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

One potentially solid proposal came out of Scott Morrison’s extraordinary news conference, held on Tuesday morning against the backdrop of the fresh revelations about appalling behaviour in Parliament House.

Morrison said he was open to a conversation about having Liberal Party parliamentary quotas, and had been “for some time”, as his colleagues knew.

“I have had some frustrations about trying to get women preselected and running for the Liberal Party to come into this place,” he said.

“I have had those frustrations for many years going back to the times when I was a state director where I actively sought to recruit female candidates, whether it was for state or federal parliament.”

At present women form just over a quarter of the federal parliamentary Liberal Party (including both houses); in Labor, they are a little under half of caucus.

If Morrison is serious about quotas, he should immediately take action to have the Liberal Party, and its state divisions, advance the proposal.

It will also be up to women in the party who support quotas to seize the moment, while the PM is desperately searching for initiatives.

But even if this important debate takes off, it won’t be an easy one within the party, which has stood firmly against quotas, vociferously rejecting Labor’s embrace of them.

One well-placed source says there’s a growing minority in the party for quotas but there would still be a larger proportion against, including opposition from some of the female MPs.

Quotas also go against the democratisation push in the party. And they would take a long time to make a substantial difference to the ratio of men and women.

Tuesday’s news conference put on display the different faces of Morrison.

In part, his performance was a mea culpa and explanation for what critics attacked as his mishandling of the debate over the past weeks, notably when he recounted his wife’s advice, and he contrasted Australia’s peaceful women’s protest with the shooting of demonstrators in Myanmar.

In part and more broadly, he was trying to relate to women, to say he had heard their messages, understood their pain.

“I acknowledge that many have not liked or appreciated some of my own personal responses to this over the course of the last month, and I accept that,” he said.

“People mightn’t like the fact that I discuss these [traumatic events] with my family. They are the closest people in my world to me. That is how I deal with things, I always have.

“No offence was intended by me saying that I discuss these issues with my wife. […] that is in no way an indication that these events had not already dramatically affected me.

“Equally, I accept that many were unhappy with the language that I used on the day of the protests. No offence was intended by that either. I could have chosen different words.”

He acknowledged “many Australians, especially women, believe that I have not heard them” and said “that greatly distresses me.”

He had “been doing a lot of listening over this past month”, which was “not for the first time”. He listed what he’d heard, ranging from women clutching their keys as weapons as they walked, to being talked over in boardrooms, staff rooms and even cabinets. There was much else that was “not OK”.

Morrison was at times highly emotional – as he was also in the joint parties meeting, where the official briefing noted he’d found it difficult to get out his first words in an address canvassing the recent times.

But amid his strong pitch at projecting empathy during his news conference, suddenly attack-dog Morrison broke the leash.

Sky News’ Andrew Clennell had asked, “if you’re the boss at a business and there had been an alleged rape on your watch and this incident we heard about last night on your watch, your job would probably be in a bit of jeopardy, wouldn’t it? Doesn’t it look like you have lost control of your ministerial staff?”

Instead of batting the question away – a tactic he’s adroit at – Morrison let fly.

This exchange followed.

PM: I will let you editorialise as you like, Andrew, but if anyone in this room wants to offer up the standards in their own workplaces by comparison I would invite you to do so.

Clennell: Well, they’re better than these I would suggest, Prime Minister.

PM: Let me take you up on that, let me take you up on that. Right now, you would be aware that in your own organisation that there is a person who has had a complaint made against them for harassment of a woman in a women’s toilet and that matter is being pursued by your own HR department.

This outburst was a bad misjudgment.

It wrongly implied the matter involved Sky News – Morrison had got his facts wrong about its nature. News Corp later put out a statement saying it was an exchange “about a workplace-related issue, it was not of a sexual nature, it did not take place in a toilet and neither person made a complaint”. The matter had now been resolved.

Morrison had distracted from, and undermined, the whole message he was trying to get through – that he understands and is focused on the problems women endure and on finding solutions.

One notable characteristic of Morrison is how his mood can turn on a dime. That reinforces the unsettling feeling one has of never being sure whether, on any particular day, we’re seeing the real deal, or the practised political actor.

– ref. View from The Hill: Scott Morrison opens door to Liberal quotas, but don’t hold your breath – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-scott-morrison-opens-door-to-liberal-quotas-but-dont-hold-your-breath-157693

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Arrow, Professor of History, Macquarie University

One group of women was strikingly absent from the March4Justice rallies last week: Coalition MPs. Admittedly, there are not many of them (only 23% of the government’s MPs are female), but the refusal of the minister for women to attend the demonstration was a remarkable abrogation of responsibility.

Only one female Liberal MP, Tasmanian Bridget Archer, attended the demonstration. She had assumed – wrongly – it would receive bipartisan support. Like many who marched, she was motivated to attend by what she described as “a deep-seated rage”.

Women across Australia have expressed similar feelings: March4Justice events held across the country attested to a resurgent feminist anger. This rage has been sparked by overwhelming evidence of a misogynist culture that ignores and downplays sexual assault and enables perpetrators to escape justice.

Very few of the LNP’s female ministers spoke out against their party’s culture of toxic masculinity in the wake of the news about Brittany Higgins’ alleged rape. Like most players in this awful story, most seemed focused on establishing their lack of knowledge of the incident after it allegedly took place.

How extraordinary, then, were the events of Monday evening. Reports broke that male Liberal staffers had exchanged videos featuring themselves engaging in sex acts in Parliament House. In particular, the revelation that one male staffer had filmed himself masturbating on a female MP’s desk seems to have finally prompted some reticent female MPs to comment. Liberal MP Katie Allen declared on Twitter:

Nationals MP Michelle Landry told reporters she was “absolutely horrified” by the story, but added: “The young fellow concerned was a really good worker and he loved the place. I feel bad for him about this.”

That these reports of lewd behaviour in Parliament House are now drawing the comment of otherwise silent female Liberal and Nationals MPs is telling. If these MPs were serious about confronting a misogynist culture in their party, they would have to deal with the impact of the Coalition’s policies on women.

A Liberal male staffer masturbating on a female MP’s desk is merely a symptom of something very wrong in the party’s attitudes to women, not the sum total of it.

Let’s start with JobSeeker. Women form the majority of 2 million JobSeeker recipients affected by the federal government’s decision to replace the $75-a-week Coronavirus Supplement with a $25-a-week permanent increase in JobSeeker. The Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) warned that rolling back the supplement would have a “devastating” impact on women. The government did it anyway.

Read more: COVID-19 is a disaster for mothers’ employment. And no, working from home is not the solution

The government consistently failed to recognise the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on women. During the COVID lockdowns, women lost their jobs at a faster rate than men and were offered fewer supports. They also shouldered far more of the unpaid care work associated with childcare and home schooling.

Yet government ministers failed to consult the Office for Women on the big policy responses to the pandemic, including JobKeeper and JobSeeker. Free childcare was the first policy to be wound back in the pandemic “snapback” last year.

The mismanagement and neglect in aged care is a feminist issue. Two out of three residents in aged care are women. Almost 90% of the aged care workforce is female.

The recent Royal Commission into Aged Care called for much stricter regulation and improvements to workforce conditions. Yet, given the government has consistently rejected calls for greater regulation of the sector, the future looks bleak for those who live and work in residential aged care.

Women also bore the brunt of the massive fee hikes to university courses that formed the centrepiece of the government’s Job-Ready Graduates Package in 2020. The steepest fee increases (up to 113% in some cases) were for humanities and social sciences courses: in 2018, women comprised two-thirds of enrolments in these subjects.

Read more: Why degree cost increases will hit women hardest

On domestic and family violence, the government has reduced supports for survivors, who are overwhelmingly women. The telephone counselling service 1800 RESPECT, previously managed by Rape and Domestic Violence Services Australia, was outsourced to a private health insurer in 2017. There was a corresponding decline in the quality of service offered to those in need.

The government’s recent merger of the Family and Federal Courts reduces the resources available to women and their children for settling complex family law matters. The government was even considering allowing domestic violence survivors to access their superannuation early – effectively funding their own meagre safety nets – to escape violent relationships, an idea it has since abandoned.

Of course, the ALP is not immune from making policies that harm women. On the day Julia Gillard delivered her famous misogyny speech in parliament in 2012, the Labor government also legislated to move thousands of women from a parenting payment to the lower Newstart payment.

But the far wider breadth and depth of successive LNP governments’ attacks on women through policy are, frankly, breathtaking.

LNP women’s attitude to feminism might be best summed up by Julie Bishop’s sparkly red shoes. She wore them on the day she resigned as foreign minister, her leadership aspirations defeated by men in her own party, whom she only now identifies as the “big swinging dicks”. The shoes today sit on display in Old Parliament House.

Bishop’s brand of glamorous, individualistic one-woman celebration took her all the way to cabinet. Until, that is, it couldn’t take her any further. A “feminism” premised on a single white woman’s empowerment, rather than a movement that works to safeguard the rights and freedoms of all women, is not up to the demands of the present moment.

All the quotas in the world won’t change the culture of the government if none of the women who are elected are prepared to stand up for women’s rights.

– ref. Memo Liberal women: if you really want to confront misogyny in your party, you need to fix the policies – https://theconversation.com/memo-liberal-women-if-you-really-want-to-confront-misogyny-in-your-party-you-need-to-fix-the-policies-157687

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Xanthe Mallett, Forensic Criminologist, University of Newcastle

As the country watches Scott Morrison grapple with the sex scandals rocking our federal parliament, it is worth wondering what has really changed since former Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s now-famous 2012 “misogyny” speech.

The power of that speech is undeniable, and it resonates loudly today.

Gillard spoke to the imbalance of power between men and women and the under-representation of women in positions of authority. Her speech raised serious concerns about how some politicians saw women’s roles in contemporary Australia.

Fast forward to yesterday, and Scott Morrison attempted to address the most recent shocking allegations of lewd behaviour by some coalition staff – the allegation being a group of government staffers had shared images and videos of themselves undertaking lewd acts in Parliament House, including in the office of a female federal MP.

These stories raise the question as to why some men participate in sexually denigrating women – both those in authority as well as those in positions of submission in hierarchical organisations. And why is male aggression towards women so often expressed through sex rather than through other means?

As a criminologist, I interpret men’s sexually aggressive behaviour – whether it is desecrating a women’s desk by videoing himself masturbating on it, or a sexual assault – as an activity born of a need for power and control.

When some men feel challenged, or want to dominate someone to fulfil an innate internal inadequacy, they can feel the need to do so sexually. Often, the subjects of their rage about feelings of inadequacy are women.

From lewd comments, to being groped, through to sexual assault, the attacks on women in the workplace continue.

Research suggests heterosexual men who are more socially dominant are also more likely to sexually objectify women. When these men are placed in positions of submission to women at work and their dominance is challenged, the levels of sexual objectification of women go up. This supports the assertion that some men increase their dominance by sexually objectifying women, and this objectification can become physical.

This conversation around how we address this has been building for some time.

Read more: Sexism, harassment, bullying: just like federal MPs, women standing for local government cop it all

In 2017, the #MeToo movement went viral, as women started to share their negative sexual experiences via social media. The discussion initially focused on women being sexually harassed by their bosses in the media and entertainment industry, but it soon became obvious the problem was much wider than that. It permeates every industry in every country.

Sexual harassment and assault are more common than many people might believe, or want to believe. A 2018 study surveyed 2,000 people in the US. It found 81% of women and 43% of men had suffered some form of sexual harassment or assault. Further, 38% of the women surveyed said they have suffered from sexual harassment in the workplace.

The picture is mirrored in Australia. A 2018 Australian Human Rights Commission report found 23% of women said they had been sexually harassed at work in the previous 12 months.

In 2021, we are still having the same debate.

One big question is where these bad male behaviours originate from?

Social Learning Theory might help us to understand what is going on in relation to some men’s need for sexual domination of women. It is based in the premise that individuals develop notions of gender and the associated behaviours by watching others and mimicking them. This learning is then reinforced vicariously through the experiences of others.

Combine this learnt behaviour with cognitive development theory, which suggests gender-related behaviour is an adoption of a gender identity through an intellectual process, and we can see how misogynistic behaviours can be identified, remembered, and mimicked by subsequent generations of males.

This could be termed “cultural misogyny”.

How do we change the dynamic?

The only way to shift the framing around appropriate behaviour in the workplace, and society more generally, is to continue to break down gender stereotypes. Women need to be elevated to positions of power to reduce male domination in all aspects of life. We must challenge the undermining of women’s and girl’s autonomy and value when boys exhibit it, to break the chain of passing on these negative attitudes.

Read more: #MeToo has changed the media landscape, but in Australia there is still much to be done

We are only now beginning the hear the breadth of stories from women speaking out about their own negative experiences.

As a woman in academia – a very hierarchical structure – I have been sexually harassed, and I just accepted it as part of my working world. My experience was with a very senior member of a previous university, and I would never have considered challenging him or reporting it, as I was very well aware of the power he had over me and my career. I even considered changing organisations to avoid the unwanted behaviours.

The brave women who are now speaking up have changed the way I view my own experience. The more we raise our voices, support each other and encourage change in the attitudes around us, the more we will all benefit.

– ref. ‘Cultural misogyny’ and why men’s aggression to women is so often expressed through sex – https://theconversation.com/cultural-misogyny-and-why-mens-aggression-to-women-is-so-often-expressed-through-sex-157680

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tegan Larin, PhD Candidate Monash University XYX Lab, Monash University

The recent US shootings at massage businesses in Atlanta should ring alarm bells in Australia. Eight people were killed in the attacks, including four Korean women and two Chinese women.

US authorities are still trying to determine the exact motive behind the attack by a 21-year-old white man, who is a suspected sex buyer.

But some feminist groups, such as Asian Women for Equality, immediately identified misogynist racism as a key element behind this sort of violence. As one member of the group, Suzanne Jay, said,

Men are being trained by the prostitution industry. They’re being encouraged and allowed to orgasm to inequality. This has an impact on Asian women who have to deal with these men.

The global sex trade, feminists have argued,

increasingly contributes to the dehumanisation of all Asian women.

Indeed, it has been reported that the Atlanta shooting suspect explained the attacks were a form of vengeance to eliminate the “temptation” for his “sexual addiction”.

How Australia’s massage businesses operate

Like the US, Australia’s “massage parlours” are associated with the prostitution of Asian women. These venues, outwardly presenting as massage businesses but offering illicit sexual services, make up the majority of brothels in the city I study, Melbourne.

Australia’s commercial sex industry is regulated at the state and territory level, resulting in a patchwork of differing models.

In Victoria, massage parlours are estimated to outnumber legal brothels five-fold. My research on Melbourne’s massage parlours supports this estimate.

Read more: Will Victoria be the first place in the world to fully decriminalise sex work?

Despite the main purpose of Victoria’s Sex Work Act to “control sex work”, the majority of Victoria’s brothels get around the legislative requirements and controls by operating under the guise of legitimate massage businesses.

Massage businesses are usually considered a general retail premises in most council areas, which do not require a planning permit or registration.

Australia’s sex industry is also heavily reliant on a culture of sexualised racism.

An analysis of online massage parlour advertising conducted as part of my research shows ads commonly feature images of Asian women in suggestive poses. The wording highlights race or ethnicity, with such phrases as “young and beautiful trained girls from Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam, China and Malaysia”.

