the image that can stick with us, not the public health messages or statistics we intended to convey.

For some people, photos of needles are so scary this might put them off vaccination. While we don’t know precisely which types of needle imagery could stimulate such a response, we know needle phobia is a real issue. In fact, one survey found 23% of adults have avoided influenza vaccines due to fear of needles. And we don’t want to risk this happening with COVID-19 vaccines.

Read more: Fear of needles could be a hurdle to COVID-19 vaccination, but here are ways to overcome it

What can we do about it?

Whether we are choosing images for news articles or for our personal social media, it is important we consider the potential impact of the photos we use. Here are some tips for choosing the right image:

• focus on positive outcomes. Consider showing a smiling person with a plaster on their arm or someone holding a vaccination card or sticker. Flickr provides free photos that reflect the reality of immunisation and are medically accurate

• humanise the process. People develop, deliver and receive vaccines. Show these people where possible, instead of disembodied needles

• depict diversity. Ensure images of vaccination show diversity of ethnicity, gender, age and disability

• imply rather than illustrate vaccination. Why do we need the needle in the photo? We do not illustrate articles about urinary tract infections in children with photos of urine samples or invasive medical treatments. An image of a health worker speaking to someone with their sleeve rolled up is enough to evoke a mental image of the vaccination process, particularly when it accompanies a story about vaccines

• highlight the vial not the needle. For stories about vaccine production or rollout with no personal or emotive element, showing the vaccine vial is a neutral option

• avoid inaccurate images. The emoji of a needle full of blood? Not a great choice to tell your friends and family you have been vaccinated. The plaster emoji is a good alternative. Publications should check any vaccine images with medical professionals for accuracy.

Read more: 5 ways we can prepare the public to accept a COVID-19 vaccine (saying it will be ‘mandatory’ isn’t one)

– ref. Pictures of COVID injections can scare the pants off people with needle phobias. Use these instead – https://theconversation.com/pictures-of-covid-injections-can-scare-the-pants-off-people-with-needle-phobias-use-these-instead-157963

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lucinda McKnight, Senior Lecturer in Pedagogy and Curriculum, Deakin University

Robots are writing more of what we read on the internet. And artificial intelligence (AI) writing tools are becoming freely available for anyone, including students, to use.

In a period of rapid change, there are enormous ethical implications for post-human authorship — in which humans and machines collaborate. The study of AI ethics needs to be central to education as we increasingly use machine-generated content to communicate with others.

Robots can write, too

AI robot writers, such as GPT-3 (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) take seconds to create text that seems like it was written by humans. In September, 2020 GPT-3 wrote an entire essay in The Guardian to convince people not to fear artificial intelligence.

AI does this through what’s called natural language processing and generation. This involves converting human language to computer commands and vice versa. To do this, machine algorithms study millions of text samples, words, sentences and paragraphs humans use to gain a general understanding of the context of human language. Then machines use that knowledge to put together text.

As recently as 2019, this kind of technology seemed a long way off. But today, it is readily available.

For example, the free Zyro content generator provides text for websites. I can select the categories “Health and Living” and “Personal Trainer” (I happen to be one, as well as an academic). In two seconds, the following text appears:

I am experienced with personal training, athletic performance, and nutrition. This includes working with children, pregnant women, older adults, people with disabilities, athletes, and anyone looking to achieve a competitive edge, improve their overall health, and overall performance. I also have an interest in alternative health, including wellness coaching and nutrition counselling. In my spare time, I enjoy spending time with my family, the outdoors, and writing.

This sums me up (despite the program knowing nothing about me) and would be fine for my website, if I had one. I have the option to generate more responses, and in two seconds, the program offers:

I am experienced in working with adults and children to improve their overall physical and emotional well-being. I have a strong desire to help you reach your goal […] I love helping others achieve their goals. I love working with others to achieve their goals. I am a mother of two healthy children and a wife to two incredible people.

While this is repetitive and Zyro does not notice the apparent error in the last sentence, these issues would be easy to correct. Text, even for niche purposes, can now be generated in a few clicks.

There are other digital tools such as paraphrasers and rewriters that can generate up to 1,000 articles from a single seed article, each of them substantially unique. Quillbot and WordAI, for instance, can rapidly rewrite text and make it difficult to detect plagiarism. WordAI boasts “unlimited human quality content at your fingertips”.

Questions for schools and universities

So what does this mean for education, writing, and society?

Of course, there’s the issue of cheating on essays and other assignments. School and university leaders need to have difficult conversations about what constitutes “authorship” and “editorship” in the post-human age. We are all (already) writing with machines, even just via spelling and grammar checkers.

Tools such as Turnitin — originally developed for detecting plagiarism — are already using more sophisticated means of determining who wrote a text by recognising a human author’s unique “fingerprint”. Part of this involves electronically checking a submitted piece of work against a student’s previous work.

Many student writers are already using AI writing tools. Perhaps, rather than banning or seeking to expose machine collaboration, it should be welcomed as “co-creativity”. Learning to write with machines is an important aspect of the workplace “writing” students will be doing in the future.

Read more: OK computer: to prevent students cheating with AI text-generators, we should bring them into the classroom

AI writers work lightning fast. They can write in multiple languages and can provide images, create metadata, headlines, landing pages, Instagram ads, content ideas, expansions of bullet points and search-engine optimised text, all in seconds. Students need to exploit these machine capabilities, as writers for digital platforms and audiences.

Perhaps assessment should focus more on students’ capacities to use these tools skilfully instead of, or at least in addition to, pursuing “pure” human writing.

But is it fair?

Yet the question of fairness remains. Students who can access better AI writers (more “natural”, with more features) will be able to produce and edit better text.

Better AI writers are more expensive and are available on monthly plans or high one-off payments wealthy families can afford. This will exacerbate inequality in schooling, unless schools themselves provide excellent AI writers to all.

We will need protocols for who gets credit for a piece of writing. We will need to know who gets cited. We need to know who is legally liable for content and potential harm it may create. We need transparent systems for identifying, verifying and quantifying human content.

Read more: When does getting help on an assignment turn into cheating?

And most importantly of all, we need to ask whether the use of AI writing tools is fair to all students.

For those who are new to the notion of AI writing, it is worthwhile playing and experimenting with the free tools available online, to better understand what “creation” means in our robot future.

– ref. In an AI world we need to teach students how to work with robot writers – https://theconversation.com/in-an-ai-world-we-need-to-teach-students-how-to-work-with-robot-writers-157508

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Holden, Professor of Economics, UNSW

House prices are back in the news, and out of control.

In the past three months the median house price in Sydney has risen by more than A$100,000 to A$1.12 million. Sydney’s median residential property price (including houses and apartments) is now 2.6% above its previous high-water mark, recorded in August 2017, before lending criteria were tightened (and COVID-19 struck).

Even areas far from central Sydney, such as the Central Coast, have recorded double-digit percentage increases.

What exactly is driving these sharp rises is a matter of debate. Australia’s economic recovery from COVID-19 has been stronger than many thought. The prospect of most Australians being vaccinated and international borders reopening provides further hope – even if our vaccine roll-out has been less than stellar in its planning and execution.

Of course, interest rates are at historic lows. More to the point, loans that can be fixed for three or five years have become much cheaper and more widely used as well. This has given borrowers the capacity to borrow larger sums.

The federal government has contributed, too, with a suite of measures targeted at first-home buyers. Like all such measures, these look attractive at the individual level but simply translate into higher prices. Schemes like the “first home owner grant” should really be called the “seller subsidy”.

Finally there is the elephant in the room: irrational exuberance.

Who knows how much “fear of missing out” has played into price rises. Against the backdrop of a worldwide public health and economic crisis, one might think buyers would be a little more circumspect about their future incomes.

But apparently not so much.

Our housing affordability problem

Sadly, there is little new about the fact that Australia – and the largest capital cities in particular – have a serious housing affordability problem. It has been that way for at least a decade.

Sydney and Melbourne are routinely ranked among the top half-dozen most expensive cities in the world when comparing housing prices to average incomes earned in those cities.

Home ownership rates have fallen more or less constantly. Young people are basically excluded from home ownership unless they have very high incomes or parents with the means and inclination to provide financial help.

On top of this, household debt levels in Australia are disturbingly high – reflecting the large mortgages people who do manage to claw their way into the housing market have to take out.

Sure, that is matched against the high asset values of the property they have bought. But as any student on economic history knows, that’s little comfort when an asset price bubble bursts.

To put it another way: asset prices come and go, but debt is forever.

So here we are again. The housing market is so frothy it has seriously reduced financial mobility at the individual level, and it threatens financial stability at the macro level.

Read more: Zoning isn’t to blame for Australia’s soaring house prices

Quick fixes that won’t work

Let’s start by ruling out some of the supposed quick fixes for getting property prices under control.

Some say the Reserve Bank of Australia should hike interest rates to make it harder for borrowers to pay such high prices. But the RBA should mainly focus on its inflation target (one it has missed year after year), getting unemployment down and wages growth up. Those things all require low interest rates.

To calm the frenzy, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority could use so-called “macroprudential tools”. These are requirements on financial institutions to limit systemic risks. In the past the financial regulator has set policies to limit credit growth and curb the proportion of “interest-only mortgages” (mortgages that don’t require principal payments). It can and should do these things, though it has a pretty spotty track record at acting in a timely and effective manner.

Perhaps most importantly, both sides of politics need to revisit Australia’s almost unique and certainly odd system of allowing interest payments on rental properties to be offset against a person’s taxable income – that is, “negative gearing”.

Read more: Negative gearing reforms could save A$1.7 billion without hurting poorer investors

Phasing out negative gearing

Such deductions are permissible for other asset classes such as stocks – and have been for 100 years or so. But no “ordinary” Australian wage earner can get big loans to bet on the stock market. Even wealthy investors cannot get anything like the leverage they can in residential property in other asset classes.

This is a peculiarity flowing from the amount of capital banks need to hold against property loans. It’s a market failure that should be addressed.

The best way to do this – as I pointed out in a report for the McKell Institute in mid-2015 – is to gradually phase out negative gearing over time, and allow it only for new dwellings in future. Expanding housing supply would also be very helpful.

Labor took a policy based on this report to two elections. It lost both – although perhaps the last loss had more to with other things, including a quite separate and less appealing franking credit policy.

Read more: Words that matter. What’s a franking credit? What’s dividend imputation? And what’s ‘retiree tax’?

The Coalition almost pre-empted Labor by reforming negative gearing in 2015/16. But then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull bowed to pressure from then treasurer and negative-gearing fan Scott Morrison.

Housing affordability remains a serious problem in Australia. We need to tackle it now, and with a multi-pronged approach. If we don’t, we risk the future of young Australians and our financial system at the same time.

– ref. Vital signs: to fix Australia’s housing affordability crisis, negative gearing must go – https://theconversation.com/vital-signs-to-fix-australias-housing-affordability-crisis-negative-gearing-must-go-158518

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Maria Nugent, Co-Director, Australian Centre for Indigenous History, Australian National University

Return to Uluru is the latest book from respected historian Mark McKenna. It is one of a few history books published recently that explicitly engage with the Uluru Statement from the Heart and its demand for a nationwide process of truth telling — one that some key advocates insist should be pursued locally and pluralistically. Not one truth, but many truths.

McKenna has already responded to the Uluru statement in his searching Quarterly Essay, Moment of Truth (2018). Amid that wide-ranging discussion of politics, history and Australian futures, he paused to consider a single street sign in the down-at-heel suburb of Kurnell on Botany Bay’s southern shore, where, in 1770, the Endeavour crew had spent a listless week.

Read more: The Uluru statement is not a vague idea of ‘being heard’ but deliberate structural reform

Through reconstructing a history of a worn out sign announcing Kurnell as the “birthplace of modern Australia”, McKenna traced the changing significance of this site, and the strange politics of foundational myths. This revealing vignette seemed like a chapter-in-the-making, with Kurnell poised to be added to the itinerary of vantage points from which he showed his readers ways to view past, present and future differently.

But it was a tease. McKenna’s next book — this one — turns its back on the coastal fringes and faces inwards, gingerly and then confidently venturing into terrains, actual and abstract, he had not yet traversed.