Read more: New report shows compelling reasons to decriminalise sex work

In addition to ads, my research also examined online sex buyer review forums. These typically encourage men to include descriptions of “ethnicity, appearance, breast size”, ratings of the women’s body parts and the “services” received.

These sex buyer reviews not only demean and denigrate women, they also promote the sexualised and racist stereotypes that pervade the industry.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, a recent study of sex buyer reviews of Australia’s legal brothels found

that sex buyers actively construct and normalise narratives of sexual violation and violence against women.

The effects of sexualised racism in prostitution

This blatant racism, misogyny and male sexual entitlement is not confined to massage parlour owners or their customers. It’s also embedded in Victoria’s Sex Work Regulations.

The updated regulations now allow advertising to reference “race, colour or ethnic origin of the person offering sexual services”. This means that Victoria’s sex industry legally promotes women from minorities as an eroticised “other”.

Read more: US has a long history of violence against Asian women

This normalisation of sexualised racism promoted by the sex trade in Australia may have wider effects.

A Korean-Canadian doctor, Alice Han, for example, recounted to the ABC being asked twice in a span of 12 hours in regional New South Wales whether she was a sex worker.

She said this exemplifies “a pattern of demeaning stereotyping and racial profiling” of Asian women in Australia, and the association of Asian women with prostitution more broadly.

Australia’s sex industry also relies on the migration and trafficking of Asian women for its survival.

Indeed, Australia’s sex industry is rife with modern slavery for the purposes of sexual exploitation. Cases have been found in both legal and illegal brothels, signalling the wholesale failure of prostitution legislation in this country.

This raises questions about the model of total decriminalisation being proposed in Victoria. This model seeks to decriminalise not only those exploited in prostitution but those who profit from them, such as pimps, brothel owners and sex buyers.

The best path forward

Australia is increasingly behind the rest of the world when it comes to approaching prostitution from a gender equality perspective.

Indeed, the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) has consistently reprimanded Australia for not meeting its requirements to reduce the demand for prostitution.

In order to address the mix of racism, misogyny and men’s sexual entitlement that prostitution is founded on, Australia must adopt a new national framework. The Nordic or “Equality” model offers one path forward — it decriminalises those working in prostitution, but not those who exploit them.

This model, which has garnered support from survivors of prostitution and anti-trafficking organisations around the world, includes robust social services to support those in the sex trade and assist them into transitioning to other industries.

We know prostitution relies on the abuse of the world’s most marginalised women and girls in order to function. It is predominantly Asian and migrant women who suffer on the front lines of Australia’s sex trade.

While the national conversation confronting society’s acceptance of sexual violence is well overdue, we cannot ignore the sexism, misogyny and racism bound up in Australia’s sex trade.

– ref. US massage parlour shootings should ring alarm bells in Australia: the same racist sexism exists here – https://theconversation.com/us-massage-parlour-shootings-should-ring-alarm-bells-in-australia-the-same-racist-sexism-exists-here-157591

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andy Pitman, Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, UNSW

People living on the east coast of Australia have been experiencing a rare meteorological event. Record-breaking rainfall in some regions, and very heavy and sustained rainfall in others, has led to significant flooding.

In different places, this has been described as a one in 30, one in 50 or one in 100 year event. So, what does this mean?

What is a 1 in 100 year event?

First, let’s clear up a common misunderstanding about what a one in 100 year event means. It does not mean the event will occur exactly once every 100 years, or that it will not happen again for another 100 years.

For meteorologists, the one in 100 year event is an event of a size that will be equalled or exceeded on average once every 100 years. This means that over a period of 1,000 years you would expect the one in 100 year event would be equalled or exceeded ten times. But several of those ten times might happen within a few years of each other, and then none for a long time afterwards.

Read more: Explainer: was the Sydney storm ‘once-in-a-century’?

Ideally, we would avoid using the phrase “one in 100 year event” because of this common misunderstanding, but the term is so widespread now it is hard to change. Another way to think about what a one in 100 year event means is that there is a 1% chance of an event of at least that size in any given year. (This is known as an “annual exceedance probability”.)

How common are 1 in 100 year events?

Many people are surprised by the feeling that one in 100 year events seem to happen much more often than they might expect. Although a 1% probability might sound pretty rare and unlikely, it is actually more common than you might think. There are two reasons for this.

First, for a given location (such as where you live), a one in 100 year event would be expected to occur on average once in 100 years. However, across all of Australia you would expect the one in 100 year event to be exceeded somewhere far more often than once in a century!

In much the same way, you might have a one in a million chance of winning the lottery, but the chance someone wins the lottery is obviously much higher.

Second, while a one in 100 year flood event might have a 1% chance of occurring in a given year (hence it’s referred to as a “1% flood”), the chance is much higher when looking at longer time periods. For example, if you have a house designed to withstand a 1% flood, this means over the course of 70 years there’s a roughly 50% chance the house would be flooded at some point during this time! Not the best odds.

How well do we know how often flood events occur?

Incidents like these 1% annual exceedance probability events are often referred to as “flood planning levels” or “design events”, because they are commonly used for a range of urban planning and engineering design applications. Yet this presupposes we can work out exactly what the 1% event is, which sounds simpler than it is in practice.

First of all, we use historical data to estimate the one in 100 year event, but Australia has only about 100 years of reliable meteorological observations, and even shorter records of river flow in most locations. We know for sure this 100-year record does not contain the largest possible events that could occur in terms of rainfall, drought, flood and so on. We have data from indirect paleoclimate evidence pointing to much larger events in the past.

Read more: Sydney storm: are extreme rains and flash floods increasing?

So a 1% event is by no means a “worst case” scenario, and some of the evidence from paleoclimate data suggests the climate has been very different in the deep past.

Second, estimating the one in 100 year event using historical data assumes the underlying conditions are not changing. But in many parts of the world, we know rainfall and streamflow are changing, leading to a changing risk of flooding.

Moreover, even if there was no change in rainfall, changes to flood risk can occur due to a host of other factors. Increased flood risk can result from land clearing or other changes in the vegetation in a catchment, or changes in catchment management.

Increased occurrence of flooding can also be associated with poor planning decisions that locate settlements on floodplains. This means a one in 100 year event estimated from past observations could under- or indeed overestimate current flood risk.

A third culprit for influencing how often a flood occurs is climate change. Global warming is unquestionably heating the oceans and the atmosphere and intensifying the hydrological cycle. The atmosphere can hold more water in a warmer world, so we would expect to see rainfall intensities increasing.

Extreme rainfall events are becoming more extreme across parts of Australia. This is consistent with theory, which suggests we will see roughly a 7% increase in rainfall per degree of global warming.

Australia has warmed on average by almost 1.5℃, implying about 10% more intense rainfall. While 10% might not sound too dramatic, if a city or dam is designed to cope with 100mm of rain and it is hit with 110mm, it can be the difference between just lots of rain and a flooded house.

So what does this mean in practice?

Whether climate change “caused” the current extreme rainfall over coastal New South Wales is difficult to say. But it is clear that with temperatures and heavy rainfall events becoming more extreme with global warming, we are likely to experience one in 100 year events more often.

We should not assume the events currently unfolding will not happen again for another 100 years. It’s best to prepare for the possibility it will happen again very soon.

Read more: Droughts and flooding rains: it takes three oceans to explain Australia’s wild 21st-century weather

– ref. What is a 1 in 100 year weather event? And why do they keep happening so often? – https://theconversation.com/what-is-a-1-in-100-year-weather-event-and-why-do-they-keep-happening-so-often-157589

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anastasia Powell, Associate Professor, Criminology and Justice Studies, RMIT University

On Monday night, Four Corners investigated how Brittany Higgins’s alleged rape at Parliament House was kept quiet for almost two years.

Once again, it highlighted the huge barriers to justice faced by victims of sexual assault.

This comes barely a week after tens of thousands of Australians marched, demanding justice and an end to the harassment and mistreatment of women within federal parliament and beyond.

With sexual violence in the media spotlight on a daily basis, we need to reflect on how far we have come — and what still needs to be done — to achieve justice for victim-survivors.

Almost 90% of women don’t go to police

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, one in five Australian women and one in 20 men have experienced sexual assault since the age of 15. Most assaults occur in private spaces, and most are against women by a man known to them.

Yet, almost nine in ten women(87%) do not contact the police.

Many are worried their experience won’t be taken seriously. They also worry they will face repercussions, whether personally, professionally or from the perpetrator themselves, if they report the assault.

What survivors want

According to Australian research, victim-survivors say they want to have their experience heard, to have the wrong against them acknowledged, and to know that something will be done to stop the perpetrator from harming others.

Sadly, we know often the opposite often occurs. Whether it is workplaces and other organisations responding to sexual harassment and/or sexual assault, or formal responses in our criminal justice system, victims are often left feeling silenced and sidelined.

Read more: Sexual assault: what can you do if you don’t want to make a formal report to police?

But a formal report to police is not the only option. There are alternative ways a victim-survivor can either seek support or talk about what happened to them. There’s a national helpline, and sexual assault counselling services in every state and territory.

Some states also have an option for victims to make an anonymous or confidential informal report to police. Importantly, research shows a positive experience making an informal report can encourage a victim-survivor to report formally.

Another option, currently under consideration by the Victorian Law Reform Commission, is restorative justice. In broad terms, this allows a victim and a perpetrator to meet with expert support to acknowledge the impacts of the crime and find a way to repair the harm.

Reforming laws around consent

Of course, these alternative ways of responding to sexual assault do not mean we should ignore the formal criminal justice processes. There are ways to improve it — and the last several weeks have demonstrated the urgent need to do so.

Many measures are needed, and one of them is reform to consent law. Criminal law is left to the states and territories, and so, confusingly, there are many definitions of consent across Australia.

In response to the confusion, as well as the low threshold for accused persons to claim that they had a reasonable belief there was consent, advocates, academics and survivors are calling for affirmative consent laws.

Read more: Australian law doesn’t go far enough to legislate affirmative consent. NSW now has a chance to get it right

Affirmative consent requires consent to be actively given by actions and/or words before, and continuously throughout, a sexual act. Under such laws, consent cannot be inferred from the behaviour of another person, such as what they were wearing or that they (supposedly) flirted with the perpetrator prior to the rape. Instead, a perpetrator must show they took active and reasonable steps to make sure the other person was consenting.

Yet, most Australian states do not currently require a person to take such active steps to determine another’s consent. Both the New South Wales and Queensland Law Reform Commissions recently failed to recommend the inclusion of active steps in proposed rape law changes.

More education for police, juries

There is a host of other concrete changes that can improve justice for victims of sexual assault.

Other possible measures include greater training for police investigating sexual assaults.

There is also independent victim legal representation in sexual assault trials, initiatives to reduce the trauma of giving evidence for victim-survivors, along with inclusion of expert testimony on the nature of sexual violence, and education for potential jury members.

Changing our broader culture

The ongoing national public conversation about sexual violence has made a further problem abundantly clear.

Too often bystanders, who had an opportunity to either intervene or provide support to a victim, do nothing.

The National Community Attitudes Survey on Violence Against Women shows us many Australians blame victims, minimise abuse, and excuse the actions of perpetrators.

We can all do better to educate ourselves on how to respond supportively if a colleague, friend or loved one discloses that they are a victim of sexual violence. We can also speak up and challenge victim-blaming attitudes when we see them, whether it is at the office, at the sports club, at the pub, or at a family BBQ.

Read more: Rape culture: why our community attitudes to sexual violence matter

Sex and respectful relationships education needs to start early, be consistent, inclusive, positive about sex and sexuality, and promote consent as a normal practice in all our interactions with others.

Modelling respect

But if the past few months have taught us anything, it is the importance of leadership that models respect: both for victim-survivors and for women generally.

Sadly, the best laws and the best prevention education in the world may not be enough to create lasting change if our leaders and institutions don’t also step up, stop walking past sexual violence, and set a new standard for respect and justice.

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732

– ref. Almost 90% of sexual assault victims do not go to police — this is how we can achieve justice for survivors – https://theconversation.com/almost-90-of-sexual-assault-victims-do-not-go-to-police-this-is-how-we-can-achieve-justice-for-survivors-157601

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

Why do you get dizzy when you stop spinning? – Finn, 7

Why does it look like the world is tilting when I spin around really fast, and then lie down? – Milosh, 7, Brisbane

Great questions, Finn and Milosh!

Your ears are really amazing. They help you hear and help you balance. And when you walk, run, jump and spin around, the parts of your ear that help you balance get really excited. Here’s what’s going on in your ears when you spin around (and when you stop).

Which way’s up?

Deep in your ears, past your ear drums, you have balance organs that tell you what is up and what is down. They also tell you that you’re moving, and even how you’re moving.

Three of these balance organs look like the inner tubes of a bicycle wheel. You can see these three tubes in blue in the picture below. These tubes tell you when you are moving and spinning.

The tubes are filled with fluid, like water. When you move your head, the fluid in the tubes begins to move. The moving fluid bends hairs on the top of hair cells that are also in the tube.

When the hairs bend in one direction, the cells become excited. The cells then send a message to your brain that your head is moving in that direction.

Amazingly, moving your head also moves your eyes. When you turn your head in one direction, your eyes move in the opposite direction. This is why you can clearly look at road signs in a bumpy car without the sign becoming blurry.

Read more: Curious Kids: Why do our ears pop?

I feel dizzy now

When you spin around and around on the spot, this moves the fluid in one of the tubes. The fluid in the tube moves in the same direction as if shaking your head “no”.

If you spin around really fast, the fluid in your ear moves really fast too. This is what happens when you first start to feel dizzy.

When you stop spinning, your head stops moving but the fluid in the tube of the balance organ keeps spinning. So now your brain thinks you are spinning in the opposite direction. This is what makes you feel dizzy again.

Your eyes then flick very quickly back and forth to the right and left too, even though your head is not moving anymore.

I think I need to lie down

If you lie down after spinning around really quickly, the water in the tube is spinning in the same direction as shaking your head “no”.

But now your head is in a different position. Instead of flicking right and left, your eyes flick up and down.

So, if you lie down after spinning really fast, the brain gets two messages about what your head is doing (going round and round, and lying down). These two messages join together and trick your brain into thinking the world is tilted.

Hello, curious kids! Have you got a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au

– ref. Curious Kids: when I stop spinning, why do I feel dizzy and the world looks like it’s tilting? – https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-when-i-stop-spinning-why-do-i-feel-dizzy-and-the-world-looks-like-its-tilting-154559

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Maund, Research Affiliate, School of Architecture and Built Environment, University of Newcastle

Some 18,000 people have been evacuated in New South Wales as torrential rain hammers the state. Almost three-quarters of NSW is subject to a severe weather alert.

Right now, thousands of people are sheltering in schools, bowling clubs, community centres and other makeshift evacuation centres.

As always, the State Emergency Service (SES) is doing great work to ensure the safety of the community. And evacuation centre staff and volunteers are doing their utmost to ensure the well-being of the evacuees.

But the floods have revealed, yet again, Australia must better accommodate people displaced by natural disasters. As climate change worsens and extreme weather events become more frequent and severe, we need adaptable, safe, secure and multi-purpose spaces to house those in need – possibly for weeks or months.

Evacuation centres are crucial

Evacuation and relief centres are often the first place disaster-affected people go, and should provide a minimum standard of living and care. But this standard is not always met.