In Return to Uluru, McKenna continues his journey in search of alternative sites of national foundations — or, national sites of alternative foundations. This quest had begun with Looking for Blackfellas’ Point, subtitled An Australian History of Place, published two decades ago in 2002.

Searching for a satisfying way to intervene in the heat of the history wars, he turned his focus to what had become his own backyard: a bend in the Towamba river in southeastern NSW known in the local vernacular as Blackfellas’ Point, where he had purchased eight acres (3.2 hectares) of land. From there, McKenna’s vista spanned outwards to the far south coast region, reaching backwards to its frontier past and forwards to its racial present.

McKenna then detoured via his magisterial biography of Manning Clark, An Eye for Eternity, a suitable byway for a historian deeply interested in place and the redemptive power of narrative. By the early 2010s, he resumed his Australian journey by essaying four coastal locations. In From the Edge: Australia’s Lost Histories (2016), he explored the peripheral histories of the long stretches of beach of southeast Australia from Gippsland to Sydney; Port Essington on the Cobourg Peninsula in west Arnhem Land; Murujuga in the Pilbara in the northwest and Gangaar (Cooktown) in Far North Queensland.

These off-centre places were offered as viable and lively alternatives to the moribund, foundational myths of single moments of bloodless and benign possession. Such myths are gradually reaching their use by date, although still hanging on as last year’s commemoration of Cook and the Endeavour proved.

Read more: A failure to say hello: how Captain Cook blundered his first impression with Indigenous people

Redemption

And so, Return to Uluru sees McKenna venture inland — for the first time. Heading inwards, he makes use of those stories of discovery and exploration, with which settler Australians (particularly those of a certain age) are familiar, to insert himself into a practised way of encountering the mythologised space of the continent’s heart. The opening section of the book has the quality of re-enactment; it is hard to know how ironic it is. This is a history approached from the outside in.

But the explorer narrative makes sense since it turns out McKenna is a rare creature — someone who had not yet made the pilgrimage to Uluru and the fabled Centre. And so, the “return” in the book’s title is initially a puzzle: Who then, if not the author, is making a return to Uluru? What is returning — or being returned?

It takes the remainder of the book — which is part travelogue, part detective story, part historical narrative and part political treatise — to appreciate in all dimensions this powerful metaphor of return.

With the Centre reached, the second section of the book, called Lawman, focuses on a policeman, Bill McKinnon, who murdered an Aboriginal man, Yokununna, in 1934. McKinnon is reasonably well-known in scholarship on the Northern Territory. His killing of Yokununna, an Anangu man arrested on suspicion of being responsible (along with others) for the death of an Aboriginal stockman, is likewise amply documented since it was the subject of a federal government inquiry. This part of the book provides a narrative retelling of episode — a seamless weaving together of the official story and its obfuscations and competing interests.

Reading this part is a reminder the audience for this book is not the critical historian who is wondering when the debates about policing in the NT or the contradictions of government policy will be canvassed. The archive holds secrets and stories, and this is an “archive story”, which requires little critical commentary.

If the four “off-the-beaten-track” coastal sites of From The Edge were chosen for the ways they lent themselves to the work of revelation — of hidden histories or discarded truths — Uluru provides McKenna scope for the work of redemption.

In this case, redemption comes through the belated admission of a sin that was denied — or covered up — for which the perpetrator avoided punishment, even as he lived out his life knowing that he had dissembled. That is the Uluru to which McKenna returns through his historical scholarship.

As with all his books, the work of historical reckoning that McKenna pursues through the poetic telling of history operates simultaneously at a series of scales: the individual, the family, the local, and the national. It is the same rhetorical move that originally allowed McKenna’s own land on the NSW south coast to become a space of imagining on a national scale. And now, Uluru speaks again to the nation’s unfinished business.

This time it is a single site (a cave near Uluru), a singular episode (a newly-minted territory policeman chasing accused Aboriginal men), and a split second (when the policeman’s bullet kills one of them) that becomes the viewfinder for seeing past, present, future anew.

Ethical questions

Explaining its emphasis on the “micro”, the book begins with an epigram from the Swiss artist and sculptor, Alberto Giacometti: “By doing something a half centimetre high, you are more likely to get a sense of the universe than if you try to do the whole sky”.

But we are left with the question of whether a focus on the microcosmic is a productive model for this urgent and difficult work of national truth telling? Might it be a problem that a string of episodes — but not structures — are revisited and revised?

By the book’s third section, the power of the quest begins again — and here we are not only travelling to the Centre or into the past through the surviving official record. We are also jumping on a plane to Brisbane to meet with policeman McKinnon’s family. Here, we delve into other archives — those boxes of papers and other detritus of one’s life, which in Australia are less likely to be found in attics than in garages or, in Brisbane, in that evocative space known as “under the house”.

At this juncture, as the story spins from past to present, from the official memory to family memory, from public archives to private ones, the ethical stakes seem to grow ever greater.

While McKenna is flicking nonchalantly through McKinnon’s personal papers, he finds treasure — “a copious archive of Australia’s frontier” — including the notebook in which the policeman admits he had fired to hit Yokununna. Meanwhile, a curator in a museum in South Australia is searching records and finding the remains of McKinnon’s victim.

Our archives and collections — both public and private — still contain plenty of damning evidence to hold the past to account. These secret stashes. This murky memory-work.

Archaeologist Denis Byrne has described the “ethos of return”, in which the flow of things and knowledge is reversing, coming home — perhaps to haunt, perhaps to heal. This is another kind of redemption. A powerful section of the book deals with the urgent work of taking Yokununna’s remains home — a process interrupted by COVID-19 and still playing out.

So far, the two families at the heart of this story — McKinnon’s and Yokununna’s — are travelling on parallel journeys; the reckoning will come, as it has powerfully at Myall Creek and other places, when families on opposite sides of a violent past come face to face.

Read more: How can we achieve reconciliation? Myall Creek offers valuable answers

Such a future meeting is not yet guaranteed, but it hangs as a possibility. The Myall Creek memorial was shepherded by local churches and communities. Here, it seems, it will be museum curators and historians who are the nursemaids for re-membering — creating communities around common but differently experienced pasts.

What are we to do?

At the height of the history wars in the 1990s, the anthropologist Gillian Cowlishaw expressed surprise at how readily some Australians were prepared to condemn their own ancestors rather than try to understand them.

She saw this as symptomatic of the polarising tenor of the furore — a failure of collective imagination to apprehend the complexities and contradictions of frontier lives. McKenna’s book (and inquiry) seeks to avoid such simplification and easy distancing from the fraught pasts we inherit.

Read more: Friday essay: it’s time for a new museum dedicated to the fighters of the frontier wars

He nudges his readers to see McKinnon and his crime for what it was: violent, illegal, excessive, irrational, and unconscionable, even if he was exonerated. No-one was found guilty of the killing, although the inquiry’s finding was that the “shooting of Yokununna […] though legally justified, was not warranted”.

McKenna does this not by swift damnation from the comfortable distance of the present, but by paying attention to the chinks in McKinnon’s own conscience. The fact that he held onto a piece of evidence that would expose him even as he spent his long retirement contributing occasionally to myth-making about himself and other police on the NT frontier.

But McKenna also has to deal with the implications for cherished family memories and pride when it becomes clear the generosity and hospitality extended to him by McKinnon’s doting daughter (who is slipping into dementia) is the path to the evidence that exposed her father.

And, indeed, the shadow of memory loss — the cruel play of remembering and forgetting — falls over the whole sorry episode. What happens when the distant frontier takes up residence in the family home? How will we remember our flawed ancestors then?

McKenna shares a story of a difficult meeting with McKinnon’s grandchildren, who understand the gravity of the situation, and articulate their commitment to reconciliation. They are prepared to do what needs to be done to come to terms with their unexpected inheritance; what that will be remains to be seen.

The book ends – surprisingly, jarringly, uncomfortably – with a sympathetic portrait of McKinnon, sitting atop an overturned box playing a violin. The context of the photograph is explained (McKinnon took it and annotated it). But we are left with the question: What do we do with these benign and romantic images of men who murdered and got away with it because the racial structures of Australian society ensured they would?

Is this the challenge of a much anticipated process of truth telling? Not that we will return to the big historical truths that in some ways, we all already know, but that we will have to revise our own and others’ family myths and treasured memories, finding a way to reconcile or hold in tension our love of — and our abhorrence for — the sins of the fathers?

This is the redemptive strain in McKenna’s work — that quest for grace — which perhaps has echoes of his biographical subject Manning Clark and his belief in the moral purpose of the historian’s craft.

Return to Uluru, by Mark McKenna, is published by Black Inc.

– ref. Friday essay: truth telling, Return to Uluru and reckoning with the sins of fathers – https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-truth-telling-return-to-uluru-and-reckoning-with-the-sins-of-fathers-155118

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

The vaccine rollout was thrown into fresh uncertainty on Thursday night after the government received medical advice against using the AstraZeneca vaccine for people under 50 because of the very small risk of blood clots.

Most immediately, this means those younger health and aged care workers who have not yet been vaccinated will be offered the Pfizer shot. This may involve delays.

These people are in the cohort currently being vaccinated, together with over 70s who are unaffected by the new advice, which went to the government on Thursday evening.

Scott Morrison said the later stages of the rollout will now urgently be re-examined and re-calibrated. He said it was “far too early” to say what impact it would have on the rollout’s timetable.

The government’s deadline for all eligible people who want a vaccine to receive at least one shot by the end of October is set to blow out.

Vaccine purchases will also be reviewed.

Morrison unveiled the advice from the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation at a hastily summoned press conference on Thursday night, also attended by Health Minister Greg Hunt, Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly, and Health Department Secretary Brendan Murphy.

Morrison said he had received the advice “in the last 15 minutes”.

The government had urgently sought the advice following evidence overseas of a link between the AstraZeneca vaccine and blood clots, with some deaths resulting.

There has been one clot case in Australia, a man in his 40s.

Explaining that the Pfizer vaccine should be preferred over AstraZenica for those under 50s, ATAGI said, “This recommendation is based on the increasing risk of severe outcomes from COVID-19 in older adults (and hence a higher benefit from vaccination) and a potentially increased risk of thrombosis with thrombocytopenia following AstraZeneca vaccine in those under 50 years”.

But it said AstraZeneca can be used in adults under 50 “where the benefits clearly outweigh the risk for that individual and the person has made an informed decision based on an understanding of the risks and benefits.”

Under 50s who’ve already had one AstraZeneca dose without serious adverse effects can be given a second dose, the advice said.

ATAGI described the possible blood clot side effect as “rare but serious”.

Advice is being provided to GPs involved in the rollout.

This is the latest difficulty to hit the rollout. The government this week stressed the main problem was shortage of supply, with AstraZeneca doses from Europe being held back and CLS, which is manufacturing the vaccine locally, not gearing up to the one million weekly target as fast as expected.

As of Thursday, one million doses of one or other of the two vaccines had been administered in Australia. At present Australia only has the two vaccines available.

Morrison stressed that decisions were up to individuals and their doctors – this was advice only.

“There is not a prohibition on the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine for persons under 50. There is an expression of a preference.”

Kelly said a clot was very rare. “At the moment, it seems to be around 4 to 6 per million doses of vaccine. It’s only been found in the first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine, usually within 4 to 10 days after that vaccine. But it is serious, and it can cause up to a 25% death rate when it occurs.”

In a late night statement AstraZeneca said it respected the government’s decision based on advice to recommend AstraZeneca’s vaccine be used in those over 50.

It noted that, “Overall, regulatory agencies have reaffirmed the vaccine offers a high-level of protection against all severities of COVID-19 and that these benefits continue to far outweigh the risks”.

– ref. New setback for vaccine rollout, with AstraZeneca not advised for people under 50 – https://theconversation.com/new-setback-for-vaccine-rollout-with-astrazeneca-not-advised-for-people-under-50-158661

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

Scott Morrison is inclined to underestimate tough women.

He’s done this in the past, to his detriment. In 2006, when he was managing director of Tourism Australia, Morrison was sacked after falling out with the board and federal Liberal tourism minister, Fran Bailey.