The recent Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements highlighted issues that arose at some centres during the Black Summer fires of 2019-20. These included:

• overcrowding, which forced people to sleep on floors with little or no bedding, or in their cars

• power and/or communications outages

• insufficient storage for food and donated items

• inadequate bathroom and kitchen amenities

• inability to accommodate pets

• outbreaks of illness among evacuees

• centres not equipped for people with disabilities, mobility issues or chronic health concerns.

As one heavily pregnant women who gave evidence noted:

[…] my husband, three-year-old daughter, cat and dog had to evacuate for almost two weeks, and I gave birth to my son during our evacuation. This put strain on finances and the mental health of our three-year-old, who became traumatised during the fires.

Read more: Why do people try to drive through floodwater or leave it too late to flee? Psychology offers some answers

Creating multi-purpose spaces

The royal commission called for better evacuation planning. It said this should include:

• assessing the location and standard of evacuation centres

• assessing the suitability of evacuation centres to cater for diverse groups

• contingencies if evacuation centres are unable to cope

• community education on the function and limitations of evacuation centres.

We believe the measures must go further, and a network of multi-purpose buildings is needed across Australia. These should be accessible and designed to meet the needs of a community affected by disaster.

Read more: Not ‘if’, but ‘when’: city planners need to design for flooding. These examples show the way

The buildings may be existing, or specially constructed. They might be located at sports grounds, large parks or similar public facilities. When not needed for crisis accommodation, these spaces can also be used for sport, functions and other purposes – as is often the case now.

However, their potential use as an evacuation centre should be integral to their design, rather than an afterthought.

Essential features should include:

• enough space to accommodate thousands of people

• spaces catering for people with particular needs, such as children

• cooking facilities

• beds and bedding

• toilets and showers

• storage facilities

• backup power.

These centres should also ensure people can access additional help such as advice on government assistance, recovery schemes, long-term housing options and health support.

Just as importantly, we must identify which agency or agencies will manage the evacuation centre, and define the role the community can play in volunteering time, food, clothing and support to others.

Read more: ‘They lost our receipts three times’: how getting an insurance payout can be a full-time job

Not just an overnight fix

Between July 2019 and February 2020, bushfires in Australia destroyed more than 3,100 homes and displaced 65,000 people.

The Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) says the displacement affected not just housing conditions, but people’s livelihoods, education, security and health. It called for better planning for the next bushfire season, to help minimise the negative impacts.

Many people left homeless by natural disasters remain so for months, or even years, after the event.

For example, a Senate inquiry into lessons from the Black Summer fires this month heard some residents on the NSW South Coast were displaced more than a year after the disaster – partly due to bureaucratic hurdles to accessing disaster relief funding. Some were still living in tents and caravans, and did not have access to running water.

With this in mind, multi-purpose community spaces should be flexible enough to accommodate people for longer periods – allowing them to recover physically, socially and financially.

Under climate change, bushfires and floods will only get more frequent and intense. We must start planning and building better evacuation centres now – let’s not wait for the next disaster.

This story is part of a series The Conversation is running on the nexus between disaster, disadvantage and resilience. You can read the rest of the stories here.

– ref. Thousands of flood-stricken people are sheltering in schools, clubs and halls – but we can do better – https://theconversation.com/thousands-of-flood-stricken-people-are-sheltering-in-schools-clubs-and-halls-but-we-can-do-better-157584

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Annika Seppälä, Senior Lecturer in Geophysics, University of Otago

Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.

If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nz

When the Sun ejects solar particles into space, how does this affect the Earth and climate? Are clouds affected by these particles?

When we consider the Sun’s influence on Earth and our climate, we tend to think about solar radiation. We are acutely aware of the skin-burning dangers of ultraviolet, or UV, radiation.

But the Sun is an active star. It also continuously releases what is known as “solar wind”, made up of charged particles, largely protons and electrons, that travel at speeds of hundreds of kilometres per hour.

Some of these particles that reach Earth are guided into the polar atmosphere by our magnetic field. As a result, we can see the southern lights, aurora australis, in the southern hemisphere, and the northern equivalent, aurora borealis.

This visible manifestation of solar particles entering Earth’s atmosphere is a constant reminder there is more to the Sun than sunlight. But the particles have other effects as well.

Read more: Why is the sun’s atmosphere so hot? Spacecraft starts to unravel our star’s mysteries

Solar particles and ozone

When solar particles enter the atmosphere, their high energies ionise neutral atmospheric nitrogen and oxygen molecules, which make up 99% of the atmosphere. This “energetic particle precipitation”, named because it’s like a rain of particles from space, is a major source of ionisation in the polar atmosphere above 30km altitude — and it sets off a chain of reactions that produces chemicals that facilitate the destruction of ozone.

The impact of solar particles on atmospheric ozone was first observed in 1969. Since the early 2000s, thanks to new kinds of satellite observations, we have seen growing evidence that solar particles play an important part in influencing polar ozone. During particularly active times, when the Sun releases large amounts of particles into space, up to 60% of ozone at altitudes above 50km can be depleted. The effect can last for weeks.

Lower down in the atmosphere, below 50km, solar particles are important contributors to the year-to-year variability in polar ozone levels, often through indirect pathways. Here, solar particles again contribute to ozone loss, but a recent discovery showed they also help curb some of the depletion in the Antarctic ozone hole.

How ozone affects the climate

Most of the ozone in the atmosphere resides in a thin layer at altitudes of 20-25km — the “ozone layer”.

But ozone is everywhere in the atmosphere, from the Earth’s surface to altitudes above 100km. It is a greenhouse gas and plays a key role in heating and cooling the atmosphere, which makes it critical for climate.

In the southern hemisphere, changes in polar ozone are known to influence regional climate conditions.

Its depletion above Antarctica had a cooling effect, which in turn pulled the westerly wind jet that circles the continent closer. As the Antarctic hole recovers, this wind belt can meander further north and affect rainfall patterns, sea-surface temperatures and ocean currents. The Southern Annular Mode describes this north-south movement of the wind belt that circles the southern polar region.

Ozone is important for future climate predictions, not only in the thin ozone layer, but throughout the atmosphere. It is crucial we understand the factors that influence ozone variability, be it man-made or natural like the Sun.

The Sun’s direct influence

The link between solar particles and ozone is reasonably well established, but what about any direct effects solar particles may have on the climate?

We have observational evidence that solar activity influences regional climate variability at both poles. Climate models also suggest such polar effects link to larger climate patterns (such as the Northern and Southern Annular Modes) and influence conditions in mid-latitudes.

The details are not yet well understood, but for the first time the influence of solar particles on the climate system will be included in climate simulations used for the upcoming Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment.

Read more: Solar weather has real, material effects on Earth

Through solar radiation and particles, the Sun provides a key energy input to our climate system. While these do vary with the Sun’s 11-year cycle of magnetic activity, they can not explain the recent rapid increase in global temperatures due to climate change.

We know rising levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are pushing up Earth’s surface temperature (the physics have been known since the 1800s). We also know human activities have greatly increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Together these two factors explain the observed rise in global temperatures.

What about clouds?

Clouds are much lower in the atmosphere than where most solar particles penetrate. Particles know as galactic cosmic rays (coming from the centre of our galaxy rather than the Sun) may be linked to cloud formation.

It has been suggested cosmic rays could influence the formation of condensation nuclei, which act as “seeds” for clouds. But recent research at the CERN nuclear research facility suggests the effects are insignificant.

This doesn’t rule out some other mechanisms for cosmic rays to affect cloud formation, but thus far there is little supporting evidence.

– ref. Climate explained: how particles ejected from the Sun affect Earth’s climate – https://theconversation.com/climate-explained-how-particles-ejected-from-the-sun-affect-earths-climate-155445

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Maund, Research Affiliate, School of Architecture and Built Environment, University of Newcastle

Some 18,000 people have been evacuated in New South Wales as torrential rain continues to hammer the state. Almost three-quarters of NSW is subject to a severe weather alert.

Right now, thousands of people are sheltering in schools, bowling clubs, community centres and other makeshift evacuation centres.

As always, the State Emergency Service (SES) is doing great work to ensure the safety of the community. Evacuation centre staff and volunteers are doing their utmost to ensure the well-being of the evacuees.

But the floods have revealed, yet again, Australia must better accommodate people displaced by natural disasters. As climate change worsens and extreme weather events become more frequent and severe, we need adaptable, safe, secure and multi-purpose spaces to house those in need – possibly for weeks or months.

Evacuation centres are crucial

Evacuation and relief centres are often the first place disaster-affected people go, and should provide a minimum standard of living and care. But this standard is not always met.

The recent Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements highlighted issues that arose at some centres during the Black Summer fires of 2019-20. These included:

• overcrowding, which forced people to sleep on floors with little or no bedding, or in their cars

• power and/or communications outages

• insufficient storage for food and donated items

• inadequate bathroom and kitchen amenities

• inability to accommodate pets

• outbreaks of illness among evacuees

• centres not equipped for people with disabilities, mobility issues or chronic health concerns.

As one heavily pregnant women who gave evidence noted:

[…] my husband, three-year-old daughter, cat and dog had to evacuate for almost two weeks, and I gave birth to my son during our evacuation. This put strain on finances and the mental health of our three-year-old, who became traumatised during the fires.

Read more: Why do people try to drive through floodwater or leave it too late to flee? Psychology offers some answers

Creating multi-purpose spaces

The royal commission called for better evacuation planning. It said this should include:

• assessing the location and standard of evacuation centres

• assessing the suitability of evacuation centres to cater for diverse groups

• contingencies if evacuation centres are unable to cope

• community education on the function and limitations of evacuation centres.

We believe the measures must go further, and a network of multi-purpose buildings is needed across Australia. These should be accessible and designed to meet the needs of a community affected by disaster.

The buildings may be existing, or specially constructed. They might be located at sports grounds, large parks or similar public facilities. When not needed for crisis accommodation, these spaces can also be used for sport, functions and other purposes – as is often the case now.

However, their potential use as an evacuation centre should be integral to their design, rather than an afterthought.

Essential features should include:

• enough space to accommodate thousands of people

• spaces catering for people with particular needs, such as children

• cooking facilities

• beds and bedding

• toilets and showers

• storage facilities

• backup power.

These centres should also ensure people can access additional help such as advice on government assistance, recovery schemes, long-term housing options and health support.

Just as importantly, we must identify which agency or agencies will manage the evacuation centre, and define the role the community can play in volunteering time, food, clothing and support to others.

Read more: ‘They lost our receipts three times’: how getting an insurance payout can be a full-time job

Not just an overnight fix

Between July 2019 and February 2020, bushfires in Australia destroyed more than 3,100 homes and displaced 65,000 people.

The Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) says the displacement affected not just housing conditions, but people’s livelihoods, education, security and health. It called for better planning for the next bushfire season, to help minimise the negative impacts.

Many people left homeless by natural disasters remain so for months, or even years, after the event.

For example, a Senate inquiry into lessons from the Black Summer fires this month heard some residents on the NSW South Coast were displaced more than a year after the disaster – partly due to bureaucratic hurdles to accessing disaster relief funding. Some were still living in tents and caravans, and did not have access to running water.

With this in mind, multi-purpose community spaces should be flexible enough to accommodate people for longer periods – allowing them to recover physically, socially and financially.

Under climate change, bushfires and floods will only get more frequent and intense. We must start planning and building better evacuation centres now – let’s not wait for the next disaster.

This story is part of a series The Conversation is running on the nexus between disaster, disadvantage and resilience. You can read the rest of the stories here.

Read more: Not ‘if’, but ‘when’: city planners need to design for flooding. These examples show the way

– ref. Thousands of flood-affected people are sheltering in schools, clubs and halls – but we can do better – https://theconversation.com/thousands-of-flood-affected-people-are-sheltering-in-schools-clubs-and-halls-but-we-can-do-better-157584

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

Have you ever wondered why your super fund rarely sends you mail?

It could be because it is one of the 36 funds that perform badly, or one of the six funds that perform extraordinarily badly. As of mid last year those six funds managed the retirement savings of 900,000 Australians.

Not that you would know it from their communications. The wonder of a system that pours a fresh 9.5% of your salary into super each year is that your fund is able to show an upward graph of the amount you’ve got saved even if it is managing those savings badly. You might think it was performing well.

Or your fund might have a more straightforward reason for avoiding mail.

The head of Australia’s biggest super fund, Australian Super with 2.4 million members, spelled it out in an appearance before the banking royal commission.

He said “a direct mail-out – a one-off direct mail-out to Australian Super’s members — costs $2.3 million”.

A million here, two million there…

Chief executive Ian Silk was trying to put into context the $2 million Australian Super threw at the startup news site New Daily throughout 2012 and 2013. He said the $2 million (long gone) wasn’t an investment in the financial sense of the term, but an investment in communications, “a tool to enhance the fund’s engagement with members”.

It’s an investment that will be illegal from July under the government’s proposed Your Future, Your Super law, along with those rather odd TV advertisements implying improbably that unless the government lifts compulsory super contributions, people might lose their houses.

It will be illegal for funds to spend money on these things even if they route the payments through a third party such as the super-fund-owned Industry Super Australia, as they now are.

Read more: That extra you’re about to get in super, most of it will come from you, but don’t expect the ads to tell you that

The new laws, which flow from the royal commission and a Productivity Commission inquiry, will require every cent of super fund spending (without “any materiality threshold”) to be directed to the best financial interests of members.

What’s different is the addition of the word “financial”. Previously funds were only required to act in the “best interests” of the members.

Until now (and this is an example used in the explanatory memorandum) it might have been OK for a fund to spend member contributions on “well-being and counselling services, due to its preference for providing beneficiaries with a holistic retirement experience”.

Services, seats at the Australian Open

It won’t be legal after July. Spending will have to be in the best “financial” interests of members.

And the onus of proof will be reversed. If challenged, funds will have to demonstrate that their decisions were indeed in the best financial interests of their members, rather than regulators demonstrating that they were not.

Which it should be. It’s our (mainly conscripted) money that they are spending. If they can’t make out a case for the way they are spending it, they might be acting as if it’s their own.

Shockingly, when in 2017 the Productivity Commission inquiry into super asked all 208 funds regulated by the Prudential Regulation Authority for information about their spending and net returns and fees by asset class, 94 didn’t respond.

A cavalier approach to finances

Of the 114 funds that did respond, 26 left blank all of the bits of the form that asked about assets, net returns and investment management costs.

When the commission tried again the following year, 13 of the 136 funds that responded provided no information about expenses at all. It was as if they either didn’t know about their expenses, or felt it was their business and no one else’s.

Time and time again the commission heard about bank-operated funds buying products from other parts of the bank at high prices.

The banking royal commission heard of hundreds of thousands of dollars spent by just one (industry) fund on corporate hospitality at the Australian Open.

It heard of directors of a retail fund who decided against putting their members into lower-priced products when they became available, overruling a lone director who protested, using capital letters

in what circumstances would it NOT be in a client’s best interest to transfer to the new pricing if it was lower than their existing pricing?

Spending on advertising would still be permitted under the draft legislation, but only where it was in the best financial interests of members. If it was aimed at grabbing members from other funds it probably would pass the test, because when funds get bigger the administrative and investment costs per member can shrink.

But the guidance note makes it clear that the costs per member would need to actually shrink, along with the charges to members, or there would need to be a documented case prepared as to why they should have shrunk.

Read more: Yes, women retire with less than men, but boosting compulsory super won’t help

Vanity advertising, or advertising for a group of funds, or advertising aimed at influencing public opinion won’t cut it.