Years later, in 2018, the Australian Financial Review quoted Tim Fischer, who’d chaired Tourism Australia at the time, saying “a lot of us could see it coming as relations between Scott and Fran Bailey had deteriorated over a range of issues. But Scott didn’t seem to see it.”

Morrison was close to then prime minister John Howard and he thought – erroneously – Howard would step in and save him from Bailey. But Howard supported his minister.

Fast forward to 2021, and Morrison’s grappling with a broad “women’s problem”. And women playing hardball are all around the place.

Take just two current examples, Christine Holgate and Grace Tame.

In a submission to a Senate inquiry released this week Holgate, former Australia Post CEO, has launched a comprehensive counterattack to her being effectively forced out of her job last year, after a ferocious prime ministerial attack.

On a very different front Tame, the young and feisty Australian of the Year, has targeted Morrison’s choice of Amanda Stoker to become the new assistant minister for women.

Morrison in October excoriated Holgate over her rewarding four employees with Cartier watches (worth an average of $5000) for landing a lucrative deal with banks, which sustained Post’s network of franchises around the country.

Read more: Australia Post CEO Christine Holgate quits in Cartier watches affair

Immediately after Holgate had told a Senate committee about the watches, a furious Morrison let loose in the parliament. Declaring the action disgraceful, he said: “The chief executive has been instructed to stand aside and, if she doesn’t wish to do that, she can go.”

A devastated Holgate, regarded as a high-performing CEO, soon left her position.

A later inquiry (which the government initially declined to release) found no dishonesty or intentional misuse of Post’s funds, although it did find the purchase of the watches was inconsistent with the legislative obligation imposed on Post.

The controversy has now resurfaced with a Senate inquiry, instigated by Pauline Hanson, at which Holgate will appear next week.

Holgate argues in her submission the watches’ purchase was “legal, within Australia Post’s policies, within my own signing authority limits, approved by the previous Chairman, expensed appropriately, signed off by auditors and the [chief financial officer]”.

While Holgate in her submission focuses her ire on Post’s chairman, Lucio Di Bartolomeo, rather than on Morrison, the affair goes directly to the PM’s original reaction, which blackened her reputation.

Regardless of whether Post, as a government business, should have used watches as rewards, Morrison’s outburst was extreme and ill judged.

It led to a highly competent chief of a government business being publicly trashed and unnecessarily sacrificed, over not very much.

Holgate – who attracted sympathy from many CEOs and support among Australia Post small businesses – has yet to be replaced, a long and expensive process.

Morrison obviously thought the name “Cartier” would resonate (negatively) with his “quiet Australians”. If the employees had each been given cash bonuses of $5000 would he have reacted in the same way? The answer seems clear.

A harder question is, if the CEO had been male, would the PM’s temper tantrum have been as unrestrained?

Impossible to say, of course. But many people, especially women in this current climate of heightened sensitivity, would believe he’d have been more measured.

Grace Tame – whose passionate words when awarded Australian of the Year were an influence on Brittany Higgins to go public with her rape allegation – is potentially an ongoing thorn in the side of a PM trying to assure women he “gets it”.

Read more: ‘What are you afraid of ScoMo?’: Australian women are angry — and the Morrison government needs to listen

She’s a strong woman who finds herself, suddenly and unexpectedly, with a megaphone and she will use it all year.

In nominating Stoker, who is socially conservative and can be combative, as assistant minister for women, Morrison was inviting trouble.

Apart from dealing with the problems posed by Christian Porter and Linda Reynolds, the PM’s reshuffle was an effort to improve his and his government’s credentials on women’s issues.

It promoted female ministers and inserted references to “women” in various ministerial titles.

Yet he put Stoker into a position that would inevitably spark a adverse reaction among some women’s advocates.

Tame claimed Stoker had “supported a fake rape crisis tour aimed at falsifying all counts of sexual abuse on campuses across the nation”.

She said Stoker had also “supported” men’s rights advocate Bettina Arndt “who gave a platform [in an interview] to the pedophile who abused me”.

Stoker returned fire, defending her record promoting justice for women, and saying, “I did not attend Ms Arndt’s campus tour. I raised it in Senate estimates to highlight the universities’ inconsistent approaches to free speech and deplatforming.”

This week she dismissed Tame’s claims about falsifying accounts of abuse on campuses as “utter nonsense”.

Leaving aside the nitty gritty of their dispute, in the circumstances Morrison made a provocative choice, when he could have allocated the post to a less controversial frontbencher.

On Thursday Morrison and his new attorney-general Michaelia Cash unveiled the government’s full response to the Sex Discrimination Commissioner’s Respect@Work report.

The measures will strengthen protection for people in workplaces against sexual harrassment and remove the exemption from the sex discrimination legislation that members of parliament and judges now enjoy – although Morrison could not say how this would be applied in relation to MPs.

On Wednesday the government announced a two-day National Women’s Safety Summit to be held in late July.

The budget will have the stamp “women” on parts of it.

But the Prime Minister is not keen on the call, put forward for Friday’s national cabinet by Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, for a summit to address the “economic and social inequality facing Australian women”.

Palaszczuk, seizing the moment, wants national cabinet to host such a summit, which would have state and territory and stakeholder representatives. It would canvass issues including the pay and superannuation gender gaps and affordable child care.

“It’s the perfect time to have it,” she says. “Everyone is having conversations – in workplaces, around kitchen tables, on social media.”

A combination of such a broad agenda and so many strong women would make that a formidable political challenge for Morrison.

Read more: The government’s ‘roadmap’ for dealing with sexual harassment falls short. What we need is radical change

– ref. Grattan on Friday: Scott Morrison finds strong women can be tough players – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-scott-morrison-finds-strong-women-can-be-tough-players-158648

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jo Caust, Associate Professor and Principal Fellow (Hon), School of Culture and Communication, The University of Melbourne

Who gets what in the arts has long been topic of much debate. There are myriad issues round elitism, regional distribution, excellence, artforms, organisations versus individuals and so on. Some of this is generated by an unequal allocation of funding as well as the limited amount available overall. But other issues relate to historical approaches and a hierarchy of arts practice.

It is unusual, though, for an arts minister to step into the fray. In 2015, then arts minister George Brandis decided to change the funding distribution and invent his own funding scheme for excellence. This did not work out well for anyone, including the minister.

Now the current Minister for the Arts, Paul Fletcher, has decided to put his view out there. At a talk on Wednesday to the Sydney Institute, Fletcher attacked the arts sector for being a “cosy club” of elites while raising the issue of “fairness”, particularly in relation to regional and urban distribution of arts funding.

He described the audience for the arts as “an elite group of people wearing black tie going to opening nights in our big cities”. This might sound more like a Labor dig at the top end of town than a Coalition line. The minister seems to be confusing privileged audience members with hard-working arts workers, who could use support rather than insults.

Read more: A litany of losses: a new project maps our abandoned arts events of 2020

Bruised, battered, forgotten

Perhaps, like many, Fletcher is still feeling a bit bruised from 2020. The art sector was shutdown due to the pandemic and then was generally ignored for more than eight months by his government, despite the dramatic economic impact on the sector. The extremely slow response by the federal government was not seen by the arts sector as “sensitive” or “fair” for that matter. The federal government did end up providing a large amount of funding at the end of 2020 and into 2021, but the process for deciding “who got what” was hardly transparent.

Now it seems the minister wants to raise issues around elitism and funding share, as well as the urban/regional debate. This seems a little disingenuous given recent accusations of funding “rorts” at both federal and state levels.

Fletcher has declared he wants to see if he can shift the Labor party and Greens from their high ground positions in relation to the arts, while reminding everyone of past contributions by the Coalition to the cultural sector.

However, it is the minister’s government that disappeared the “arts” into an amorphous department of infrastructure.

It is the minster’s government that has continued to downplay the importance of Australian content by reducing “red tape” obligations to produce Australian content. It is the minister’s government that has continued to decrease the amount of arts funding available. And yes, it is the minster’s government that chose to ignore the needs of the arts sector during a time of desperate need.

Yet, in this speech this week, Fletcher claimed the “level of funding committed to the arts by the Morrison Government in 2020-21 has been unprecedented”. Belated additional funding for COVID relief may have increased the federal arts allocation dramatically for the past 12 months. But this additional funding has not been equitably allocated, and the government has continued to ignore cultural workers who were not eligible for JobKeeper or JobSeeker.

Read more: Latest arts windfalls show money isn’t enough. We need transparency

Big arts, big funding

Certainly, it can be agreed arts funding is skewed towards the big end of town. The opera companies, symphony orchestras and major theatre companies receive more than 60% of the funding available from the Australia Council.

Is Fletcher talking about changing this ratio or providing more money overall? Or is he using the opportunity to have a go at a vulnerable sector when he is meant to be their advocate? The minister maybe diving in at the deep end, without necessarily understanding the full complexity of the arts or arts funding.

Perhaps he is playing to supporters when he argues too much funding is going to urban performing arts companies, rather than, for example, to regional activity or commercial productions that tour.

But professional arts practice is usually located in urban centres because that is where artists live and work. It is also where they can attract the biggest audiences, which is critical when arts activity depends on box office income. Of course, there are also fantastic arts groups and individuals working in the regions that also need to be recognised, celebrated and more generously funded. But in the annual Australia Council report for 2019-2020, it is noted that of “government initiatives”, only 5% of total arts funding was allocated to regional areas. If the government was serious about providing more funding to regional areas, it could certainly increase this percentage.

However, since the Coalition parties came into power in 2013, the amount of money available for arts funding has continued to decrease. This is something that could easily be changed given the small amount overall given to arts practice at the Australia Council ($187.1 million in 2019-2020). A further 95 companies have lost their funding since 2016.

Over the past eight years there has been a dramatic continual decline in arts funding relative to population growth, which has particularly affected individuals and small to medium arts organisations. Is the minister arguing that he wants to give more money to the sector or is he really concerned about electoral boundaries and getting the support of Coalition voters in the regions?

The arts sector would love to have a minister who demonstrates they care about the needs of the sector and does their best to improve the position of the arts in Australian society. Instead, it feels like Fletcher is employing and possibly enjoying a “divide and rule” approach, which helps no one in the end, least of all the arts.

Read more: At moments like these, we need a cultural policy

– ref. What happens when your arts minister suffers from cultural cringe? – https://theconversation.com/what-happens-when-your-arts-minister-suffers-from-cultural-cringe-158621

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jason Harris, Professor of Corporate Law, University of Sydney

Shareholder primacy is often said to be the guiding principle of corporations.

The idea is that they exist to benefit their shareholders by providing dividends and capital gains, the more the better.

Fifty years ago, Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman went as far as to argue that was the only responsibility of companies — to make as much for their shareholders as the law would allow.

These days, most boards refrain from speaking about shareholder primacy and instead talk about the interests of the company, which includes things such as social license, stakeholder engagement and community expectations.

But what happens if shareholders try to tell boards and company managements how to go about their jobs?

Are the directors and chief executives required to follow their instructions?

Directors serve their companies first

From a legal perspective, company directors are required to act in the best interests of the company rather than (what might be the shorter-term) interests of shareholders.

If shareholders are not happy with the decisions of the company, they have the option of replacing the directors.

The directors, under the leadership of the board chair have the ability to remove and give instructions to the chief executive and senior managers.

Directors are accountable to shareholders indirectly, because shareholders have the ability to vote them off the board.

Shareholders lack direct power

In large public companies, this threat is often difficult to carry out because big institutional investors usually support incumbent managements and lack the resources or the will to actively monitor all of the companies in their portfolio, at least while they seem to be doing well.

Even smaller shareholders (most of them) are passive investors.

But directors don’t have carte blanche. They are legally bound to act in the best interests of their company.

Read more: ‘Not suitable’: where to now for James Packer and Crown’s other casinos?

There is no parallel duty for them to act in the best interest of shareholders.

Decisions about how the company’s money should be spent and what it should pay its workers are solely decisions for company management, under the supervision and ultimately authority of the board of directors.

Even government shareholders

But what if the company is a government-owned enterprise? What if it has only one shareholder (the government) who has appointed the entire board?

Legally speaking, that makes no difference. The board still has the authority to refuse to do what the shareholder wants.

From a practical perspective, serving on the board of a government-owned company is different from serving on the board of a non-government company.

Governance in the boards of government-owned companies is inherently politicised because the government can appoint and remove directors whenever it wants, for whatever reasons it wants, rational or otherwise.

Even at Australia Post

Which brings us to the Australia Post “scandal”.

A new chief executive, Christine Holgate, transformed the business, opening up new business lines, expanding offshore, producing massive increases in revenues and profits and energising the company’s network of disillusioned franchisees.

Instead of thanking her, late last year the head of the sole shareholder, Prime Minister Scott Morrison, labelled part of her conduct “disgraceful and not on”.

She had used company money to buy expensive presents (watches) for staff who secured contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

“So appalled and shocked was I by that behaviour — any shareholder would in a company raise their outrage if they had seen that conduct by a chief executive”, the prime minister said, that the chief executive had been instructed to stand aside and, “if she doesn’t wish to do that, she can go”.

Australia Post lacked guidelines

In mainstream corporate Australia, the idea of bonuses of $20,000 for staff producing millions of dollars would only raise eyebrows if no bonus was paid.

Linking pay to performance is common, including in government-owned entities such as the Future Fund.

But apparently not if it is done via luxury watches during a pandemic.

Part of the problem is confused corporate governance. The board of Australia Post didn’t have a clear framework for rewarding employees with bonuses.

Read more: Australia Post CEO Christine Holgate quits in Cartier watches affair

This left the chief executive to determine how to implement a suggestion from the then chair of the board that the employees be rewarded. Increases in salary or new company cars might not have raised eyebrows, not in the way watches did.

But handing out watches didn’t break any rules. If the board had put in place detailed-enough policies for bonus payments the chief executive would have had clear rules to follow.

Those rules could have been designed with the aim of not embarrassing the government.

Its chair sided with the prime minister

Without clear rules, the chairman and chief executive should have worked as a team, and might have. In her submission to the Senate inquiry, Christine Holgate says that when the watches were bought in 2018 the then chair took part in a discussion about whether to award the bonuses in the form of watches.

The subsequent chair paid greater attention to a complaint from the sole shareholder even though his legal duty was to the company rather than its owner.

Read more: COVID hands Australia Post opportunity to end daily delivery

The more-serious scandal involving Crown Casino demonstrates clearly the problems that can arise when board members appear to bend over backwards to assist the major shareholder rather than the company.

The old saying says “a person cannot serve two masters”. Directors’ duties are to their companies.

– ref. Company directors can’t serve two masters: what went wrong at Australia Post – https://theconversation.com/company-directors-cant-serve-two-masters-what-went-wrong-at-australia-post-158525

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nathan Bartlett, Associate Professor, School of Biomedical Sciences and Pharmacy, University of Newcastle

Authorities in the United Kingdom overnight recommended people under 30 be offered an alternative COVID vaccine to the AstraZeneca/Oxford shot.

The recommendation came after the European Medicines Agency (EMA) found a “possible link” between the vaccine and blood clots. The EMA also said blood clots should be listed as a “very rare” side effect of the vaccine.

It’s important to note there’s still no conclusive evidence the vaccine is causing the clots, as so few have been reported. However, evidence there is a link is increasing, which has prompted more focused monitoring.

The benefits of getting a COVID vaccine still far outweigh the risks. I would still be encouraging everyone to be vaccinated with the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said this morning “there’s nothing to suggest at this stage that there would be any change” to Australia’s current rollout strategy. The Therapeutic Goods Administration and the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation are currently reviewing the data and latest advice from Europe and the UK.

What’s causing these clots?

Blood clotting events linked to vaccination are being called “vaccine-induced prothrombotic immune thrombocytopenia” (VIPIT).

In these rare instances, clots are forming in a patient’s blood, and not just in veins but in arteries and other rare locations like the brain and abdomen. This is also paired with low platelet counts (cells needed for the blood to clot).

Read more: What is thrombocytopenia, the rare blood condition possibly linked to the AstraZeneca vaccine?

It appears, in these instances, the body’s response to the vaccine is triggering an “off target” immune response that is attacking platelets. Limited data that is yet to be peer reviewed suggests antibodies targeting platelets cause them to become activated and trigger clotting. This autoimmune response also targets the platelets for destruction, reducing their level in the blood. So platelets are either tied up in clots or are eliminated. Both processes contribute to “thrombocytopenia” (low blood platelet count).

Like infections, vaccines trigger an immune response, so when receiving any shot that stimulates a robust immune response there’s a small but real risk your immune system will generate “off target” effects. In these rare instances, these effects can lead to autoimmunity, which is an immune response that attacks your own cells.

All vaccines and medications come with small risks

The numbers of clots reported after the AstraZeneca are very small, so we don’t exactly know how common they are. But they appear to occur at a rate between one in 25,000 and one in 500,000.

The UK’s vaccine advisory board said there were 79 cases of blood clotting issues among more than 20 million people given the AstraZeneca vaccine. That’s a chance of about 0.0004%, or one in 250,000.

Researchers haven’t yet identified any specific risk factors so far for the development of blood clots following COVID vaccination. We need to understand as quickly as possible what these are if indeed a causal link is established.

Some have suggested there could be a link with women taking the contraceptive pill having a higher risk of blood clots after receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine. But there’s no evidence for this at all. As far as I know, information on whether women receiving the vaccine are taking the contraceptive pill isn’t captured. Perhaps it’s something to consider going forward.

Young people don’t appear to be at particularly higher risk of blood clots linked to the vaccine. The publicised cases of blood clots have occurred in mostly women under 60 years of age.

Australia shouldn’t follow the UK’s new recommendation

One reason the UK is able to advise younger people to receive other vaccines is because it has other vaccine options, including the Pfizer and Moderna shots. Offering the under 30s an alternative vaccine isn’t really going to hinder the rollout, which is going very well in the UK.

But this isn’t the case in Australia. The AstraZeneca shot is the only one we have guaranteed supply of, given CSL is producing it in Melbourne.

It’s important to remember the AstraZeneca vaccine is a very safe and effective vaccine. It’s also easier to store and distribute than the Pfizer vaccine.

The priority is vaccinating as many people as possible and quickly

It’s important to note we’re in uncharted territory. This is the first time in modern history we’ve been in a situation where we’ve needed to roll out a vaccine to deal with a pandemic.

We’re also using new vaccine technologies that we’ve had to expedite to try and get on top of this virus as soon as possible. These new technologies, including AstraZeneca’s, have never been tested at this immense scale until now.

There are a lot of unknowns, but certainly the scale in which were doing this means we’re going to see very rare adverse events linked to these vaccines.

At this stage the priority is still to vaccinate as many people as possible, as quickly as possible.

My primary concern is ongoing high levels of transmission across the world. The more cases there are, and longer we delay vaccinating people, the higher the likelihood is of new variants of the virus emerging.

Read more: UK, South African, Brazilian: a virologist explains each COVID variant and what they mean for the pandemic

Even though we have very low COVID-19 case numbers in Australia currently, we’ve seen regular outbreaks stemming from hotel quarantine. We can’t predict what’s going to happen in the future. The longer the virus is waiting at our doorstep, the greater the risk we’ll have another outbreak and end up in lockdown and much worse — and nobody wants that.

– ref. AstraZeneca’s blood clot risk is incredibly small. Australia shouldn’t follow the UK’s lead of offering under 30s another vaccine – https://theconversation.com/astrazenecas-blood-clot-risk-is-incredibly-small-australia-shouldnt-follow-the-uks-lead-of-offering-under-30s-another-vaccine-158611

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anthony Zulli, Associate professor, Victoria University

The federal government has asked Australia’s medical and vaccine regulators to urgently consider the European Medicines Agency’s finding of a possible link between the Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID vaccine and rare blood clots.

This follows reports over recent weeks of blood clots in a small number of people around the world who had received the AstraZeneca vaccine, including one man who was hospitalised in Melbourne.

Scientists have termed the condition “vaccine induced prothrombotic immune thrombocytopenia” (VIPIT). But what does this actually mean, how significant is the risk, and what are the implications for Australia’s vaccine rollout — which is currently relying predominantly on the AstraZeneca jab?

A paucity of platelets

As indicated by its name, VIPIT is a form of something called thrombocytopenia.

Thrombocytopenia is a condition whereby the numbers of thrombocytes (very small blood particles, or platelets) are markedly reduced. Platelets form clots to stop bleeding, so when you don’t have enough platelets in your blood, your body can’t form clots. This can lead to excessive bleeding.

The condition has a genetic component, but can also arise from more than 300 common medicines, including penicillin and certain pain killers. Quinine, which is added to tonic water for flavour, can also very rarely cause thrombocytopenia.

The symptoms of VIPIT can include severe headaches, abdominal pain, seizures and visual changes. These are similar to the symptoms of thrombocytopenia unrelated to the vaccine.

In rare cases of thrombocytopenia, clots can develop in the vessels draining blood from the brain. The European Medicines Agency said it had received reports of 169 cases of brain blood clots in people who had been vaccinated with the AstraZeneca shot.

In severe cases, thrombocytopenia can be fatal. There have been deaths from blood clots reportedly associated with the AstraZeneca vaccine, including 19 in the United Kingdom.

Read more: What can go wrong in the blood? A brief overview of bleeding, clotting and cancer

VIPIT appears to present 4-20 days after vaccination, and so far, the issue has been largely associated with women under the age of 65.

So how could this vaccine potentially cause thrombocytopenia? The “prothrombotic immune” part of the name denotes it’s caused by an over-activation of the immune system, which gives us a clue.

Platelets and COVID-19

The AstraZeneca vaccine prompts cells to make a specific part of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19), called the spike protein, which the virus uses to attach to cells when infecting us.

The vaccine stimulates our immune system to generate antibodies against the spike protein, which then primes the body to mount an immune response against SARS-CoV-2, if it encounters the virus in the future.

But in some people, the AstraZeneca vaccine seems to produce antibodies that react with platelets, making them stick together, leading the blood to clot. This in turn reduces circulating platelet numbers, and hence the thrombocytopenia.

These antibodies are similar to those found in some people on a blood thinning drug called heparin. The immune response to heparin generates antibodies that bind to platelets. This can lead to blood clots in some people, called heparin induced thrombocytopenia. As many as one in 20 patients receiving heparin develop thrombocytopenia.

Keeping in mind we’re yet to establish cause and effect, it’s a possibility that the biological mechanism by which we believe heparin leads to thrombocytopenia could be the same biological mechanism by which the AstraZeneca vaccine might.

How common is it?

Naturally occurring thrombocytopenia affects about one in 30,000 adults a year in the United States.

As for the suspected vaccine-induced kind, according to data collated by the Thrombosis and Haemostasis Society of Australia and New Zealand, VIPIT is as rare as one in 500,000 people. But the society notes the data are incomplete.

Different countries have reported different rates. Norway, for example, has so far reported one in 25,000 vaccinated adults under the age of 65 have experienced low platelet counts, bleeding, and widespread thromboses (blood clots).

Of course, the possibility that some of these cases of thrombocytopenia may have occurred regardless of the vaccine makes understanding vaccine-induced cases more complicated. But taken together, thrombocytopenia appears to be more common in the general population than among those who have been vaccinated.

As we continue to vaccinate the world, it’s likely small subsets of people will continue to experience this complication. Whether we can establish a causal link between the AstraZeneca vaccine and thrombocytopenia is subject to continued investigation.

Read more: Politics with Michelle Grattan: Stephen Duckett on what’s gone wrong with the rollout

Be aware, but not alarmed

Amid this ongoing investigation, some countries, such as Norway, have paused their rollouts of the AstraZeneca vaccine. Others have restricted use of the vaccine in certain groups, like Canada, which is using it only for adults older than 55, who may have higher risks from COVID and lower risk of blood clots. Meanwhile, the UK has pledged to make other vaccine options available for younger people.