And nor will indifferent performance. The law will require the Prudential Regulation Authority to annually test the performance of funds against objective, consistently-applied benchmarks, different benchmarks for different stated investment strategies.

Early MySuper test results

Funds that fail the test will be required to notify their members in writing. Funds that fail two years in a row will be closed to new members.

Most of us probably have no idea that we spend more on super investment and administration fees each year than we do on gas and electricity combined.

And when the performance is lousy (the difference between a good and bad fund can be $660,000 in retirement) we often don’t find out until it’s too late.

Our funds are about to have to work for us first, and no-one else.

– ref. Super funds have been working for themselves when they should have been working for us. That’s about to change – https://theconversation.com/super-funds-have-been-working-for-themselves-when-they-should-have-been-working-for-us-thats-about-to-change-157580

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ross Hendy, Lecturer in Criminology, Monash University

Examples of the police using force in the line of duty are not uncommon, but allegations of excessive force used by staff at Auckland Women’s Prison have raised serious questions about what happens away from the public eye.

Corrections Minister Kelvin Davis has now ordered an urgent overhaul and review of women’s prisons. This follows criticism by a district court judge of the Department of Corrections for its failure to properly respond to accusations of “degrading” and “inhumane” treatment of inmates at the prison.

At the same time, a reported increase in assaults on corrections officers has highlighted what a difficult ethical and practical area this is for staff.

Generally, the use of force by police and other law enforcement agencies in democratic societies is governed by the principles of reasonableness, proportionality and necessity.

The Crimes Act sets out how anyone — not just those entrusted with specialist law enforcement powers — may use force in certain circumstances: self-defence, the defence of another, or to prevent suicide or immediate and serious injury.

But determining whether the use of force was necessary, reasonable and proportionate is often open to interpretation. What happens in the heat of the moment may look quite different in the cold light of another day.

Permission to use force

Police and anyone using force are governed by section 62 of the Crimes Act, which stipulates any force used should not be excessive. If and when it is found to be excessive, the person responsible is criminally liable.

Prison staff are also governed by the Corrections Act. It gives them the power to use force in self-defence, defence of a prisoner or other person, provided the use of physical force is reasonable and necessary.

Unlike the police, however, corrections staff require permission whenever practical before force is used.

In the case of Auckland Women’s Prison, the Corrections Department’s independent inspectorate found no evidence of deliberate cruelty by staff but said they lacked proper oversight and guidance.

Read more: Despite claims NZ’s policing is too ‘woke’, crime rates are largely static — and even declining

This underlines the importance of risk identification and management in a custodial situation. Custody officers have a duty of care to the people in their protection, but also a clear interest in their own safety.

Equally, supervisors need to balance the rights of those in custody with the safety of their workforce. The reported increase in assaults on corrections officers will undoubtedly affect their sense of personal safety and inform their risk assessment when considering the need to use force.

The review of women’s prisons will need to address the real challenges of determining the reasonableness, proportionality and necessity of actions, both at the time of the event and afterwards.

Risk in the real world

In reality, assessing risk is never easy. When training to be a frontline police constable, for example, I didn’t anticipate the need to use force on someone affected by mental illness. Police training at the time was focused on the apprehension of criminal suspects rather than those in crisis.

In fact, police report force being used once in every 91 suicide attempts attended in 2019 — making up 6% of all incidents where force was used.

Two incidents in particular influenced how I assessed risk and responded.

The first involved a 13-year-old female who had been sending text messages threatening to self-harm. I detained her at her school but she became less compliant when she realised we were heading to the police station. She kicked out the rear passenger window to escape.

The second involved a middle-aged male who had sliced both arms in a suicide attempt. It took three of us to restrain him, all the while trying to avoid the blood and blood-drenched towels, before he could be sedated and given first aid.

Unlike many dramatised depictions of police use of force, real incidents tend to be messy. Without context they can appear uncoordinated, excessive or repressive. Actions taken in response to something might seem more reasonable at first glance than those taken to prevent it.

Read more: Policing by consent is not ‘woke’ — it is fundamental to a democratic society

Getting the balance right

Research has shown people’s attitudes tend to be shaped by their own levels of trust and confidence in police. Those who hold generally positive views will view police actions as appropriate; those who hold negative views see them as inappropriate.

How people view the actions of prison staff will probably depend on similar perceptions.

While the Auckland Women’s Prison inquiry has drawn attention to the potential for misuse of force, we should be mindful of missing the many nuances that render easy assessment superficial — including that the people who work in these places are not allowed to comment publicly.

The review ordered by the minister will have to address the need to strike the right balance between the safety of those in custody and the safety of those responsible for them. The decisions upon which that balance hinges are not as easy as they might appear.

– ref. Overhaul of NZ women’s prison system highlights the risk and doubt surrounding use of force on inmates – https://theconversation.com/overhaul-of-nz-womens-prison-system-highlights-the-risk-and-doubt-surrounding-use-of-force-on-inmates-156848

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Vagg, Conjoint Clinical Associate Professor, Deakin University School of Medicine and Specialist Pain Medicine Physician, Deakin University

As a pain specialist, I often have patients asking me whether they should try medicinal cannabis. There’s a common perception it can be an effective way to manage chronic pain.

But two expert groups have recently recommended against medicinal cannabis for people suffering persistent non-cancer pain.

The International Association for the Study of Pain published a position statement last week after its presidential taskforce summarised the evidence on the topic.

And yesterday the Faculty of Pain Medicine of the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists published guidance for health practitioners in the form of a Choosing Wisely recommendation. (Choosing Wisely is an initiative of NPS Medicinewise which aims to highlight low-value health care.)

Many in the community would see this recommendation as controversial. So let’s take a look at some of the commonly held misconceptions about medicinal cannabis and chronic pain.

Myth #1: evidence shows cannabis products are effective for chronic pain

Evidence from randomised controlled trials is critically lacking when it comes to medicinal cannabis products for chronic pain.

While some studies have looked at tetrahydrocannabinol (THC, the main psychoactive component of cannabis) or a combination of THC and cannabidiol (CBD), there isn’t a single published randomised controlled trial of a CBD-only product for chronic pain of any type. Australian medicinal cannabis products are often CBD-only.

This means we can’t even judge whether the claims that medicinal cannabis can alleviate pain might be true. The results of THC-containing products in clinical trials don’t give a reliable picture one way or the other because they involve too few participants, have major technical flaws in design, or have been judged to have an unacceptably high risk of producing biased results.

The International Association for the Study of Pain taskforce looked at all the available research published in peer-reviewed journals on the use of medicinal cannabis for pain management, from preclinical studies to human trials.

They concluded overall the studies’ “quality, rigour, and transparency of reporting” of benefits and harms needs to be improved across the board. We would require higher quality data, for example through randomised controlled trials, to determine the safety and efficacy of using medicinal cannabis for pain.

In the polite and understated world of academic medicine, this is about as big a smackdown as it gets. The authors are essentially saying most of the studies are too poorly done, using unsuitable methods, to give any answer to the most basic question of whether medicinal cannabis helps with pain.

Read more: Medicinal cannabis users in Victoria could soon be allowed to drive with THC in their system. Is it safe?

Myth #2: cannabis products should be provided as a ‘last resort’

A doctor has the right to prescribe any drug they think may be effective for an individual patient based on nothing more than their clinical judgement. We do this relatively frequently, especially for chronic pain.

This is ethical if we have a scientific reason to believe the drug may be helpful. But for patients with chronic pain, we have little reason to believe medicinal cannabis offers any sustained benefit.

A further challenge to the ethical provision of cannabis products as a “last resort” is the fact they’re among the most expensive pharmaceutical products available to chronic pain patients, many of whom have very modest incomes. The only party likely to benefit is the manufacturer.

Myth #3: medical cannabis may help with the opioid crisis

There’s a consensus that much of the current use of opioid analgesics to manage chronic non-cancer pain in Australia may be of limited value.

Proponents of medicinal cannabis have suggested it may hold promise as a potential solution to this problem. While this idea has some appeal, the balance of the evidence points the other way.

Read more: 1 in 10 women with endometriosis report using cannabis to ease their pain

Data collected from Australia and New Zealand shows participation in best-practice multidisciplinary pain care, as provided by a specialist pain clinic, results in half of pain patients being able to reduce their opioids by at least 50%, with improved quality of life.

People wanting an alternative to opioid treatment for persistent pain will do best if they seek out treatment from a professional team of experts, rather than substituting cannabis for opioids.

It could be harmful

The International Association for the Study of Pain taskforce identified general known risks from using cannabis, such as in recreational settings. But no studies have characterised the way the body handles prescribed or over-the-counter medicinal cannabis products.

The TGA guidance document on medicinal cannabis notes basic research on how the drugs interact with both the body and other medications — known as pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic studies — is not available. Without this information, we can’t answer important questions about the safety of medicinal cannabis.

Medicinal cannabis products may have a role in the management of other conditions, such as relieving chemotherapy-induced nausea, or treating childhood epilepsy. The evidence around those conditions seems to be more convincing than the studies for persistent pain, though I’m not an expert in either field.

Despite the lack of evidence to support the use of medicinal cannabis for chronic pain, the legislation around medicinal cannabis in Australia continues to become more permissive.

It will be legal to sell low-dose CBD products over the counter from June this year, if they meet the very minimal requirements to be listed by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA).

Meanwhile, Tasmania is set to become the last Australian state to allow GPs to prescribe medicinal cannabis from July.

Read more: Weed withdrawal: More than half of people using medical cannabis for pain experience withdrawal symptoms

The Faculty of Pain Medicine has a track record of advocacy for pain patients. We led the process that resulted in the first ever National Pain Strategy a decade ago, and were a founding partner of Painaustralia as an ongoing policy voice.

If medicinal cannabis was truly as potentially valuable as often claimed, we would be the loudest voice in favour of wider access. The weight of evidence points us away from this conclusion.

– ref. Medicinal cannabis to manage chronic pain? We don’t have evidence it works – https://theconversation.com/medicinal-cannabis-to-manage-chronic-pain-we-dont-have-evidence-it-works-157324

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cate Macinnis-Ng, Associate Professor, University of Auckland

Islands are biodiversity hotspots. They are home to 20% of the world’s plants and animals yet cover only 5% of the global landmass. But island ecosystems are highly vulnerable, threatened by habitat fragmentation and introduced invasive weeds and predators.

Climate change adds to all these stresses. In our recent paper, we use Aotearoa New Zealand as a case study to show how climate change accelerates biodiversity decline on islands by exacerbating existing conservation threats.

Aotearoa is one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots, with 80% of vascular plants, 81% of arthropods and 60% of land vertebrate animals found nowhere else.

Its evolutionary history is dominated by birds. Before the arrival of people, the only native land mammals were bats. But now, introduced predators threaten the survival of many species.

Complex interplay between many threats

Conservation efforts have rightly concentrated on the eradication of introduced predators, with world-leading success in the eradication of rats in particular.

Potential climate change impacts have been mostly ignored. Successive assessments by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) highlight the lack of information for Aotearoa. This could be due to insufficient research, system complexity or a lack of impacts.

In the past, some researchers even dismissed climate change as an issue for biodiversity in Aotearoa. Our maritime climate is comparatively mild and already variable. As a result, organisms are expected to be well adapted to changing conditions.

Read more: Despite its green image, NZ has world’s highest proportion of species at risk

Palaeo-ecological records suggest few species extinctions despite abrupt environmental change during the Quaternary period (from 2.5 million years ago to present). But past climate change provides an incomplete picture of contemporary change because it did not include human-induced threats.

Habitat loss and fragmentation, land‐use change and complex interactions between native species and introduced predators or invasive weeds all contribute to these threats.

How climate change affects biodiversity

Species respond to climate change by evolving physiological adjustments, moving to new habitats or, in the worst cases, becoming extinct. These responses then change ecosystem processes, including species interactions and ecosystem functions (such as carbon uptake and storage).

Methods for identifying climate change impacts are either empirical and observational (field studies and manipulative experiments) or mechanistic (ecophysiological models). Mechanistic approaches allow predictions of impacts under future climate scenarios. But linking species and ecosystem change directly to climate can be challenging in a complex world where multiple stressors are at play.

There are several well-known examples of climate change impacts on species endemic to Aotearoa. First, warming of tuatara eggs changes the sex ratio of hatchlings. Hotter conditions produce more males, potentially threatening long-term survival of small, isolated populations.

Second, mast seeding (years of unusually high production of seed) is highly responsive to temperature and mast events are likely to increase under future climate change. During mast years, the seeds provide more food for invasive species like rats or mice, their populations explode in response to the abundant food and then, when the seed resource is used up, they turn to other food sources such as invertebrates and bird eggs. This has major impacts on native ecosystems.

How masting plants respond to climate change is complex and depends on the species. The full influence of climate is still emerging.

Indirect effects of climate change

We identified a range of known and potential complex impacts of climate change in several ecosystems. The alpine zone is particularly vulnerable. Warming experiments showed rising temperatures extend the overlap between the flowering seasons of native alpine plants and invasive plants. This potentially increases competition for pollinators and could result in lower seed production.

Some large alpine birds, including the alpine parrot kea, will have fewer cool places to take refuge from invasive predators. This will cause local extinctions in a process know as “thermal squeeze”.

Small alpine lakes, known as tarns, are not well understood but are also likely to suffer from thermal squeeze and increased drought periods. Warmer temperatures may also allow Australian brown tree frogs to invade further into these sensitive systems.

Climate change disproportionately affects Indigenous people worldwide. In Aotearoa, culturally significant species such as tītī (sooty shearwater) and harakeke (flax) will be influenced by climate change.

The breeding success of tītī, which are harvested traditionally, is strongly influenced by the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle. As ENSO intensifies under climate change, numbers of young surviving are decreasing. For harakeke, future climate projections predict changes in plant distribution, potentially making weaving materials unavailable to some hapū (subtribes).

Read more: Traditional knowledge helps Indigenous people adapt to climate crisis, research shows

Mātauranga, the Indigenous knowledge of Māori, provides insights on climate change that haven’t been captured in western science. For instance, the Māori calendar, maramataka, has been developed over centuries of observations.

Maramataka for each hāpu (subtribe) provide guidance for the timing of gathering mahinga kai (traditional food sources). This includes the gathering of fish and other seafood, planting of crops and harvesting food. Because this calendar is based on knowledge that has accrued over generations, some changes in timing and distributions due to environmental or climate change may be captured in these oral histories.

Climate change is here now

Future projections of climate change are complicated in Aotearoa — but it is clear the climate is already changing.

Last year was the seventh hottest on record for Aotearoa. Many parts of the country suffered severe summer drought. NASA captured images of browned landscapes across the country.

Much of the focus of climate change research has been in agricultural and other human landscapes but we need more effort to quantify the threat for our endemic systems.

On islands across the world, rising sea levels and more severe extreme weather events are threatening the survival of endemic species and ecosystems. We need to understand the complicated processes through which climate change interacts with other threats to ensure the success of conservation projects.

While we focused on terrestrial and freshwater systems, marine and near-shore ecosystems are also suffering because of ocean acidification, rising sea levels and marine heatwaves. These processes threaten marine productivity, fisheries and mahinga kai resources.

And for long-term conservation success, we need to consider both direct and indirect impacts of climate change on our unique species and ecosystems.

– ref. Many New Zealand species are already at risk because of predators and habitat loss. Climate change makes things worse – https://theconversation.com/many-new-zealand-species-are-already-at-risk-because-of-predators-and-habitat-loss-climate-change-makes-things-worse-156650

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alan Morris, Professor, Institute of Public Policy and Governance, University of Technology Sydney

International students commonly share bedrooms so they can afford the rent. What is perhaps much more surprising is that our research suggests thousands are “hot-bedding” – their beds are available to them for only some hours of the day or night so others can use them the rest of the time. If our survey of more than 7,000 international students renting privately in Sydney and Melbourne is representative of the 758,154 international students in Australia in December 2019, this equates to about 22,750 students hot-bedding.

In our survey, 3% of all students answered yes to the question, “Do you have to hotbed (i.e. our bed is only available for a few hours of the day/night)?”. The survey also found about four in ten of these hot-bedding students were going without meals. And this was before nearly two-thirds of international students lost their jobs in the COVID-10 pandemic.

Read more: ‘No one would even know if I had died in my room’: coronavirus leaves international students in dire straits

Another extraordinary finding is that 14% of hot-bedders said their employer had threatened them with visa cancellation (compared to 2% of non-hot-bedders). One in five (20%, compared to 5% of non-hot-bedders) answered yes when asked: “Has the landlord/real estate agent/property manager ever taken away your passport?”

These findings suggest a sizeable proportion of hot-bedders are struggling financially and in a vulnerable situation. Many said their circumstances were having a negative impact on their studies.

Despite this, almost eight in ten agreed or strongly agreed that they “enjoy living and studying in Australia”.

Who are the hot-bedders?

In our survey, 45% of hot-bedders were female. Just under two-thirds (65%) were university students, rather than studying at vocational or English language colleges.

Hot-bedding was spread across all age groups and countries of origin. Thus 4% were aged 18, a quarter were 19 to 21, 42% were 22 to 25, 18% were 26 to 30 and 11% were over 30.

Just under a third came from low-income countries, half came from middle-income countries and 15% from high-income countries.

How do they feel about rent costs?

Hot-bedders were generally satisfied with their rent – 23% disagreed with the statement, “I think the rent I pay is fair.”

However, one in two (51%) strongly agreed or agreed they worried about paying rent each week (compared to 35% for non-hot-bedders) and only 21% (36% non-hot-bedders) disagreed.

Most students (58%) living less than 40 minutes away from their education provider paid more than $250 a week in rent.

About four in ten hot-bedders agreed they “go without necessities like food so I can pay for my accommodation” and had failed to make a rent payment because of a lack of funds. The rates for students who didn’t hot-bed were two in ten.

Read more: ‘God, I miss fruit!’ 40% of students at Australian universities may be going without food

Almost half (48%) of hot-bedders agreed concern about paying the rent was having a negative impact on their studies.

How do they view their accommodation?

Despite having to hot-bed, just under eight in ten (78%) of these students said they were satisfied or very satisfied with the home they are renting.

Just over seven in ten (72%) agreed with the statement, “The home I rent is suitable for my needs.” Only 7% disagreed.

Only one in ten hot-bedders agreed the person they rent from did not keep the property well-maintained.

Just over one in four (27%) hot-bedders felt their home was overcrowded compared to 12% of non-hot-bedders.

The cramped situation appeared to have a negative impact on their academic work. About one in three (35%) agreed or strongly agreed that “the condition of my accommodation has a negative impact on my studies”, compared to 13% of those who didn’t hot-bed.

Remarkably, just under one in four (23%) hot-bedding students answered “yes” when asked if the “balcony of the property is used as a bedroom”, compared to 5% of students who did not hot-bed. A similar percentage of hot-bedders (and 4% of non-hot-bedders) said the garage is used as a bedroom.

Read more: Informal and illegal housing on the rise as our cities fail to offer affordable places to live

How secure do they feel?

Most hot-bedders reported they had a good relationship with their landlord or real estate agent. Only 6% said it was “bad” or “not very good”.

Close to half (45%) of hot-bedders said the person they pay rent to lives in the same accommodation. It’s unclear whether this is the actual landlord, or a person who sub-lets the property.

Two in three hot-bedders sensed they “could stay in this rental property as long as they want to”. Despite the seemingly good relationship of most hot-bedders with their landlord, just under one in three agreed that if they “complain about the standards of the property and maintenance problems [they] might be asked to leave”.

Although maintenance did not seem to be a major issue, just under four in ten hot-bedders agreed they were concerned the rent might be increased if they did ask for repairs. And 38% were anxious they “might be told to leave [their] property and be given a short time to leave”.

When asked, “In the last year, have you ever felt that you could become homeless?”, 37% answered yes. This compares to 17% of non-hot-bedders.

Just under four in ten hot-bedders agreed or strongly agreed that “stress around the possibility of losing my accommodation is affecting my academic studies”.

Read more: Why coronavirus impacts are devastating for international students in private rental housing

What is their employment status?

Half of the students who hot-bed had paid work at the time of the survey and of those employed 48% reported that their landlord employed them, compared to 17% of the other students in paid work.

A large proportion felt they were poorly paid and their job was insecure. Less than half of the hot-bedders felt they were well-paid. Only one in four disagreed with the statement, “My current job is insecure.”

Just over eight in ten said losing their job would cause them financial difficulties.

Financial stress is widespread

The chart below shows eight measures of financial stress adapted from the Australia Bureau of Statistics. We added an item on affordability of textbooks.

On every measure students who hot-bed were two to three times more likely to have answered yes to the question, indicating financial stress. Perhaps the most alarming statistic is that 39% of hot-bedders went without meals. So did 20% of non-hot-bedders.

One in ten hot-bedders suffered from all eight indicators of financial stress. A worrying 34% of hot-bedders reported five or more indicators of financial stress. Only 9% of non-hot-bedders reported five stress indicators. Less than one in 100 endured all eight.

Read more: Tracking the rise of room sharing and overcrowding, and what it means for housing in Australia

– ref. As one student gets out of bed, another gets in: thousands are ‘hot-bedding’ in Australia – https://theconversation.com/as-one-student-gets-out-of-bed-another-gets-in-thousands-are-hot-bedding-in-australia-156589

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Deborah Ralston, Professorial fellow, Monash University

All sorts of claims are being made following the release of the Retirement Income Review, including that it paid insufficient attention to issues of gender.

Among other things we are being told that the gap between female and male super would narrow if compulsory contributions were lifted from 9.5% to 12%.

It wouldn’t, not at all. As the review of which I was a member states, “maintaining the superannuation guarantee at 9.5% would avoid the increases in inequities associated with the superannuation guarantee rate rising to 12%”.

Since men on average earn more than women, increasing the superannuation guarantee rate would widen — rather than narrow — the retirement income gap.

By design, superannuation is a contributory scheme. That means what you get in retirement depends largely on how long you have been in the workforce and how much you have been paid.

In that respect women are at a disadvantage, firstly due to the gender pay gap.

Women get less super because they get less pay

The review points out in November 2019 the gap in total average weekly earnings was 16.9% for women and men working full-time.

The Bureau of Statistics reported in December 2020 that the pay gap had fallen to 13.4%.

While there is still a way to go, it’s an improvement.

However, the second and greater disadvantage for women is that they are far more likely to take on caring roles that lead to career breaks and part-time employment.

Some 93% of all primary carer leave is taken by women. The result is a gender pay gap of closer to 30% when part-time and full-time work are taken together.

Several things could help

To understand the contribution of career breaks to super balances and retirement incomes, the review constructed and modelled five different scenarios for female workers based on observed patterns of career breaks and part-time work.

Not surprisingly the modelling found that when women take more time out of the workforce, the gender gap in superannuation balances increases. Breaks earlier in careers have a greater impact on balances than breaks taken later.

In recent decades the impact of career breaks has been declining as women take less time out of the workforce. Average female working life climbed from 24 years in 1980 to around 38 years in 2019.

There are a number of measures that could improve super outcomes for women.

The review found one would be to require the payment of superannuation on employer paid parental leave and government parental leave pay.

The super gap isn’t as wide as the pay gap

Another would be to require employers to make superannuation contributions to workers earning less than $450 per month.

The present exemption impacts directly on those who work part-time and who work for a number of different employers, 63% of whom are women.

Both options would improve the retirement incomes of women, but only marginally mitigate the gender gap inherent in the way superannuation is structured.

Read more: Retirement incomes review finds problems more super won’t solve

But here’s what else we found. A number of measures already in place do quite a bit to lessen the gap.

Among them are the Low-Income Superannuation Tax Offset and the government superannuation co-contribution.

Because women earn less than men, both benefit women far more than men.

Also, women benefit from the imposition of Division 293 tax which limits concessions for higher income earners, who are more likely to be men.

Half as worse off in retirement

And women also make higher voluntary super contributions as a proportion of incomes then men. This is particularly so for women over the age of 50, suggesting some make a concerted effort to catch up.

As a result, in 2017‑18 the median gap in superannuation balances between men and women aged 60‑64 was 22%, considerably less than the 30% gender gap in pay.

And the age pension means test means that once women move into retirement, they are more likely than men to get the age pension, and to get more of it.

Read more: Home ownership and super are far more entwined than you might think

When the age pension and superannuation income are combined, the retirement income gap for women who have worked full time with no career break falls to 8.4% For women with two career breaks and part-time work it falls to 14.5%.

We could do better, and the review spelled out steps to take. It found that boosting compulsory super contributions was not one of them.

An increase in the proportion of income sent to super would lift the retirement incomes of high earners more than the retirement incomes of low earners.

Until things change, increases in compulsory super will boost the retirement incomes of men more than women.

– ref. Yes, women retire with less than men, but boosting compulsory super won’t help – https://theconversation.com/yes-women-retire-with-less-than-men-but-boosting-compulsory-super-wont-help-157412

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Deborah Gleeson, Associate professor, La Trobe University

Papua New Guinea’s COVID-19 outbreak is a portent of the “catastrophic moral failure” the head of the World Health Organization warned of in January due to poor countries being pushed to the back of the vaccine queue.

Australia has gifted 8,000 doses to PNG, and vowed to help the nation of almost 9 million secure 1 million more. Earlier this month Australia agreed to work with the US, India and Japan to provide 1 billion vaccines to poorer countries in the Asia-Pacific. It is also supporting COVAX, the global program aiming to buy and distribute 2 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses to developing nations by the end of 2021.

But all this could be negated through Australia’s potential spoiling role (with a handful of other countries) against a proposal supported by 118 countries to ramp up vaccine production by relaxing the trade rules governing intellectual property.

Inequities in access to COVID-19 vaccines

The inequities in access to vaccines are stark. By November, wealthy nations accounting for just 14% of the global population had locked in premarket agreements to buy 51% of the first 7.48 billion doses of candidate COVID-19 vaccines.

That number should be enough to vaccinate almost half the global population – 3.76 billion of 7.8 billion people. But Canada, Australia, Britain, Japan, the European Union and the US have all bought up more than their fair share. Canada has reserved about 4.5 courses per person; Australia and the UK close to 2.5.

This means most middle-income countries won’t achieve widespread vaccination coverage until late 2022, according to The Economist’s Intelligence Unit. For poorer economies, including some of Australia’s closest neighbours, it won’t be “before 2023, if at all”.

Suspending intellectual property rules

Addressing vaccine inequities, the director-general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said, requires pulling “out all the stops”.

One of those stops is the international agreement protecting intellectual property rights – the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, commonly called the TRIPS agreement. All members of the World Trade Organization are bound by the agreement.

In October 2020, South Africa and India proposed waiving certain provisions of TRIPS that give the owners of the intellectual property exclusive rights over the manufacture and sale of COVID vaccines. The waiver would only apply to COVID-19 medical products and only for the duration of the pandemic. This would allow others to make COVID-19 vaccines without the vaccine developers’ permission.

The TRIPS waiver is supported by 118 of the WTO’s 164 members – more than two-thirds of its membership.

The counter-proposal supported by Australia

Australia, however, has joined with Canada, Chile, Colombia, New Zealand, Norway and Turkey in supporting a counter-proposal that argues provisions already in the TRIPS agreement are good enough.

TRIPS does allow for compulsory licensing, enabling the use of a patent without the consent of the owner, in a public health emergency. But the compulsory licensing process is time-consuming and only applies to patents, not the other types of intellectual property important for making vaccines.

The counter-proposal put its faith in encouraging more talk between vaccine developers and manufacturers, enabling them to make voluntary licensing agreements and identify ways to increase production.

But there’s little reason to think this would achieve more than what is already happening. For example, AstraZeneca has licensed the Serum Institute of India to make its vaccine both for India and other countries.

Read more: Yes, export bans on vaccines are a problem, but why is the supply of vaccines so limited in the first place?

Voluntary licences are problematic because they are ad hoc and confidential. The lack of transparency has seen pricing discrepancies such as Bangladesh and South Africa reportedly paying more for their AstraZeneca doses than European nations.

Voluntary licences can also place tight restrictions on where the resulting products can be sold. For example, when US pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences negotiated licences with makers in India, Pakistan and Egypt to produce a cheaper version of Remdesivir (a candidate for COVID-19 treatment in the early stages of the pandemic) the licence conditions excluded many middle-income countries from buying the cheaper version.

Australia’s support for this counter-proposal is therefore a distraction at best. It can’t bring about the fundamental change the TRIPS waiver could generate. Nor is it likely to lead to the world being vaccinated sooner.

– ref. More talk, no action: Australia’s approach to trade rules restraining vaccine production – https://theconversation.com/more-talk-no-action-australias-approach-to-trade-rules-restraining-vaccine-production-156971

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elisabeth Findlay, Director of Queensland College of Art, Griffith University

Barely a year goes by on the Australian art calendar without the announcement of a major Impressionist exhibition. The latest is the National Gallery of Victoria’s “international exclusive show”, French Impressionism from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

The NGV’s is the next instalment in a series of recent Impressionist exhibitions, including Monet: Impression Sunrise (National Gallery of Australia, 2019) and Colours of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay (Art Gallery of South Australia, 2018).

The global popularity of Impressionism can be traced back to 1886 when the art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel mounted an exhibition of 300 Impressionist works in New York. Attracting widespread acclaim, it was a turning point in public awareness of the art movement.

The NGV announcement includes phrases such as “artistic energy and intellectual dynamism”, “radical practitioners” and a “breathtaking display”. But such cliche and hyperbole belies the more interesting realities of a divided group of artists striving to capture the complexities of the emerging modern world around them.

A romanticised story

At the heart of the popularity of Impressionism is a romanticised story of a group of young artists battling against the conservatism of the dominant French Salon. They are repeatedly presented as a passionate collective who embraced plein air painting, capturing nature with unprecedented freshness.

Impressionist exhibitions almost invariably perpetuate the notion of the male artist as a genius. An aura surrounds artists such as Monet, Renoir and Degas. They are repeatedly viewed as heroic radicals who shunned the establishment, rallying together to champion a new form of art.

For decades, Monet in particular, has been singled out for praise. From his pioneering work at La Grenouillère to his final days at Giverny, Monet is applauded for abandoning the studio and immersing himself in the landscape. His paintings have become the paragon of the Impressionists’ ability to authentically capture the world around them.