We will wait to see how the Australian experts respond. But for the general adult population, we agree with the current guidance from bodies including the European Medicines Agency and the World Health Organization that the benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine outweigh the risks.

That said, it’s not unreasonable to be cautious. You should monitor for these symptoms up to 28 days after receiving the jab:

• breathlessness

• pain in the chest or stomach

• swelling or coldness in the leg

• severe or worsening headache

• blurred vision

• persistent bleeding

• multiple small bruises, reddish or purplish spots, or blood blisters under the skin.

If you’re experiencing any of these symptoms and you’re concerned, seek medical advice.

Read more: Data suggest no increased risk of blood clots from the AstraZeneca vaccine. Australia shouldn’t pause its rollout

– ref. What is thrombocytopenia, the rare blood condition possibly linked to the AstraZeneca vaccine? – https://theconversation.com/what-is-thrombocytopenia-the-rare-blood-condition-possibly-linked-to-the-astrazeneca-vaccine-158522

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Golledge, Director, Kingsford Legal Centre; Senior Lecturer, UNSW Law, UNSW

Over a year ago, Kate Jenkins, the Sex Discrimination Commissioner, publicly released the Respect@Work report, a landmark national inquiry into sexual harassment in workplaces by the Australian Human Rights Commission.

Jenkins found the prevalence of sexual harassment in Australia to be “endemic”, conservatively estimating the cost to the economy at $3.5 billion dollars per year. The report also documented the long-term health and well-being implications for people (predominantly women) who experience such harassment, and made 55 recommendations to comprehensively reform how Australia responds to and prevents sexual harassment.

Fast forward a year and there has been no meaningful reform, despite a groundswell of public concern and increasing numbers of women speaking out about the sexual harassment they have experienced at their workplaces.

On March 15, as part of the March 4 Justice, a petition of more than 90,000 signatures was delivered to Canberra politicians. A key demand was that the government fully implement the 55 recommendations in the Respect@Work Report.

Light on detail: the government’s response

Following intense public pressure, the Morrison government has finally responded to the report with a plan entitled, “A Roadmap for Respect: Preventing and Addressing Sexual Harassment in Australian Workplaces”.

The roadmap recognises the importance of a preventative approach to stop sexual harassment before it occurs. It also expresses agreement (either in full, in part or in principle) or “notes” the recommendations in the Respect@Work report.

Read more: Friday essay: Sex, power and anger — a history of feminist protests in Australia

This, however, falls significantly short of a commitment to fully implement all 55 recommendations put forth by Jenkins. For the roadmap to respond effectively to her damning findings, it must deliver radical change to ensure workplace equality in reality.

That said, there is no doubt the groundswell of public condemnation of sexual harassment has meaningfully shaped the government’s response.

Positive measures announced include:

• extending the time limit for making a sexual harassment complaint to the Australian Human Rights Commission from six months to 24 months

• clarifying that sexual harassment is a form of serious misconduct that can warrant immediate dismissal

• closing the loophole that exempts parliamentarians and judges from being held accountable for sexual harassment complaints under the Sex Discrimination Act.

All these changes are welcome and, in fact, long overdue. Other aspects of the roadmap will require scrutiny, as further details emerge.

A key hope was the government would strengthen the legal obligations on employers to prevent sexual harassment — known as “positive obligations”. However, the roadmap indicates the government believes this duty already exists in work health and safety laws.

Given Jenkins’ finding of “endemic” sexual harassment in Australian workplaces, this approach has clearly not worked. Furthermore, work health and safety laws are complex and unlikely to be an entirely appropriate approach for dealing with sexual harassment matters.

We should remain mindful of the needs of people who have experienced this type of harassment to have a voice in the process, to tell their story and to receive a just outcome. Given the size of the challenge ahead of us, we should look to strengthen the Sex Discrimination Act with a positive duty on employers to prevent this type of behaviour.

Read more: Sexual harassment at work isn’t just discrimination. It needs to be treated as a health and safety issue

This would help create the cultural change Australia needs and bring greater scrutiny of workplaces with significant sexual harassment problems. It would also give important oversight to the AHRC as the expert body.

We also need to watch and ensure the recommendations are followed with increased budgetary support at all ends of the spectrum. This includes everything from the important preventative education work with young people that Jenkins found works, to strengthening the supports available to people who need help when they experience sexual harassment.

The AHRC should be properly empowered to take on the mammoth task of seeing this challenge through to the end.

Further work to be done

There is no doubt that without the bravery of the people who have brought complaints of sexual harassment (usually at a high personal cost), or who spoke to Jenkins or spoke out publicly in recent months, we would not have seen such a recognition by the government about the scale and size of the problem.

In order to fully transform the way in which Australia deals with sexual harassment, the government must consider greater reform in terms of the role confidentiality agreements have in legally silencing people who bring sexual harassment complaints.

People brave enough to bring formal legal complaints of harassment are most often asked to sign a confidentiality agreement in settlement of their cases. These agreements usually prevent them from speaking about what they experienced and can mean serial sexual harassment continues unabated.

They also reflect the power imbalance in sexual harassment cases, with harassers or employers almost always insisting on confidentiality. This means we don’t know which workplaces have sexual harassment problems.

Read more: Politicians need expert help to change culture of sexual violence and impunity. We don’t need yet another review to tell us that

Australia should consider following a growing number of US jurisdictions in introducing legislation that only permits confidentiality clauses in sexual harassment settlements when requested by the person who has experienced the harassment.

We need to use the power of the law to change this legally sanctioned silence. This is a powerful way we can work to end the culture of silence and shame around sexual harassment, so anyone who experiences it can feel supported and empowered enough to call it out, whoever the harasser is.

We need to remember Jenkins found that sexual harassment was not inevitable — and was preventable. The way we respond now will determine whether this remains a widespread experience into the future.

– ref. The government’s ‘roadmap’ for dealing with sexual harassment falls short. What we need is radical change – https://theconversation.com/the-governments-roadmap-for-dealing-with-sexual-harassment-falls-short-what-we-need-is-radical-change-158431

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anthony Richardson, Professor, The University of Queensland

The tropical water at the equator is renowned for having the richest diversity of marine life on Earth, with vibrant coral reefs and large aggregations of tunas, sea turtles, manta rays and whale sharks. The number of marine species naturally tapers off as you head towards the poles.

Ecologists have assumed this global pattern has remained stable over recent centuries — until now. Our recent study found the ocean around the equator has already become too hot for many species to survive, and that global warming is responsible.

This story is part of Oceans 21
Our series on the global ocean opened with five in-depth profiles. Look out for new articles on the state of our oceans in the lead-up to the UN’s next climate conference, COP26. The series is brought to you by The Conversation’s international network.

In other words, the global pattern is rapidly changing. And as species flee to cooler water towards the poles, it’s likely to have profound implications for marine ecosystems and human livelihoods. When the same thing happened 252 million years ago, 90% of all marine species died.

The bell curve is warping dangerously

This global pattern — where the number of species starts lower at the poles and peaks at the equator — results in a bell-shaped gradient of species richness. We looked at distribution records for nearly 50,000 marine species collected since 1955 and found a growing dip over time in this bell shape.

So, as our oceans warm, species have tracked their preferred temperatures by moving towards the poles. Although the warming at the equator of 0.6℃ over the past 50 years is relatively modest compared with warming at higher latitudes, tropical species have to move further to remain in their thermal niche compared with species elsewhere.

As ocean warming has accelerated over recent decades due to climate change, the dip around at the equator has deepened.

We predicted such a change five years ago using a modelling approach, and now we have observational evidence.

For each of the 10 major groups of species we studied (including pelagic fish, reef fish and molluscs) that live in the water or on the seafloor, their richness either plateaued or declined slightly at latitudes with mean annual sea-surface temperatures above 20℃.

Read more: The ocean is becoming more stable – here’s why that might not be a good thing

Today, species richness is greatest in the northern hemisphere in latitudes around 30°N (off southern China and Mexico) and in the south around 20°S (off northern Australia and southern Brazil).

This has happened before

We shouldn’t be surprised global biodiversity has responded so rapidly to global warming. This has happened before, and with dramatic consequences.

252 million years ago…

At the end of the Permian geological period about 252 million years ago, global temperatures warmed by 10℃ over 30,000-60,000 years as a result of greenhouse gas emissions from volcano eruptions in Siberia.

A 2020 study of the fossils from that time shows the pronounced peak in biodiversity at the equator flattened and spread. During this mammoth rearranging of global biodiversity, 90% of all marine species were killed.

125,000 years ago…

A 2012 study showed that more recently, during the rapid warming around 125,000 years ago, there was a similar swift movement of reef corals away from the tropics, as documented in the fossil record. The result was a pattern similar to the one we describe, although there was no associated mass extinction.

Authors of the study suggested their results might foreshadow the effects of our current global warming, ominously warning there could be mass extinctions in the near future as species move into the subtropics, where they might struggle to compete and adapt.

Today…

During the last ice age, which ended around 15,000 years ago, the richness of forams (a type of hard-shelled, single-celled plankton) peaked at the equator and has been dropping there ever since. This is significant as plankton is a keystone species in the foodweb.

Our study shows that decline has accelerated in recent decades due to human-driven climate change.

The profound implications

Losing species in tropical ecosystems means ecological resilience to environmental changes is reduced, potentially compromising ecosystem persistence.

In subtropical ecosystems, species richness is increasing. This means there’ll be species invaders, novel predator-prey interactions, and new competitive relationships. For example, tropical fish moving into Sydney Harbour compete with temperate species for food and habitat.

This could result in ecosystem collapse — as was seen at the boundary between the Permian and Triassic periods — in which species go extinct and ecosystem services (such as food supplies) are permanently altered.

The changes we describe will also have profound implications for human livelihoods. For example, many tropical island nations depend on the revenue from tuna fishing fleets through the selling of licenses in their territorial waters. Highly mobile tuna species are likely to move rapidly toward the subtropics, potentially beyond sovereign waters of island nations.

Read more: Tropical fisheries: does limiting international trade protect local people and marine life?

Similarly, many reef species important for artisanal fishers — and highly mobile megafauna such as whale sharks, manta rays and sea turtles that support tourism — are also likely to move toward the subtropics.

The movement of commercial and artisanal fish and marine megafauna could compromise the ability of tropical nations to meet the Sustainable Development Goals concerning zero hunger and marine life.

Is there anything we can do?

One pathway is laid out in the Paris Climate Accords and involves aggressively reducing our emissions. Other opportunities are also emerging that could help safeguard biodiversity and hopefully minimise the worst impacts of it shifting away from the equator.

Currently 2.7% of the ocean is conserved in fully or highly protected reserves. This is well short of the 10% target by 2020 under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity.

But a group of 41 nations is pushing to set a new target of protecting 30% of the ocean by 2030.

This “30 by 30” target could ban seafloor mining and remove fishing in reserves that can destroy habitats and release as much carbon dioxide as global aviation. These measures would remove pressures on biodiversity and promote ecological resilience.

Designing climate-smart reserves could further protect biodiversity from future changes. For example, reserves for marine life could be placed in refugia where the climate will be stable over the foreseeable future.

We now have evidence that climate change is impacting the best-known and strongest global pattern in ecology. We should not delay actions to try to mitigate this.

Read more: Australia’s marine (un)protected areas: government zoning bias has left marine life in peril since 2012

– ref. Marine life is fleeing the equator to cooler waters. History tells us this could trigger a mass extinction event – https://theconversation.com/marine-life-is-fleeing-the-equator-to-cooler-waters-history-tells-us-this-could-trigger-a-mass-extinction-event-158424

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Duane W. Hamacher, Associate Professor, The University of Melbourne

When Uncle Segar Passi watches the position of the setting Sun from his front patio, he notes its location and relates that to the time of year and changes in seasonal cycles.

What he sees translates into his artworks. They are visually stunning, a rich tapestry of colours jumping off the frame with a palate that easily rivals Vincent van Gogh. This is reflected in the many awards he has garnered over the years.

His artistic talent is matched only by the depth of his wisdom and cultural knowledge, which he teaches through his practice.

An island home

Turning 79 this year, Uncle Segar is a senior Meriam elder and a Dauareb man, meaning his community is originally from Dauar, the larger of the two small islands off the coast of Mer (the other being Waier) in the eastern Torres Strait.

The volcanic trio of islands are collectively known as the Murray Island group, and sit at the very tip of the Great Barrier Reef.

Professor Martin Nakata, a Torres Strait Islander and Pro-Vice Chancellor at James Cook University, brought me to Mer years ago to help the community document its star knowledge for education and community programs.

We stood on the beach near Uncle Segar’s house, watching the sunset near the double-hilled island of Dauar when he told me:

That place has powerful magic. If you want to learn about traditional star knowledge, you ask those elders. They’re the big dogs.

Looking to the artworks on the wall in Uncle Segar’s workshop, I noticed a plethora of subtle characteristics encoded within each one.

I know his artistic style is unique and aesthetically gorgeous, but I also know that every colour, brushstroke, motif and design has meaning. I see a painting showing a crescent Moon with the cusps pointing up. Above it are puffy cumulus clouds and the moonlight reflected in the choppy waters.

Another painting, which looks nearly identical from a distance, shows the Moon tilted at an angle. The clouds above are cirrus, and the reflection of moonlight is clear and strong on the calm, still water.

In his characteristic soft voice, Uncle Segar explained the meaning behind this pair of paintings.

Every month there is a New Moon at a different angle. Did you ever notice this?

He explained how the New Moon (kerker meb) can tell you about the changing seasons if you look at the angle of its tilt. When the cusps are pointing up (Meb metalug em), it is the dry season, the Sager.

You will see large cumulus clouds in the evening sky and the water is choppy. When the cusps point at an angle (Meb uag em), the water is calm and you see cirrus clouds. This is the wet monsoon season, the Kuki. He pointed to the painting:

If the water looks rough and the Moon is pointed up, you know the winds will die down and the next day the water will be fine.

The art of knowledge

The paintings are a medium through which complex systems of knowledge are passed down. These systems are based on generations of collective observation, deduction and interconnection – a longstanding system of science.

Read more: The Moon plays an important role in Indigenous culture and helped win a battle over sea rights

Uncle Segar is an expert on clouds and weather, the plants and animals, the sea, land, and the sky. His knowledge is as deep as his artworks are captivating.

The self-taught artist developed his style in the 1960s and has since won several major awards for his work, gaining an international profile through his raw talent, complex works and lovely personality. But his passion is for local community, both on Mer and across the Torres Strait.

Uncle Segar’s work has appeared in local school books and seasonal calendars about traditional knowledge. He has also worked closely with me and other academics over the years, sharing Meriam Star Knowledge and co-authoring several research papers.

These include publications about traditional ways of interpreting the twinkling stars, the role of astronomy in song and dance, and the relationship between bright meteors and death rites in the Torres Strait.

Uncle Segar is currently contributing to a major book on Indigenous astronomy for a global audience and has been featured in recent Indigenous astronomy articles in Cosmos magazine. His knowledge has even been written into the Australian National Curriculum for schools across the country.

The flying spirits

This knowledge has found its way into films by some of the world’s most critically acclaimed directors. Members of the Mer community performed the Maier (Shooting Star) dance for the 2020 Werner Herzog and Clive Oppenheimer film Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds.

Maier is a term from the Meriam Mir language referring to fireballs (exceptionally bright meteors), which are seen as a celestial personification of a recently deceased person’s spirit flying to Beig, the land of the dead.

The brightness, trajectory and sound of a Maier all have special meaning. If the Maier breaks into fragments and you see sparks fall (uir-uir), you know that person left behind a large family.

The trajectory of the Maier tells you where that person is from. And when you hear the booming sound (dum) as the fireball explodes, it tells you that person has arrived at their destination.

The Maier dance is originally from Mer but had not been performed on the island since 1969. In late 2019, the community approved Herzog and Oppenheimer to film the dance on Mer.

Led by Meriam elder Alo Tapim, four local dancers were taught the kab kar (sacred dance) and performed it on the beach at sunset just hours later, with cameras rolling. The segment you see at the end of the film is the first time the dance had been performed on Mer in 50 years.

Name in the stars

In 2020, his lifetime of work and his contributions to astronomy were recognised when the International Astronomical Union renamed the asteroid “1979 MH4” as “7733 Segarpassi”.

This is a 1.9km-wide asteroid in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. It is 2.4 times farther from the Sun than Earth is, and takes 3.7 years to orbit the Sun.

Read more: From 7809 Marcialangton to 7630 Yidumduma: 5 asteroids named after Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people

Uncle Segar’s important contributions to culture and science are also encapsulated in the newly released commemorative coin “The Shark in the Stars”.

Released on March 4, 2021 by the Royal Australian Mint, this non-circulating coin features Uncle Segar’s artwork. It is the third and final instalment of the Star Dreaming series, and was so popular all 5,000 coins sold out within two hours.

The celestial shark is called Beizam, a Meriam constellation formed by the bright stars of the Big Dipper (part of the Western constellation Ursa Major, the Big Bear). It traces out the head, body, fins and tail of the shark.

The changing position of the shark in the northern skies throughout the year is a seasonal marker that notes shifting seasons, when to hunt turtle, when to harvest yams, and informs the observer about the behaviour of the shark itself.

Read more: New coins celebrate Indigenous astronomy, the stars, and the dark spaces between them

When the nose of Beizam touches the horizon at sunset, sharks are feeding on sardines that swim in tight ribbons close to the shore. This occurs during the Sager, which can be a dangerous time to go for a dip.

Later in the year, as the shark dives below the horizon at dusk, you will see the first lightning of the coming monsoon.

Meriam people teach that water rushes through Beizam’s gills as it dives into the sea on the horizon, casting water into the sky which falls as the rains of the wet season, the Kuki.

Uncle Segar Passi continues to share his knowledge with the world, benefiting his community and the next generation of Meriam scholars. And we are exceptionally lucky and honoured to continue learning from Elders like him.

Read more: A shark in the stars: astronomy and culture in the Torres Strait

– ref. From fireballs in the sky to a shark in the stars: the astronomical artistry of Segar Passi – https://theconversation.com/from-fireballs-in-the-sky-to-a-shark-in-the-stars-the-astronomical-artistry-of-segar-passi-157319

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Frank Bongiorno, Professor of History, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National University

Some promising polling for Labor in recent weeks has inevitably raised that perennial question for a party whose national triumphs since Federation 120 years ago have been rare: can it win the next election? And in the manner of modern elections, the question soon becomes a more personal one: can it win under its present leader, Anthony Albanese?

My punditry in such matters is likely to be no better or worse than anyone else’s. Apart from polling, the limitations of which have become all too well known, there’s little for most of us to go on.

One place we might look is the quality of an opposition leader’s performance. They really have two jobs, which is one of the reasons no one much likes being opposition leader.

First, they need to keep government accountable, scrutinising its behaviour using parliament, committees such as Senate Estimates, and the media to draw attention to government failings or worse.

Their other job is to make themselves look like an alternative government. They do so by preparing policies, crafting an attractive image, and attending to problems such as weaknesses in the party organisation.

Taking these two roles into account, how well has Labor been doing this under Albanese?

Read more: From ‘snapback’ to ‘comeback’: policy gridlock as Morrison government puts slogans over substance

In the aftermath of the 2019 election, as is usually the case after an election defeat, it’s hard for an opposition to get a hearing. The government will usually have an agenda that it pursues aggressively in the flush of an election victory. Few wish to listen to the leader of a party only recently repudiated at the polls.

The months that followed the 2019 election had some of these features. The government pursued massive tax cuts, which Labor supported. But given Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s lack of an agenda – his policy at the 2019 election was to win the 2019 election – there was little for Albanese and Labor to get their teeth into.

That soon changed. Summer is usually a quiet time for both government and opposition. It was on this basis, that Morrison, “Jen and the girls” headed for Hawaii. But the Black Summer bushfires provided Albanese and the Labor opposition with their first chance to lay a glove on Morrison.

While Morrison’s performance was so poor that Albanese needed to do little to look good by comparison, the crisis did damage the government sufficiently to raise Labor’s hopes that the shine gained from “Morrison’s miracle” was wearing off.

Then came sports rorts. This scandal provided Labor with opportunities to build an argument that this was a mean and tricky government that put winning elections ahead of integrity or fairness. It claimed a ministerial scalp.

Sports rorts was soon overwhelmed by the pandemic. This was very bad news for Labor. Parliamentary sittings were reduced. Worried citizens attended to their private affairs. National cabinet provided a sense of Labor state governments being drawn into the tent with Morrison, while the federal Labor opposition was rendered irrelevant. Morrison even courted the unions with some success.

Governments almost invariably benefit from major crises because they are seen as doers. There are strong pressures to place an increasing range of issues “beyond politics”, a boon for those intent on looting the treasury and bad for public accountability.

The government’s massive spending stimulus made Labor seem particularly irrelevant. There can be no doubt that if a Labor government had tried anything similar, it would have been subjected to the mother of all campaigns by right-wing media.

So, if Albanese and much of his front bench seemed invisible during this period, this is not a matter for which they can be much criticised. And to be fair, several Labor shadow ministers used this period productively to explore what a post-pandemic order might look like.

We complain about our politicians spending too little time reading and thinking. We should notice when they do. This was Labor performing the second of those functions of opposition: crafting an alternative government.

The gods have been kinder to Labor during 2021. The government has been mired in crisis, scandal and sleaze. Labor, meanwhile, has benefited from its slow and steady achievement of greater gender equity during decades in which the Coalition’s performance in this area has deteriorated.

Read more: Grattan on Friday: The worst is not over in the crisis tearing at Scott Morrison’s government

Labor has admittedly had to do little to keep the government accountable in these matters – Morrison’s ineptness and an enterprising group of mainly female journalists have done its job for it – but the party has benefited enormously from having capable women in leadership positions. Albanese has been able to avoid looking like another well-meaning mansplainer when the issues of sexual assault and harassment are in the spotlight.

The blatant failures of the vaccination program have provided new opportunities for the Labor Party to criticise a government that likes to present itself as the saviour of the Australian people in its hour of need – as Psalm 46 would have it, “a very present help in trouble”.

Electors seem less certain. They have returned two state Labor governments in Queensland and Western Australia widely perceived to have kept their populations safe. Other state governments remain popular, even that of Daniel Andrews, despite Victoria’s ordeal of a second wave of infections.

It is not clear how much credit the Morrison government will be able to claim. Dealing competently with the Global Financial Crisis in 2008-9 appeared to win the Rudd government limited credit among voters in the medium term. It was persecuted for a few failures instead.

Albanese’s place in these considerations remains an ambiguous one. Tanya Plibersek seems to have emerged as the most likely alternative and, if Albanese were to falter at the next election, his successor.

The rules adopted by the Labor Party during the second Rudd prime ministership in 2013 make it difficult to remove a leader between elections unless he or she agrees to go. In any case, and leaving aside the party’s split under Billy Hughes in 1916 and the interim leadership of Frank Forde in 1945, Labor has still only once removed a leader without giving him the opportunity to fight an election: Simon Crean in 2003.

As the son of a single mother raised in public housing, Albanese has a backstory that might be attractive to may voters, if they only knew it. He is a consummate political professional in an age of political professionals, admired for his management of parliamentary business during the challenging minority government of Julia Gillard.

Albanese would not have been among the front rank of ministers in the best Labor governments of the modern era — those of Bob Hawke in the 1980s. But that probably isn’t a large mark against him. After all, the general quality of our political leaders has deteriorated since then, too.

At the very least, the turn of the political dial seems to give Labor, and Albanese, a fighting chance.

– ref. With the government on the ropes, Anthony Albanese has a fighting chance – https://theconversation.com/with-the-government-on-the-ropes-anthony-albanese-has-a-fighting-chance-158129

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Toole, Professor of International Health, Burnet Institute

International flights into Melbourne are set to resume today. Arrivals will be capped at 800 people in the first week, before increasing to 1,120 from April 15.

This marks the third time a hotel quarantine system has been launched in Victoria. After a series of mishaps, is this revamped version finally up to scratch?