This romanticised story of visionary artists working in nature is echoed in the stories of Impressionism beyond France. By the late 19th century local variants of Impressionism had spread to places such as America and Australia. She-Oak and Sunlight: Australian Impressionism will also be held at the NGV this year, presenting the work of leading exponents of Australian Impressionism. Into the 20th century, Impressionist techniques continued to be embraced in countries beyond France, including Japan and China.

Read more: Art Gallery SA goes back to Impressionism’s colourful roots with masterpieces from Musee d’Orsay

Impressionist paintings readily lend themselves to merchandising, with their work reproduced on a vast array of mementos, including postcards, posters, mugs, magnets, scarves, jigsaw puzzles and even umbrellas. For galleries, the large crowds and their willingness to spend on such items are a winning blockbuster formula. Critics such as Meta Knol have lamented our addiction to the blockbuster but such a successful model is difficult to abandon.

Division

However, the version of Impressionism that accompanies most blockbusters is highly sanitised. In truth, the artists were not the united group of popular imagination.

Degas was a particularly divisive figure. He was strident in his view that no-one in the group should exhibit with the conservative Salon, which had rejected and ridiculed them. This was an abiding source of tension.

In 1879 Renoir exhibited Madame Charpentier with her Children at the Salon, which enraged Degas. A further feud broke out when Monet followed Renoir’s example and submitted Seine at Lavacourt to the Salon. While usually portrayed as radicals, clearly Renoir and Monet were happy to court official recognition.

Pissaro and Degas argued that Monet should be thrown out of the group and consequently Monet, Renoir and Sisley did not exhibit in the fifth exhibition in 1880. As the bickering escalated, Durand-Ruel increasingly resorted to solo shows. By the final Impressionist exhibition in 1886 there was considerable acrimony within the group with Monet also rejecting Seurat’s Neo-Impressionism and his scientific application of optical principles.

The familiar blockbuster tropes also mask the reality that many Impressionists painted disturbing observations of human relationships and social division. Art historian T. J. Clarke in The Painting of Modern Life demonstrates that urbanisation and political instability in late 19th century France provides a much richer context to appreciate Impressionism than stories of individual geniuses capturing a fleeting moment.

For the Impressionists, places of leisure were ideal for observing human interaction. Degas, in particular, did not shy away from presenting the undercurrents of urban life. In Women on a Café Terrace in the Evening (1877), for instance, he depicts a group of prostitutes. The woman in the middle is biting her thumb. Often interpreted as a simple sign of her boredom, art historian Hollis Clayson suggests this gesture references particular sexual activities.

In Dance at Bougival, one of the major paintings in the forthcoming NGV French Impressionism exhibition, Renoir depicts a couple dancing in the new open-air cafes.

On one level this is a simple scene of frivolity but a closer look reveals something more menacing at play. The woman is looking away from the boatman with her eyes cast down, while he leans into her with his face obscured by his straw hat. Their flushed cheeks and the way he pulls her towards him invites an uneasy contemplation of their relationship.

The discarded bouquet and the burnt matches add to the sense that something is awry. Renoir would have been very familiar with the use of such items as symbols of fallen virtue.

Tension

Even in a portrait as endearing as Mary Cassatt’s Ellen Mary in a White Coat — also among the paintings coming to Melbourne — there is a tension. Feminist art historians such as Griselda Pollock have argued there are radical undercurrents to such domestic images.

Read more: The National Gallery is erasing women from the history of art

As a single woman, Cassatt did not have the opportunity to paint a scene such as Renoir’s Dance at Bougival. Her gender and class denied her access to the open-air cafes.

Cassatt’s images of domesticity therefore reflect her confinement. The recurring imagery of little girls also reveals her concern for the next generation of women. The serious faced Ellen, who is swamped by her bonnet and coat, holds firmly to the chair as she looks to a point in the distance in this psychologically complex portrait.

Impressionist exhibitions will continue to delight large audiences. However, it is unfortunate that the anodyne story of the movement dominates.

– ref. We can’t seem to get enough of the Impressionists but can we move on from the sanitised version? – https://theconversation.com/we-cant-seem-to-get-enough-of-the-impressionists-but-can-we-move-on-from-the-sanitised-version-156747

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

The government has immediately sacked a staffer after Network Ten reported on Monday that a Coalition whistleblower had provided photographs and videos recorded inside parliament house “of men engaged in blatant sex acts”.

The Coalition staffers filmed themselves and shared the videos, the report said.
Ten aired (distorted) images. It said one showed a man pointing to the desk of a female Liberal MP and then performing a “solo sex act on it”.

“One of the government staffers featured in the videos we have seen says publicly that he works closely with the prime minister’s office and the leader of the house’s office,” the report said. The leader of the house is Christian Porter.

The whistleblower, “Tom,” (not his real name) claimed staffers had procured “rent boys” to come to parliament house for Coalition MPs.

He also said “a lot” of sex occurred in parliament house’s meditation room.

Morrison said in a statement on Monday night the reports aired by Ten “are disgusting and sickening”.

“It’s not good enough, and is totally unacceptable,” he said.

“The actions of these individuals show a staggering disrespect for the people who work in parliament, and for the ideals the parliament is supposed to represent.

“My government has identified the staff member at the centre of these allegations and has terminated his employment immediately.” This is the man who committed the sex act on the MP’s desk.

Morrison said: “I urge anybody with further information to come forward”.

He said he’d have “more to say on this and the cultural issues we confront as a parliament in coming days”.

This is the second federal government staffer in under a week who has been sacked for gross sexist behaviour. Last week Andrew Hudgson, media adviser to the Assistant Treasurer, Michael Sukkar, was dismissed immediately after Tasmanian Greens leader Cassy O’Connor told the state parliament he had called her a “meth-head c***” in 2019 when he worked for the then Tasmanian premier Will Hodgman.

The Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Kate Jenkins, is currently conducting an inquiry into the parliament house workplace.

Meanwhile a parliamentary security guard on Monday night challenged Morrison’s claim a security breach was committed when Brittany Higgins and the colleague she alleged raped her entered minister Linda Reynolds office in the early hours in March 2019.

Morrison has said the man, who was dismissed within days, had been sacked “because of a security breach. That was the reason for it. As I understand it, it related to the entry into those [office] premises.”

But Nikola Anderson, the security guard who opened the door of the office for the pair, said on the ABC’s 4 Corners, “What was the security breach? Because the night that we were on shift, there was no security breach. Because these two people worked for minister Reynolds, they were allowed access in there, which is why we granted it.”

She was at the security check-in point where they entered the building, before she took them to Reynolds office. Both had active passes although they were not carrying them, so they were given temporary ones (the normal practice in parliament house when a passholder does not have their pass with them).

Asked why Morrison would have said this was a security breach and that was why the man was sacked, Anderson said, “Because he’s been given false information”. She said she was one of the only people who knew what happened and nobody had asked her anything.

Anderson said after the man left the building hastily by himself she went to check on the woman’s welfare.

She opened the door to the minister’s personal office to find Higgins lying on her back on the couch, completely naked. Higgins had opened her eyes, then rolled over onto her side.

“So therefore my take on it was, she’s conscious, she’s breathing, she doesn’t look like she’s in distress.”

Higgins has said she was drunk and fell asleep on the couch, to awake “mid-rape.”

“But given the nature of the situation and the fact that she was completely naked, I think his call on it was just let her sleep it off, leave her there.”

Anderson said she was told to be discreet about the incident. “We were told to keep it under wraps and not to make it common knowledge.”

There is now a police investigation into Higgins’ allegation she was raped, after she recently laid a complaint.

Anderson was contacted by ACT police a week ago.

Asked why she was speaking out publicly, Anderson said it was because “I’m fearful for my job, and I don’t want to be used as DPS’s [Department of Parliamentary Services] scapegoat. And the truth does have to come out. I mean, I’m sick of seeing all of these news reports with inaccurate information because it is wrong.”

– ref. Morrison says Coalition staffer sacked after ‘disgusting’ allegation – https://theconversation.com/morrison-says-coalition-staffer-sacked-after-disgusting-allegation-157629

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Deborah Morris, Military analyst, Griffith University

This is an important day for the veteran community. After five years of campaigning for a royal commission, parliament has backed a motion to establish one. Prime Minister Scott Morrison has also signalled he would no longer oppose the move.

For at least two decades, there have been numerous inquiries into veteran suicide, institutional abuse, mental health, the transition from military to civilian life, and combat trauma — with little positive outcome.

More Australian veterans have lost their lives by suicide than have been killed on active duty since ADF personnel were first deployed to Afghanistan in 2001.

In October and November of last year alone, nine veterans took their lives, leading Senator Jacqui Lambie to argue veteran suicides should be treated as “one of Australia’s most pressing problems”.

Thirteen veterans have tragically taken their life so far this year.

A petition calling for a royal commission into veteran suicide — led by the families of those who have lost their lives — has garnered more than 400,000 signatures.

Yet, despite the urgent need and popular support for the idea, a royal commission didn’t have the political support of the Morrison government until this week.

The government’s initial response seen as inadequate

Last year, a report by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) said

reducing the rate of serving and ex-serving suicides is a priority of the Australian government.

Despite this recognition, the matter has not been met with a sense of urgency.

In response to calls for a royal commission, the government established a national commission for defence and veteran suicide prevention, which has largely been seen as inadequate.

The reaction from former and serving military personnel was also mixed. Critics said the national commission was inferior to a royal commission in terms of its scope, independence and resources. The timing of the move by the government was also viewed as problematic.

While the role of the national commission is likely necessary to prevent future suicides, we believe a royal commission is still vital to bring attention to the links between veteran suicide and the institutional failures and bureaucratic barriers that are causing harm daily.

Read more: Veterans have poorer mental health than Australians overall. We could be serving them better

Data on defence suicides difficult to compile

There is imprecise and limited research into veteran suicide in Australia. Research commissioned by the Department of Veterans’ Affairs and conducted by AIHW found there were 419 known suicides of serving, ex-serving and reserve defence personnel between 2001-17.

That is on average one death by suicide every two weeks.

Veteran Scott Harris has compiled statistics on veteran suicides for The Warrior’s Return Facebook page, and has counted 731 deaths by suicide over the same period.

The Australian Institute for Suicide Research and Prevention (AISRP) has described the lack of information on veteran suicides as a “serious shortcoming in current knowledge”. The organisation said there is

very limited research information focusing specifically on suicide mortality, non-fatal suicidal behaviour or suicidal ideation among individuals who have left the [Australian Defence Force].

Put simply, the sector is flying blind.

We aren’t just lacking data on veteran suicides; there is limited knowledge of veterans in the Australian community more broadly. In fact, questions about veterans will be introduced to the census for the first time this year.

A royal commission will enable us to gather information on the defence and veteran communities to help understand their needs and ensure we craft well-targeted policies.

Five key points to consider for a royal commission

The terms of reference of the royal commission must be designed by the veteran community, as well as policy-makers and other experts. Significantly, to preclude serving and former ADF members from such an investigation would continue to silence the very people it seeks to help.

We have identified five key points to ensure a rigorous and effective commission process.

1) The terms of reference should include suicidality – not just suicide. Suicidality is a term that covers both suicide ideation (serious thoughts about taking one’s life) and actual suicide attempts.

2) It should also focus on the structural and institutional systems that contribute to suicidality. This would include the experiences of defence personnel who have struggled to get the support they need both during and after their military service.

For instance, this means looking at the bureaucratic obstacles that have prevented some veterans from accessing physical, mental and financial support after leaving the ADF, or the institutional practices and structures that encouraged abuse, bullying, harassment and denigration in the ADF.

Read more: We need to talk about suicide in the military

3) The terms of reference should look at the broader practices and processes of the ADF, including but not limited to:

• the military justice system

• institutional abuse

• military transitions, including at enlistment and discharge from the ADF

• the health care of defence personnel, including the reporting of incidents and management of injuries.

4) The royal commission must include protective measures for witnesses, akin to the disability royal commission. Given that both serving ADF members and public service employees are restricted in public comment, potential witnesses are unlikely to come forward and provide evidence without strong protections.

5) The appointment of the commissioners also requires real independence, free from bias. This was a significant sticking point with the establishment of the interim national commissioner for veteran suicide prevention, Bernadette Boss, who previously held various command and staff roles in the ADF.

As such, we argue those appointed to the royal commission should have no association with the ADF – both past and present – and a wider background than just mental health.

Morrison said today a royal commission is not a “silver bullet”, and we tend to agree.

Nobody believes this process will be easy – just that it is necessary. A royal commission, with broad terms of reference, has the capacity to draft a blueprint for the best way forward.

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

– ref. One veteran on average dies by suicide every 2 weeks. This is what a royal commission needs to look at – https://theconversation.com/one-veteran-on-average-dies-by-suicide-every-2-weeks-this-is-what-a-royal-commission-needs-to-look-at-157582

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

On any commonsense interpretation of language, Scott Morrison’s comments in parliament last Thursday deliberately concealed the full truth.

The harsher view is they were downright misleading.

Moreover, the prime minister then resorted to a tactical ploy that flies in the face of any claim the government is dealing with the Brittany Higgins matter with respect.

The cynicism displayed is appalling. Surely when the political workshopping was going on in the Prime Minister’s Office – assuming it happened – someone asked, “Is this a good idea”?

Or have they all lost any compass for what is appropriate parliamentary behaviour? Or any notion the public deserve some frankness?

Consider the sequence of words and actions concerning the inquiry into who knew what when in the Morrison office about the allegation by Higgins she was raped by a colleague in a ministerial office in 2019.

This inquiry was being undertaken by the Secretary of the Prime Minister’s department, Phil Gaetjens.

Asked last Thursday why the report was taking so long, Morrison told the House: “this work is being done by the secretary of my department. It’s being done at arm’s length from me. […]

“He has not provided me with a further update about when I might expect that report, but I have no doubt the opposition will be able to ask questions of him in Senate estimates next week.”

Fast forward to Monday’s Senate estimates.

Gaetjens revealed the work is no longer “being undertaken”. He had in fact “paused” his inquiry nearly a fortnight ago, and had immediately told the Prime Minister.

Gaetjens said that on March 9 the Australian Federal Police Commissioner, Reece Kershaw, had told him “it would be strongly advisable to hold off finalising the records of interviews with staff until the AFP could clarify whether the criminal investigation into Ms Higgins’ sexual assault allegations may traverse any issues covered by the administrative process I was undertaking”.

That same day Gaetjens emailed the Prime Minister’s Office staff “to tell them that I would be not completing the documentation.”

“At that same time, I also told the Prime Minister of that, just in case his staff asked him any questions as to what was going on.”

This was all very cosy.

Morrison did not have the same regard for parliament as Gaetjens had for the PM’s staff. He did not tell the house or the public “what was going on”.

Indeed, he had Gaetjens appear before Senate estimates – which is highly unusual for a secretary of the prime minister’s department – to deliver, in effect, an “up yours” to the senators.

Gaetjens stonewalled about the inquiry – for which there is now no end date – although he did say he had not interviewed Higgins. His explanation – he was respecting her request for privacy – doesn’t wash.

We don’t know how far Gaetjens got with his investigation before he paused it. We do know he had quite a while prior to March 9 to make progress, because the inquiry was announced mid-February.

On any reasonable work speed, it should have been done and dusted by March 9. Why was it taking so long?

Of course Morrison, under fire at question time, denied being misleading.

He then challenged Anthony Albanese to use “other forms of the house” – in other words, try to move a motion.

Albanese did, twice, and was immediately gagged by the government – twice.