A bumpy road

On March 28 last year, National Cabinet mandated 14 days of supervised quarantine for international arrivals across the country.

In June, a number of Melbourne hotel quarantine staff were infected, seeding a second wave of COVID-19 in Victoria. On July 1, Melbourne stopped receiving international arrivals. Flights would not recommence until December 7.

In planning the second version of hotel quarantine, the Victorian government had ample advice. The Victorian COVID-19 Hotel Quarantine Inquiry released an interim report on November 6 with 69 recommendations, 49 of which were accepted. The National Review of Hotel Quarantine also released its report in early November.

The second system incorporated a number of key changes, such as nominating a single government agency — COVID-19 Quarantine Victoria (CQV) — responsible for employing, training and supervising staff. The agency didn’t hire any private security guards, and staff were not permitted to have other jobs.

All staff were tested at the end of their shifts. Testing was later extended to leave days after one worker tested negative at the end of her shift but became positive, and infectious, during her days off.

Over time, the system was tweaked. For example, meal delivery and laundry pick-up were staggered so no two doors opened onto one hallway at the same time. This followed an incident in the Park Royal Hotel when a family with multiple infected members was believed to have spread the virus across the hallway to a woman who opened her door at the same time.

In February, soon after this incident at the Park Royal, a cluster of cases linked to the Holiday Inn airport hotel led to a five-day lockdown in Melbourne and no more international flights — again.

While the second version of hotel quarantine in Victoria was much more effective than the first, it ultimately failed because it did not adequately protect against airborne transmission.

Hotel quarantine needs to be an impermeable barrier

Fast forward to April and Victoria has not had a community case of COVID-19 for 40 days.

However, the situation globally is very different. Cases are surging in many European countries, Canada, parts of the United States and South America. In Asia, large resurgences have taken hold in India, Pakistan and the Philippines. Closer to home, both Papua New Guinea and Timor-Leste are experiencing serious spikes.

This escalation of cases poses challenges for Australia’s health security. A growing percentage of international arrivals will be infected and many will have one of the variants of concern that can spread more rapidly and cause more severe disease than older strains.

The hotel quarantine systems in every state and territory need to be impermeable barriers between the outside world and Australian communities.

Read more: Many of our buildings are poorly ventilated, and that adds to COVID risks

So what do we know about Victoria’s revamped system?

The key changes reflect the government’s recognition that airborne transmission — spread of the virus via tiny particles, or aerosols, that can hang around in the air — has been behind most recent breaches in the quarantine system. This came about from investigation of the cases I mentioned earlier in the Park Royal and Holiday Inn airport hotels.

Importantly, hotel ventilation systems have now been modified to ensure that when guests open their doors, the air flows from the corridor into the room, as opposed to air from the room flowing out. This followed expert room-by-room assessments by occupational hygienists and engineers.

Personal protective equipment (PPE) requirements have been standardised across all quarantine hotels to bring them in line with Health and Complex Care hotels (those that care for people who test positive to COVID-19, or “hot hotels”). More than half of the hotel staff — those who work in areas where they may be exposed to hotel guests, such as lobbies and hallways — will be supplied with N95 respiratory masks.

These two measures should effectively prevent virus transmission from infected guests to other guests and staff.

Read more: South Australia’s 6-day lockdown shows we need to take hotel quarantine more seriously

Meanwhile, testing of hotel residents will be increased from two to four times during the two weeks, with potential follow-up tests after quarantine, based on medical advice.

Further, all staff will have been vaccinated with at least one dose of the Pfizer vaccine.

An opportunity

While evidence for the role of airborne transmission in the spread of COVID-19 has been building since mid-2020, Australia has been slow to recognise this.

The peak advisory body in this area, the Infection Control Expert Group, still recommends surgical masks in quarantine hotels, which are less effective at preventing airborne transmission than N95 masks.

Meanwhile, the Commonwealth Department of Health website page on how coronavirus spreads (accessed on April 6, 2021) omits any mention of aerosol spread.

The restart of the Victorian system — with these new measures targeted at airborne transmission — offers a golden opportunity to inform other jurisdictions and, hopefully, to develop a national standard for hotel quarantine.

While the risk of another breach will never be zero, the revamped Victorian hotel quarantine system appears to have addressed the weaknesses of the previous system and has been informed by several rigorous reviews, including one on variants of concern.

To protect the entire country, we may need similar reforms in other jurisdictions. This should be mandated through a national hotel quarantine protocol built on consensus and sound evidence.

– ref. As international travellers return to Melbourne, will it be third time lucky for Victoria’s controversial hotel quarantine system? – https://theconversation.com/as-international-travellers-return-to-melbourne-will-it-be-third-time-lucky-for-victorias-controversial-hotel-quarantine-system-158419

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Deanna Kemp, Professor and Director, Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining, The University of Queensland

The benefits of switching to clean energy are huge. As with any industrial activity, the transition has potential environmental and social impacts.

As we head towards net-zero emissions, record quantities of copper will be required. Copper is critical for solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles and battery storage.

Unfortunately, we’re headed for a supply crunch. Market analysts estimate the annual copper supply shortfall could be as high as 10 million tonnes by 2030 if no new mines are built. This means prices are on the rise, giving miners an incentive to bring new copper mines to market.

The complexity of these new mines will be unprecedented. Unless mining is done differently, rushing to bring these projects into production could unleash unacceptable, catastrophic impacts onto local people and environments.

A golden age for copper

Until recently, the copper market has been flat. Prices have been low, and it has not been a good environment for producers. The market is now on the move.

The demand for copper and other energy transition minerals has sparked predictions of a commodity boom, and a golden age for mineral exploration.

On April 12-13, major producers including BHP, Rio Tinto and Anglo American will convene for the World Copper Virtual Conference to gather market intelligence.

But in the face of high global demand, it’s critical these big companies don’t gloss over copper’s sustainability challenges.

4 major sustainability challenges

There are four major challenges the mining industry faces in the impending copper boom. How well these challenges are overcome will determine who wins and loses in the energy transition.

1. Unearthed copper deposits are locked up in remote and difficult locations

Unearthed copper deposits — known as “orebodies” — are often found in places such as the high Andes, the Arctic, and the deep sea.

The social, environmental and technical challenges of projects in these locations will be greater than before. For example, BMW, Samsung and Volvo have just backed calls for a moratorium on deep sea mining.

2. Many proposed projects face public opposition

This includes major projects such as Resolution Copper in the US, Pebble in Canada, Tampakan in the Philippines, and Frieda River in Papua New Guinea.

Public opposition towards these and other large-scale copper projects means they could face difficult legal battles before these projects are permitted to go ahead.

3. Future copper mines are projected to be lower grade and deeper

Grade is a measure of the how much valuable metal there is in the ore body (deposit). Deeper, lower grade orebodies means new copper mines are likely to generate more waste rock, more tailings, and hazardous elements such as arsenic.

Read more: World-first mining standard must protect people and hold powerful companies to account

Tailings are the residues from mining and minerals processing, and is made up of finely ground rock, chemicals and water. If the projected demand is met, we calculate the world will produce more than nine times the amount of copper tailings between 2000 and 2050, than in the entire century prior.

Meanwhile, the industry faces a crisis of credibility over its management of this hazardous waste.

4. New copper mines will likely be located in politically and ecologically sensitive areas

Our research from 2019 found 65% of copper ore bodies that haven’t been mined are in areas with high water risk: too little water means miners compete for it among other local water users, and too much means waste can be difficult to contain.

Almost half (47%) of these ore bodies occur on or close to Indigenous peoples’ lands, and 64% within or near areas critical to biodiversity conservation. 50% are in socially and politically fragile countries, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo.

A simple price rise won’t solve major issues

In the past, the mining industry has relied on rising prices to address supply shortfalls. Higher metal prices give companies the financial capital they need to operate in difficult locations and invest in new mining technologies.

Some of this capital will support sustainability improvements, such as recycling and reductions in water and energy use. But many of the sustainability challenges we’ve outlined above are not price sensitive.

Read more: A brutal war and rivers poisoned with every rainfall: how one mine destroyed an island

Mining companies cannot pay their way out of biodiversity loss, extreme poverty, and corruption risk. If they don’t engage these big challenges before the copper boom gets underway these impacts will be baked in mining’s future legacy, without clarity about who takes responsibility in the long term.

This would add to the devastating impacts existing mines have already caused. One famous example is the Panguna mine in Bougainville, which led to massive environmental damage and triggered a civil war.

What’s more, intensifying social and environmental impacts of copper mines could jeopardise the long-term supply of copper. If opposition grows, and supply stalls, then so too will the clean energy transition.

So what are the options?

As demand for copper moves into overdrive, we are at a crossroads.

One option is to support large-scale copper mining and the clean energy transition for the greater good of the planet. Miners would do their best to minimise impacts, but we’d accept there’ll be collateral damage for local communities. This is far from the latest commitment to “zero harm to people and the environment” that the world’s largest companies recently made to tailings management.

Read more: Renewables need land – and lots of it. That poses tricky questions for regional Australia

A second option is to insist miners exhaust all opportunities to avoid harm. This is because sacrificing the interests of local people in the interests of a greater good would not be considered responsible, as it does not align with the concepts of equity and fairness that underpin the Paris Agreement.

This second approach would require significant improvements in managing social and environmental impacts of copper mining. It may also mean reducing global demand for copper, finding substitutes, and making hard choices about not developing mines if the risks to local people and the environment are too high. Doing this would require a wholesale restructuring of the function of global commodity markets.

We may not yet have a solution, but as the world prepares for this year’s major Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, we must start to ask: what kind of justice are we seeking in the “just transition”, and for whom?

Read more: Why most Aboriginal people have little say over clean energy projects planned for their land

– ref. Clean energy? The world’s demand for copper could be catastrophic for communities and environments – https://theconversation.com/clean-energy-the-worlds-demand-for-copper-could-be-catastrophic-for-communities-and-environments-157872

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joakim Goldhahn, Kimberley Foundation Ian Potter Chair in Rock Art, Centre of Rock Art Research + Management, University of Western Australia

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains images and names of deceased people.

Aboriginal rock art unfolds stories about the present-past and emerging worlds, often described by an outsider as the Dreamtime. Some rock art, it is believed, was put in place by spiritual and mythological beings. Many of these Ancestral Beings travelled vast distances, and their journeys link places, clans and different rock art paintings.

Other images were created to educate children about cultural protocols, or just made to tell an amusing story. The artists who created the works are also important. Some artists were prolific and appreciated. A person who made a hand stencil could often be identified by the hand’s shape.

Read more: Introducing the Maliwawa Figures: a previously undescribed rock art style found in Western Arnhem Land

Our new research into a 1972 painting made by Billy Miargu in today’s Kakadu National Park shows how rock art can act as an intergenerational media — even when no longer visible to the eye.

In December 1972, Robert Edwards and George Chaloupka, two acclaimed rock art researchers, came across Miargu camping at Koongarra in the heart of Kakadu. They took a photograph of his family. In the background, there was a newly made painting of a kangaroo. The researchers did not think much about this image, describing it as a “poor naturalistic representation.”

When Paul S.C. Taçon revisited the painting only 13 years later, it was gone (probably due to exposure to wind and rain). In 2018, we used state-of-the-art digital documentation methods to try to detect remnants of the kangaroo, but all in vain. We can no longer see the white kangaroo, as shown in the photograph below.

Revisiting Koongarra

In June 2019, we returned to Koongarra with three of Miargu’s daughters, two of his granddaughters and a great-granddaughter.

We wanted to learn about the artist and what meaning this place holds today for his family.

We learned that Miargu was born in central Arnhem Land. He moved west to Kakadu around the time of the second world war to work at cattle stations — shooting buffalo, cutting timber — and emerging tourist venues. His clan was Barrbinj and his wife, Daphnie Baljur, was Barrappa. Together, they had six children: five daughters and a son.

Miargu and his wife were camping at Koongarra in 1972 while participating in a fact-finding survey on behalf of the Commonwealth government and the Australian Mining Industry Council for a planned uranium mine. They collected mammals and reptiles for this study.

Our conversations revealed that the place where Miargu painted the kangaroo had a special meaning for him. It is situated in his mother’s clan Country, and he had a ceremonial obligation to this place.

The original kangaroo painting referenced a local ceremony. Depicting this Ancestral Being in his mother’s Country shows that Miargu had undergone this ceremony and was keen to care for this Country. Today, his son and daughters have inherited some of these obligations.

Even though Miargu’s painting of the kangaroo can no longer be detected, this place holds a special meaning to his descendants. In fact, for the family, they say “our dad’s painting is hiding, in secret place”. They address the painting as if it is still there, visible or not.

Miargu passed away in 1990. This is the only place the family knows where he created rock art. His daughter Linda Biyalwanga said, “we don’t know any other paintings. Only one painting, that’s why we bring our children to show them this painting.”

And she explained:

My daddy, story, memory, like memories, memory for us, and [he] make [the rock art] for the grandchildren, yeah. He said when I passed away, then my daughters will come around and maybe my granddaughter, and grandsons, great-great-grandchildren come and have look at […] rock art […] When they have kids, they can show them the painting.

Read more: Destruction of Juukan Gorge: we need to know the history of artefacts, but it is more important to keep them in place

Defying Western notions of time

The tangible place, the intangible rock painting, and the family’s recollection of the happy times they spent together with their parents at this special place seem to have merged into a present-past and future which embrace Western concepts of space, but defy similar notions of time.

In an inexplicable but noteworthy way, Miargu’s painting seems more present today because it is absent.

To visit Koongarra and the rock art figure he created is vital for his family. It evokes cherished memories about their parents and feelings, but also sorrow and the loss of “the Old People who finished up”.

Joanne Sullivan, another of Miargu’s daughters, expressed this when she said: “I wish my dad sit here.”

When asked if there are other places where they can connect to their parents in this way, Linda Biyalwanga answered: “It’s the only place. It’s the only place we think about, like, his spirit, mum’s spirit.”

When we left the place, Miargu’s daughters called out to their parents’ spirits and asked them to remember them and take care of them. Even though the rock painting “is hiding”, it is still crucial — it lives on even when gone…

This research was undertaken in collaboration with the family members of Billy Miargu and Daphnie Baljur.

– ref. ‘Our dad’s painting is hiding, in secret place’: how Aboriginal rock art can live on even when gone – https://theconversation.com/our-dads-painting-is-hiding-in-secret-place-how-aboriginal-rock-art-can-live-on-even-when-gone-157315

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mary-Louise McLaws, Professor of Epidemiology Healthcare Infection and Infectious Diseases Control, UNSW

Australia’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout has been much maligned recently, as it’s become clear we’re way behind schedule.

So far Australia’s average daily rate since the rollout began in late February is around 22,000 doses a day according to my calculations. To achieve herd immunity, I calculate we’ll need to vaccinate 85% of the population, using a combination of the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines. To achieve this by the end of March 2022, I calculate we need to vaccinate at least 133,000 people a day until December 31, and then around 79,000 a day in the first three months of 2022.

One way to achieve this would be to stop relying on small GP and respiratory clinics and urgently move towards using mass vaccination hubs.

However, we don’t yet have enough of the AstraZeneca vaccine to service large vaccination hubs. This I think is one reason why Australian authorities have not yet planned to use them.

What are mass vaccination sites?

Mass vaccination means vaccination on a large scale in a short time. Locations for mass vaccination would include stadiums and sportsgrounds, schools, parks, places of worship, and shopping centres.

This is what’s being done in countries like Israel, the United Kingdom and the United States.

According to the latest data, Israel has given at least one dose to 60% of its population; that figure is 46% in the UK and 32% in the US.

Read more: Vital Signs: Israel shows how to do vaccinations right. It’s a race, and we’re behind

In Australia we’ve given about 850,000 COVID vaccine doses, which is roughly 4% of the adult population.

As Australia moves into phase 1B of the rollout and beyond, the federal government’s plan has been to rely solely on GP, respiratory clinics and eventually community pharmacies. This plan presumes we’re all middle class and have the ability to access a local GP during work hours or early evenings. But many people who are unemployed, disadvantaged, working multiple part-time jobs, disaffected or can’t get away from work might not be able or willing to visit a GP clinic in their neighbourhood.

Instead, many might be more comfortable going to a mass site. For the placement of mass vaccination facilities to improve uptake of the vaccine, authorities should consult demographers who can identify the location of vaccination hubs to be most effective in attracting the most people.

We can’t rely on small GP clinics alone

Relying on small GP and respiratory clinics means the rollout is progressing very slowly. Local clinics might vaccinate around 50 people per day, depending on the size of their clinic. They also need to ensure physical distancing that allows space for people to wait for 15 minutes after their vaccination while they are monitored for any side effects.

GPs also need to continue to see patients with various health and well-being needs they should not ignore, even in a pandemic.

Read more: 4 ways Australia’s COVID vaccine rollout has been bungled

Federal Deputy Chief Medical Officer Michael Kidd said mass hubs were “not off the agenda”. And today, the NSW government announced it will be setting up a mass COVID vaccination hub in Homebush, in Sydney’s inner west.

This is a good start but we need many more mass vaccination sites before we can get close to reaching the daily target.

So far there isn’t a formal plan detailing how the federal or state governments will introduce mass vaccination hubs in the COVID vaccine rollout.

Vaccine supply is the crucial issue

Vaccination is a huge logistical challenge amid a global pandemic and there’s an element of authorities learning to build the ship while it’s sailing.

Australian governments may also not yet be able to supply sufficient vaccines for mass vaccination hubs.

The federal government has repeatedly said Melbourne-based biotech company CSL will be producing one million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine a week. It’s yet to reach that target, and it’s not yet clear exactly when it will.

But let’s look at that target and presume CSL reaches it soon. One million doses divided by seven days a week equals about 142,000 doses a day. This is only just on the cusp of being sufficient to reach our daily vaccination target. But it doesn’t take into account other delays that might occur such as problems with distribution, loss of stock, logistical hurdles, and bottlenecks at vaccination clinics.

In outbreak management you plan for the worst-case scenario. So when setting goals you should plan forward and look backwards to identify weaknesses in the plan, such as not receiving enough vaccine and logistical issues. You must also allow a buffer if things go “pear shaped”.

The fact we’re already behind the federal government’s initial target of vaccinating all Australian adults by the end of October this year suggests its plans were idealistic. It’s difficult to make further assessments without full transparency around vaccine supply and distribution.

There have been issues with Europe blocking and slowing supply. Planning appropriately for the rollout would have included considerations for delays for approval and batch testing. It begs the questions of why 2.5 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine are currently waiting for batch testing.

Authorities should be fully transparent about issues relating to vaccine supply, batch testing and distribution, so the public can feel fully informed and engaged in the vaccine rollout.

Great examples of transparency in vaccine rollouts can be seen in New Zealand and Canada. NZ includes weekly adverse reaction reports where people can read about vaccine side effects. Greater transparency like this can reduce anxiety, hesitancy and conspiracy theories.

Read more: As Australia’s COVID vaccine rollout splutters, we need transparency about when international borders might reopen

– ref. Australia urgently needs mass COVID vaccination hubs. But we need more vaccines first – https://theconversation.com/australia-urgently-needs-mass-covid-vaccination-hubs-but-we-need-more-vaccines-first-158416

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mary-Louise McLaws, Professor of Epidemiology Healthcare Infection and Infectious Diseases Control, UNSW

Australia’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout has been much maligned recently, as it’s become clear we’re way behind schedule.

So far Australia’s average daily rate since the rollout began in late February is around 22,000 doses a day according to my calculations. To achieve herd immunity, I calculate we’ll need to vaccinate 85% of the population, using a combination of the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines. To achieve this by the end of March 2022, I calculate we need to vaccinate at least 133,000 people a day until December 31, and then around 79,000 a day in the first three months of 2022.

One way to achieve this would be to stop relying on small GP and respiratory clinics and urgently move towards using mass vaccination hubs.

However, we don’t yet have enough of the AstraZeneca vaccine to service large vaccination hubs. This I think is one reason why Australian authorities have not yet planned to use them.

What are mass vaccination sites?

Mass vaccination means vaccination on a large scale in a short time. Locations for mass vaccination would include stadiums and sportsgrounds, schools, parks, places of worship, and shopping centres.

This is what’s being done in countries like Israel, the United Kingdom and the United States.

According to the latest data, Israel has given at least one dose to 60% of its population; that figure is 46% in the UK and 32% in the US.

Read more: Vital Signs: Israel shows how to do vaccinations right. It’s a race, and we’re behind

In Australia we’ve given about 850,000 COVID vaccine doses, which is roughly 4% of the adult population.

As Australia moves into phase 1B of the rollout and beyond, the federal government’s plan has been to rely solely on GP, respiratory clinics and eventually community pharmacies. This plan presumes we’re all middle class and have the ability to access a local GP during work hours or early evenings. But many people who are unemployed, disadvantaged, working multiple part-time jobs, disaffected or can’t get away from work might not be able or willing to visit a GP clinic in their neighbourhood.

Instead, many might be more comfortable going to a mass site. For the placement of mass vaccination facilities to improve uptake of the vaccine, authorities should consult demographers who can identify the location of vaccination hubs to be most effective in attracting the most people.

We can’t rely on small GP clinics alone

Relying on small GP and respiratory clinics means the rollout is progressing very slowly. Local clinics might vaccinate around 50 people per day, depending on the size of their clinic. They also need to ensure physical distancing that allows space for people to wait for 15 minutes after their vaccination while they are monitored for any side effects.

GPs also need to continue to see patients with various health and well-being needs they should not ignore, even in a pandemic.

Read more: 4 ways Australia’s COVID vaccine rollout has been bungled

Federal Deputy Chief Medical Officer Michael Kidd said mass hubs were “not off the agenda”. And today, the NSW government announced it will be setting up a mass COVID vaccination hub in Homebush, in Sydney’s inner west.

This is a good start but we need many more mass vaccination sites before we can get close to reaching the daily target.

So far there isn’t a formal plan detailing how the federal or state governments will introduce mass vaccination hubs in the COVID vaccine rollout.

Vaccine supply is the crucial issue

Vaccination is a huge logistical challenge amid a global pandemic and there’s an element of authorities learning to build the ship while it’s sailing.

Australian governments may also not yet be able to supply sufficient vaccines for mass vaccination hubs.

The federal government has repeatedly said Melbourne-based biotech company CSL will be producing one million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine a week. It’s yet to reach that target, and it’s not yet clear exactly when it will.

But let’s look at that target and presume CSL reaches it soon. One million doses divided by seven days a week equals about 142,000 doses a day. This is only just on the cusp of being sufficient to reach our daily vaccination target. But it doesn’t take into account other delays that might occur such as problems with distribution, loss of stock, logistical hurdles, and bottlenecks at vaccination clinics.

In outbreak management you plan for the worst-case scenario. So when setting goals you should plan forward and look backwards to identify weaknesses in the plan, such as not receiving enough vaccine and logistical issues. You must also allow a buffer if things go “pear shaped”.

The fact we’re already behind the federal government’s initial target of vaccinating all Australian adults by the end of October this year suggests its plans were idealistic. It’s difficult to make further assessments without full transparency around vaccine supply and distribution.

There have been issues with Europe blocking and slowing supply. Planning appropriately for the rollout would have included considerations for delays for approval and batch testing. It begs the questions of why 2.5 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine are currently waiting for batch testing.

Authorities should be fully transparent about issues relating to vaccine supply, batch testing and distribution, so the public can feel fully informed and engaged in the vaccine rollout.

Great examples of transparency in vaccine rollouts can be seen in New Zealand and Canada. NZ includes weekly adverse reaction reports where people can read about vaccine side effects. Greater transparency like this can reduce anxiety, hesitancy and conspiracy theories.

Read more: As Australia’s COVID vaccine rollout splutters, we need transparency about when international borders might reopen

– ref. Australia urgently needs mass COVID vaccination hubs. But we need more vaccine first – https://theconversation.com/australia-urgently-needs-mass-covid-vaccination-hubs-but-we-need-more-vaccine-first-158416