By the end of it all, Morrison had trashed his own credibility and left Gaetjens, who is repeatedly depicted by the opposition as being used as Morrison’s political tool – hung out to dry.

– ref. View from The Hill: Scott Morrison becomes tangled in his own spider web – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-scott-morrison-becomes-tangled-in-his-own-spider-web-157596

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chloe Lucas, Research Fellow, Geography, Planning, and Spatial Sciences, University of Tasmania

As thousands of homes remain underwater in what appears to be yet another historic flood event in New South Wales, insurance companies are being inundated with calls from worried customers. The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that Insurance Council of Australia has declared an insurance catastrophe following more than 5,000 claims over the weekend.

Flood is the most expensive natural disaster for insurers, and it’s getting worse. The outcome is bad news all round for people living in flood-prone areas (which is, well, a lot of people).

The concurrence of increasing urban development in floodplains, and more intense rainfall events thanks to climate change are creating a perfect storm for insurance risk.

In response, insurance companies are battening down the hatches – often pricing flood insurance at prohibitively high levels, and in some cases, making it hard for insured customers to receive the cover they were expecting.

While it is too soon to know the insurance outcome of the New South Wales floods, we can learn from the experience of other flood events.

Read more: Underinsurance is entrenching poverty as the vulnerable are hit hardest by disasters

‘Little loopholes’ with big consequences

After an extreme weather event in May 2018 that brought record-breaking rainfall, high winds and flooding to Hobart, I interviewed residents affected by the floods about their experiences of insurance (or of being uninsured).

The stories reveal an insurance system that is not working for far too many people, leading to long term financial and emotional pain.

After a disaster, insurance companies subcontract assessors and tradespeople from across the country to quickly respond to customers who make a claim.

Assessors decide how to categorise the damage. That can involve working out where the water came from, and whether it was contaminated by sewage. This affects their assessment of what should be done with damaged furniture and flooring.

For insurance customers, it can be hard to get to grips with these technicalities.

Yvette, whose house was badly damaged in the flood, told me about her attempts to navigate insurance jargon, worried that using the wrong terms “might give [the insurer] little loopholes”.

She read the policy document “with a fine-toothed comb” to be prepared with the right (insurance) language to negotiate.

This use of jargon is not serving customers well, and many perceive it as existing to protect the insurers.

Too many cooks

People I spoke with described the arrival of multiple assessors sent by insurance companies as “disorienting”.

Often more than ten experts, from hydrologists and hygienists to plumbers and loss adjustors were called into just one property.

In many cases, these experts produced reports that either contradicted householders’ own testimony, or contradicted one another.

As Rowan, an 80-year-old homeowner, told me:

One group would come and say, ‘Yes, your curtains need replacing because of the mould and the smell’. One would say ‘The whole bed base and the mattress all gets replaced’. The next ones would say, ‘No, just the mattress. We don’t replace the base’. So we didn’t really know where we were.

Several interviewees described insurance companies losing their records multiple times.

Beryl, a homeowner in her 40s, told us:

They lost our receipts that we’d sent in three times. [We told them,] ‘We’re carrying this A$2,600 debt and we can’t afford it.’ When I finally contacted them they said they had no record of any of those communications, no record that there’s any internal damage. This hole was in the ceiling, all the doorframes were swollen, [there were] stains on the wall.

While this could be put down to insurers’ systems being overwhelmed by an extraordinary event, it should be noted that these kinds of events are exactly what insurers claim to be prepared for.

Other examples suggest that in times of disaster, failures in the insurance claim process may be the norm.

This does insurers themselves little harm — faced with confusion and uncertainty, customers may be willing to settle for smaller claims, or agree to take a cash payout rather than a managed program of works.

Being ‘good at insurance’ is almost a full-time job

Interviewees described their resilience after the flood as dependent on their ability to manage the insurance process.

This meant being constantly available, flexible, and patient over a process that involved “countless hours” over several months. It also meant being able to push-back when offered a lesser outcome than they felt entitled to. As Yvette, told us:

I feel like it takes a lot of assertiveness and persistence to make sure I got what we deserved and needed.

Keeping their own records was important – one interviewee described having compiled a database of more than 150 interactions with insurers or their representatives over the two months since the event.

This gave them valuable evidence in negotiations with the insurance company.

Clearly, not everyone is in a position to take on such a gargantuan task.

We need fairer insurance

The experience of insurance exacerbates a ‘resilience gap’ between people who have the time, money and capacity to manage the claims process, and those with existing disadvantage who simply do not.

Much of Australia is already underinsured for disasters such as floods and bushfires.

As exposure to flood risk grows, insurers are also stepping back from insuring high risk areas, leaving vulnerable householders to bear the risk alone.

Insurers and governments should consider the importance of transparency and fairness in both insurance pricing and the claims process.

Without improvement to the system, more people will abandon insurance and the public image of insurers will suffer further.

Read more: Insurance is unaffordable for some, but it’s middle Australia that is underinsured

This story is part of a series The Conversation is running on the nexus between disaster, disadvantage and resilience. You can read the rest of the stories here.

– ref. ‘They lost our receipts three times’: how getting an insurance payout can be a full-time job – https://theconversation.com/they-lost-our-receipts-three-times-how-getting-an-insurance-payout-can-be-a-full-time-job-157588

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christine Grové, Senior Lecturer and Educational and Developmental Psychologist, Monash University

The COVID pandemic has shone a light on the ongoing decline in young people’s mental health. Psychologists have warned if we don’t start to address the mental health emergency of young people’s anxiety and depression, it may become a “trans-generational disaster”.

Paediatricians have said they are seeing growing numbers of young people coming to the emergency room because of a lack of other treatment options.

In an effort to address the rising rates of anxiety and depression in children, Victoria trialled mental well-being coordinators in ten schools last year. The initiative is now expanding to 26 primary schools in 2021.

Meanwhile, the royal commission into Victoria’s mental health system has recommended youth mental health hubs, some of which will soon be rolled out in priority areas across the state.

Developing specialist youth mental health hubs is one of several strategies also suggested by the Australian Psychological Society to the federal government in a recent budget submission.

So, what are youth mental health hubs, and will they work to stem the tide of mental health issues young people are experiencing?

Everything in one place

Australia’s National Strategy for Young Australians defines youth as young people between 12-24 years of age. Evidence shows half of mental disorders first emerge by the age of 14, and 75% by the age of 24.

Left untreated, these mental health problems have high rates of recurrence and cause negative outcomes for the individual, including reduced economic productivity, as well as social costs.

Read more: We’ve been tracking young people’s mental health since 2006. COVID has accelerated a worrying decline

Youth mental health hubs provide mental health and social services in one location. This is partly because a range of risk behaviours come with mental health difficulties including tobacco, drug and alcohol use, sexual risk taking, reduced levels of physical activity and poor nutrition. Evidence also suggests young people prefer to have their needs met in one place, rather than across a number of locations and will then be more likely to seek help when they need it.

Youth hubs should therefore have a range of specialists on site, such as trained mental health clinicians, sexual health support counsellors and psychiatrists.

Young people also want and need access to mental health information and resources. So a youth hub should be a safe place for young people to get the information they need.

Youth hubs would be connected physically and/or in partnership with schools, community organisations (such as homelessness services) and with medical specialists.

They are ideally co-designed by experts and youth with lived experience, on equal grounds. Ideally, the hubs are a youth friendly, one-stop-shop for support ranging from referrals, assessment, therapies and intervention.

Don’t we already have youth hubs?

Traditionally, mental health services, including some youth services, have not been accessible to a range of youth needs, instead targeting children or adults. Others are geared towards specific certain types of conditions.

In Australia there are two youth-specific hubs: Orygen and Headspace.

Orygen is co-designed with young people. But it specialises in youth who have had an episode of psychosis, mood disorders, emerging borderline personality disorder, and youth at high risk for a psychotic disorder.

Headspace centres provide early intervention mental health services to 12-25 year olds. The service was created to provide youth with holistic mental health support. But there are shortcomings with the model. It has been described by some experts as not being able to support some youth with complex presentations such as those with personality disorders, schizophrenia and/or substance abuse issues.

Read more: Budget funding for Beyond Blue and Headspace is welcome. But it may not help those who need it most

Many other services restrict youth access to support depending on age, diagnosis or additional illness.

Youth engagement in non-youth focused specific services is low, and transitioning youth between and across services is often unsuccessful.

Young people also prefer services that include young people as staff members, which is not common in traditional mental health support. Youth participation as staff was found in only just over half of the mental health services available in Australia.

So, what is the ideal youth hub?

There are youth hubs available across the world, including in Ireland, New Zealand, UK, Canada, France and Australia. All of these provide different services and care. However none provide a single example of best practice yet.

Key elements of youth mental health hubs identified in the World Health Organisation framework include:

• a co-designed youth-focused approach that is flexible and adapted to youth’s changing mental health needs

• an accessible, central location (close to shops or transport), with extended spread of opening hours as well as opportunity for self-referral and drop-in services

• a place that responds to all young people quickly

• youth working in the hub

• services and support types personalised as needed by the context.

Research also suggests the hubs should be an informal space, as opposed to clinical looking, such as a shop front or café design. They should also:

• provide recreational or arts activities, as well as a hang-out space

• be included and known by the community

• keep ongoing evaluation of the services provided and provide feedback back to young people.

Keeping all services in one location works well, but it doesn’t necessarily mean a coordinated, collaborative approach to care is provided. Some hubs may house a range of services in one spot but continue to work in a separated way. This defeats the purpose of coordinated care.

Read more: Stressed out, dropping out: COVID has taken its toll on uni students

We need better investment to improve current hubs or co-design new ones to enact the WHO guidelines of best practice. This is critical to ensuring more young people access the care they need, for the success of current and future generations.

– ref. Youth anxiety and depression are at record levels. Mental health hubs could be the answer – https://theconversation.com/youth-anxiety-and-depression-are-at-record-levels-mental-health-hubs-could-be-the-answer-154722

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elizabeth Mossop, Dean of Design, Architecture and Building, University of Technology Sydney

As the current New South Wales flooding highlights, it’s not enough to continue to build cities and towns based on business-as-usual planning principles — especially as these disasters tend to disproportionately affect disadvantaged populations, increasing inequality in Australia.

We need to design our urban spaces around the idea that flooding is inevitable. That means not building on flood plains, and thinking creatively about what can be done to create urban “sinks” to hold water when floods strike.

Examples from overseas show what’s possible when the political will is there.

Read more: It’s 2am, you’re sleeping, and a flash flood hits your home. Without a warning system, what do you do?

Keeping people out of harm’s way

It beggars belief this needs to be said, but it is a government responsibility to keep citizens out of harm’s way. The ongoing plans for new housing in flood-prone areas such as the Hawkesbury-Nepean Valley directly contravenes that.

Understanding urban flooding requires us to contend with the underlying natural systems over which we have built our cities and towns.

We have learned the hard way we cannot effectively “design out” flooding. Instead, we must find ways to work with the natural systems of drainage and catchments. We must create urban systems to accommodate flood waters. That reduces risk to houses, schools, hospitals, businesses and other key infrastructure.

We have tried channelling rivers with levees and flood walls and it does not work – when these constructions fail (and they usually eventually do), the danger is immense. We need to find ways to safely allow rivers to expand in times of flood, and contract when the rains subside. This cycle of expansion and contraction is normal and natural for rivers — it is us humans who need to change.

The cities of Rotterdam in The Netherlands and New Orleans in the United States are built on river deltas, and are at a very high risk of flooding. The design strategies used by planners in these cities provide effective models for reducing flooding harm in Australia.

Rotterdam: rethinking its relationship with water

Since 2001, Rotterdam has been transitioning to become a resilient delta city by rethinking its relationship with water.

The city has developed a series of sophisticated plans to address flooding, as well as other climate impacts such as drought and extreme heat.

Some plans are enormous in scope, involving city-wide strategies. Others are much more targeted, small-scale projects that can be undertaken by communities and individual households. You need both.

These plans are informed by the idea that it’s not just about applying a technical solution. A cultural change is also needed, so communities understand the urgency of the climate crisis and why the way we build towns and cities has to evolve.

The goal is to make the city a better place for all, and to promote social cohesion (a necessary ingredient in any effort to build climate change resilience).

Water management and climate adaptation should be factored into every urban plan and every project, small or large.

Rotterdam’s plans include a range of different approaches. There are “water squares” that use public open spaces to store flood waters during times of heavy rain. These urban sinks can be used as hangout spaces on dry days, and can hold vast amounts of water in heavy rain, keeping flood water away from properties.

This is very similar to the approach taken in Sydney’s Victoria Park, where parks are all at a lower elevation than surrounding streets. This allows the temporary storage of stormwater.

The Rotterdam program also includes other strategies for alternative water storage, the removal of hard surfaces and creation of more green space, and the proliferation of green roofs and roof landscapes. The goal is to create spaces that can hold and absorb rainwater when it falls.

Rotterdam’s investment in innovation and development in urban water management has led to a new knowledge industry for the city, with businesses and research institutes disseminating their expertise worldwide.

New Orleans: after Katrina, a new way of doing things

Following the devastation of the levee failures after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, New Orleans has gradually moved to a regime of urban development in which every project addresses the need to deal with stormwater and flooding on site.

In the Lakeview neighbourhood, for example, the street system is being re-engineered to use all of its alleyways as green infrastructure. They will have permeable paving and special vegetated channels called bioswales over large gravel storage beds to absorb and store stormwater. This will take the pressure off the street drainage.

The campus of Tulane University in uptown New Orleans has a stormwater masterplan. This has led to the development of a series of “stormwater gardens” that can filter and store large volumes of water, protecting the rest of the site from flooding.

In downtown New Orleans, where there is little natural ground, new buildings have to find architectural solutions for water management.

Underneath the tiny alley that leads into Bar Marilou at the Ace Hotel, massive underground storage tanks manage all of the stormwater for the entire hotel.

On the roof deck of the Standard Apartments, a “blue roof” filters stormwater through carefully selected plants. Water is then stored below the paving and above the parking deck.

At the Paul Habans Charter School on New Orleans Westbank, the entire school grounds have been converted to clean and store water. Students are taught onsite about water management and natural systems.

In the Green Schoolyard, a formerly flooded area has been redesigned to accommodate planted swales and water storage.

In the Habans Stormwater and Nature Centre, a workforce development program for Greencorps youth is building an extensive artificial wetland that will cleanse and store water as well as provide environmental education.

Change is clearly possible. It might not be easy, but as the devastation underway in NSW this week shows, it is better than the alternative.

Read more: It’s 2am, you’re sleeping, and a flash flood hits your home. Without a warning system, what do you do?

This story is part of a series The Conversation is running on the nexus between disaster, disadvantage and resilience. You can read the rest of the stories here.

– ref. Not ‘if’, but ‘when’: city planners need to design for flooding. These examples show the way – https://theconversation.com/not-if-but-when-city-planners-need-to-design-for-flooding-these-examples-show-the-way-157578

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Natasha Yates, Assistant Professor, General Practice, Bond University

Phase 1B of Australia’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout has started today, after a few teething troubles.

Last week the federal government prematurely released the national online booking system, which went live before GPs were expecting it. Practices have been swamped with phone calls since, despite many having not yet received any supply of COVID vaccines.

What’s more, extreme weather and flooding is expected to disrupt the rollout in New South Wales.

But from today, about 1,000 GP clinics have received supply and can begin vaccinating eligible Australians.

Just over six million Australians are eligible to be vaccinated in this phase. This includes Aboriginal people over 55 years old, non-Aboriginal people over 70, key workers such as police and firefighters, and health-care workers not vaccinated in phase 1A. You can take the federal government’s online test to find out whether you’re eligible, and if not, when you will be.

Check the ‘booking system’ for eligible GPs

General practices are using only the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine as part of this phase. Pfizer vaccines will continue to be given through workplaces and aged-care facilities, to those in category Category 1A. There is no plan for these to be given through GPs at this stage.

To administer the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, GPs undergo a rigorous application process, and not all practices have opted to do this. Of the roughly 6,600 accredited practices in Australia, only around two-thirds will be administering COVID vaccines. The federal government hopes up to 4,000 clinics will be administering the vaccine by the end of April.

You can find out which GP closest to you is giving these through the national online booking system. However, despite being called a “booking system”, it actually simply gives you contact details for approved GPs in your location. You are then expected to make contact yourself. You can find the “make a booking” button after doing the eligibility quiz.

But before you pick up the phone, please understand…

Each participating GP clinic is currently allocated a limited supply of AstraZeneca vaccines, around 50-400 per week. It will likely take months at this rate to vaccinate communities. Unfortunately, there just isn’t enough supply of the AstraZeneca vaccine in the country right now to do this any faster.

Currently we only have what we’ve imported, which is around 700,000 doses, despite the hope for 3.8 million by now.

However, local manufacturing will soon ramp up. On Sunday the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) approved the domestically produced version of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is being manufactured by Melbourne-based biotech company CSL.

It’s exactly the same vaccine, but it required TGA approval to make sure the locally produced version exactly matches the European one. Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt said he expected CSL to start delivering the vaccine in the coming days. The aim is for CSL to eventually produce one million doses per week.

One positive aspect to this slow start is that it allows GPs to absorb vaccine administration into their normal workflow. Most general practices are small, privately owned businesses that want to continue providing existing services as well as give the vaccinations. So there’s time to get systems and processes in place.

The overarching message is to see this as a marathon not a sprint. Be patient, and your time will come!

You don’t need any extra GP appointments before you have the vaccine

The good news is you can be given your COVID vaccine by any GP clinic approved to give them, as long as you’re eligible under the rollout plan. Even if the GP giving the COVID vaccine isn’t your usual GP, you don’t need to see them for a separate consultation beforehand.

Before you’re given a COVID vaccine you also need to consent to it, verbally or in writing. A standard consent form lists medical conditions and risks you should consider, and is available in multiple languages. Many practices will email this in advance, have it on their website, and/or have hard copies on-site.

Read more: Can I choose what vaccine I get? What if I have allergies or side-effects? Key COVID vaccine rollout questions answered

If you realise you have questions or concerns while reading the consent form, instead of booking to have the vaccine you should book for an appointment to discuss these with a GP, either your own or the one whose practice will be giving you the vaccine. Note that many vaccines will be given by immunisation nurses, with GPs on-site at all times too. A useful blog to help you get ready for the vaccine, written by GPs, can be found here.

Once you’re eligible, you can book with a GP that has a supply. It would be best to check their website before calling them to see their preferred methods of booking. Please help them by following their suggestions. And please be patient with the receptionists trying to juggle this increased workload!

– ref. The second phase of Australia’s COVID vaccine rollout is underway, despite a rocky start. Here’s what you need to know – https://theconversation.com/the-second-phase-of-australias-covid-vaccine-rollout-is-underway-despite-a-rocky-start-heres-what-you-need-to-know-157426

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katherine Woo, Postdoctoral Fellow, ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, James Cook University

The world’s oceans hold their secrets close, including clues about how people lived tens of thousands of years ago.

For a large portion of humanity’s existence, sea levels were significantly lower (up to 130 metres) than they are today, exposing millions of square kilometres of land. And the archaeological record is clear: people in the past lived on these coastal plains before the land slipped beneath the waves.

Archaeology already tells us these drowned landscapes played significant roles in human history. Major events such as human migrations across the globe and the invention of maritime technology took place along these now-drowned shorelines.

But these sites can be hard to find.

In two papers published this week our team reports on a breakthrough in detecting and excavating one particular type of coastal archaeological site — shell middens — on what is now the seabed.

The rich trove of evidence in these middens offer clues on how people adapted during times of sea-level rise and climate change.

It was long thought shell middens would be unlikely to survive the effects of rising sea levels – or if they had, it would be impossible to distinguish them from natural debris on the ocean floor. Our new findings suggest that’s not necessarily the case.

Read more: In a first discovery of its kind, researchers have uncovered an ancient Aboriginal archaeological site preserved on the seabed

A new way to detect and excavate underwater middens

In recent decades, archaeologist have systematically searched the globe for evidence of these submerged cultural landscapes.

However, rough currents and poor visibility can make it difficult to find and record underwater sites.

In two journal articles published this week, our team has announced new ways of detecting and excavating shell middens from what is now the seabed.

Previously, shell middens were hard to differentiate from natural shell deposits.

But our examination of three shell middens between 7,300 and 4,500 years old – from the Gulf of Mexico, the United States and Eastern Jutland in Denmark – demonstrate how submerged middens not only survive, but retain a distinct “signature” which can be used to separate them from naturally accumulated debris on the sea floor.

By using microscopy, geological and geophysical techniques, 3D reconstructions, and biological and ecological studies, we teased out different strands of evidence that offer new insights into how we might find other midden sites in watery depths around the globe.

Challenging what we thought we knew about ancient coastal communities

What we’ve found so far challenges current ideas about coastal use in the Gulf of Mexico and northern Europe.

In the Gulf of Mexico, there is a gap in midden sites from between 5,000 and 4,500 years ago along the coastline of our study area. New results suggest localised sea-level changes, not lack of occupation, explain that gap.

In Denmark, the discovery of these middens (which are rare in the south) hints this type of site was more common than previously thought. That shifts our understandings of how intensive coastal use may have been between 7,300 and 5,000 years ago.

Importantly, both studies imply our histories of past coastal use may need to be rewritten as more such sites are found. Previously, many archaeologists assumed that people only occupied stable coastal zones. However, in both of our study areas, this was not the case.

Furthermore, older examples of similar middens likely lie offshore in multiple regions. Our new methods can make the search for such sites easier and more efficient.

Clues about adapting to a changing environment

Research at these sites is generating critical information that is beginning to fill in missing pieces of the puzzle of the human past.

Shell middens are complex, culturally significant sites. Some are the result of people discarding food refuse, tools, and other remnants of daily life. In other cases middens are purposefully built for cultural reasons, including burials. Often they are a mix of both.

They thus provide fundamental information about past food choices, tool technology, trade practices, and cultural values. These different types of information allow us to infer how people adapted their cultures over time. They also hint at how people interacted with their surrounding environments even as sea levels rose and the climate changed.

Understanding the past can help us contend with the future

These findings are not just important for our understandings of the past. They have direct and significant impacts on modern people, especially the rights of Indigenous and First Nations people across the globe.

These Nations have long impressed on us their deep connections with marine environments and seascapes. However, recognition of these relationships in western environmental and heritage conservation policies has been slow and deeply inadequate.

These new findings support Indigenous and First Nations people to manage the cultural heritage of their ancestral lands and waters by documenting these relationships into the deep past.

The discovery of these underwater sites, and the promise of more to be found, means industry, developers, archaeologists, and government bodies must reassess how we manage and protect ancient Indigenous heritage in these underwater settings. That is especially true as offshore mining and development accelerates.

Peter Moe Astrup, Curator of Maritime Archaeology at Moesgaard Museum, co-authored this article.

Read more: An incredible journey: the first people to arrive in Australia came in large numbers, and on purpose

– ref. Ancient undersea middens offer clues about life before rising seas engulfed the coast. Now we have a better way to study them – https://theconversation.com/ancient-undersea-middens-offer-clues-about-life-before-rising-seas-engulfed-the-coast-now-we-have-a-better-way-to-study-them-157413

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Garry Stevens, Director of Academic Programs, Western Sydney University

New South Wales is currently in the grip of one of largest flood events in decades. The NSW SES is helping thousands of people evacuate and has received more than 2,000 calls for help in the last 24 hours.

Western Sydney is one of the areas hardest hit, with the Nepean River rising to levels higher than that of the great flood of 1961.

Evacuation orders are in place for western Penrith, Jamieson Town and Mulgoa, in what NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has described as a one-in-100-year event.

Despite the SES warning of dangerous road conditions, some people have driven their cars through floodwaters. Others have defied the extreme weather and used kayaks to move across flood zones.

NSW police and emergency services minister, David Elliott, has urged people to heed SES warnings and never drive, walk, or ride through flood waters. As he put it: “If the road is flooded, forget it.”

Unfortunately, however, this is advice often ignored. Research on psychology and floods reveals clues as to why.

Read more: Floods leave a legacy of mental health problems — and disadvantaged people are often hardest hit

Why we risk it when flood strikes

As a type of emergency or hazard, floods are particularly challenging for emergency service agencies due the familiarity many Australians have with water, which we mostly associate with leisure and recreation.

The all-too-frequent examples of surfers entering storm swells and the use of boats and water equipment in flooded areas highlight this cross-over of recreation into hazardous conditions. Two of the most common causes of fatalities during floods result from play activities in water courses and attempts to drive across flooded rivers and streams.

This tracks with data from our recent research.

Our recent national survey asked participants about their behaviour with flood waters. We found 19% had engaged in activities in flooded rivers, with 77% of these doing so for leisure purposes such as wading, swimming or riding an inflatable.

Over half those surveyed have driven through floodwater, with most of these (68%) having done so more than once.

Men and drivers of larger vehicles are most likely to take these risks. During a single flood event in NSW in 2016, 80 cars became stranded and three drivers died in unrelated incidents linked to driving through flood waters.

While playing in or driving through flood waters are avoidable risks, the latter involve adults who generally know the risks – much to the frustration of emergency authorities. So what convinces people make risky decisions in a flood?

Drivers in our study reported that they saw a majority of people in other vehicles (about 64%) driving through the floodwater, while only 2% were turning around.

Seeing others do something often leaves people with the impression this behaviour is typical and relatively safe, an effect known as “normalcy bias”.

In 15% of cases we studied, passengers also put pressure on drivers to cross.

When things go wrong, they can go very wrong

Another key reason involves prior experience and perceived probability of adverse outcomes. While 9% reported a negative outcome (such damage to their car or having to be rescued), 91% reported proceeding without any incident.

The reasons for these crossings were not sudden or impulsive, but often involved what the person saw as “careful consideration” of everyday needs — such as the need to get to work or buy groceries.

This presents an obvious challenge for emergency authorities. While most people succeed without issues, the cases where something goes wrong can be catastrophic and in some cases fatal.

So, how do we convey the very real risks of floodwater? How do we highlight the need for people to prepare an evacuation plan and avoid entering floodwater?

Crafting local messages for key communities

As events unfold in the Hawkesbury-Nepean area in Western Sydney, it’s clear engaging communities in flood risk is challenging. That’s especially true when recent floods haven’t been too serious and people have encountered flood waters before without issue. Unfortunately, past experience is not a predictor of future outcomes.

As part of the NSW government’s Hawkesbury-Nepean valley flood strategy, considerable effort has been made in recent years to work with local communities and craft area-specific flood risk messaging.

In 2019 and 2020, the NSW SES launched their Floods. The Risk is Real campaign to increase flood awareness in the region.

The campaign personalises the message by using billboards with local landmarks showing flood can occur in that specific area. This campaign also incorporates interactive flood mapping and augmented reality to show people what can happen when flood strikes.

Work led by Infrastructure NSW has also included a focus on specific communities that are perceived to be at higher risk.

One of these groups is large animal owners. The Hawkesbury-Nepean floodplain is home to an estimated 10,000 horses. Relocating animals takes time and planning. It can potentially lead to more road congestion and slow down flood evacuation. The government is targeting messaging to these animal owners so they understand how far in advance they need to plan and execute an evacuation when heavy rain arrives.

In 2019 the NSW SES, with support of the NSW Department of Primary Industries, Greater Sydney Local Land Services and local councils launched a website devoted to supporting and educating animal owners across the state.

It’s hard to know now what effect this work is having in the Hawkesbury-Nepean region, but it will hopefully pay dividends in future.

The significant flood event currently underway in NSW highlights the need to reinforce the risk communication messaging already in place and build on it in future.

With the right messaging, lives, property and animals can be saved.

Read more: It’s 2am, you’re sleeping, and a flash flood hits your home. Without a warning system, what do you do?

This story is part of a series The Conversation is running on the nexus between disaster, disadvantage and resilience. You can read the rest of the stories here.

– ref. Why do people try to drive through floodwater or leave it too late to flee? Psychology offers some answers – https://theconversation.com/why-do-people-try-to-drive-through-floodwater-or-leave-it-too-late-to-flee-psychology-offers-some-answers-157577

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sara Dehm, Lecturer, University of Technology Sydney

Over 100 refugees have been abruptly and quietly released from immigration detention in Melbourne, Brisbane and Darwin hotels since early 2021. These releases are welcome and long overdue, following a sustained public campaign for their freedom.

But their newly gained freedom remains conditional and their futures uncertain. What’s more, many other refugees who were also transferred to Australia from offshore detention for medical treatment have yet to be released.

This raises serious concerns for the ongoing welfare of the refugees — those now in the community and those still in detention.

It also raises questions about the arbitrary, non-transparent and even cruel nature of ministerial decision-making when it comes to who is released and who isn’t.

Why release these refugees now?

To date, the Department of Home Affairs has not provided any official rationale for the timing of these releases. Nor have they outlined any criteria or policy explaining the decisions to grant some refugees temporary visas to live in the Australian community and not others.

By our estimation, about 80 people transferred under the now-repealed medevac legislation remain in detention. But it is hard to get precise figures due to lags and gaps in government statistics and its longstanding lack of transparency.

Read more: Hotels are no ‘luxury’ place to detain people seeking asylum in Australia

In January, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton explained the initial releases as a cost-saving measure, stating it was “cheaper” for people to live in the community than in a hotel.

While this has long been true, it seems a hollow line from a government that continues to maintain a policy of offshore detention in Nauru and Papua New Guinea to the cost of over $1.2 billion per year (that’s roughly $4 million per person this financial year).

Sadly, refugees are all too used to the inconsistent and arbitrary use of power under Australia’s migration laws.

Under federal law, the minister can issue a visa to any non-citizen in immigration detention at any time. This even applies to people who have been transferred from offshore detention for medical reasons and are prohibited from applying for any visa while in Australia.

Yet, even at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic last year, Dutton largely refused to issue temporary visas to people from immigration detention. This was despite the impossibility of social distancing and heightened risk of infection for people detained in prisons, immigration detention and hotels.

Read more: A COVID ‘vaccine passport’ may further disadvantage refugees and asylum seekers

In fact, Dutton fought tooth and nail to stop the courts from ordering the release of refugees from detention. This included forcibly moving an elderly man to a Western Australian detention centre rather than release him to live with his family in Melbourne.

It is highly likely the decision to release people from hotel detention now is in response to political pressure and social mobilisation.

Refugees in hotel detention have persistently drawn attention to their incarceration through social media, community protests and with the support of high-profile advocates like former footballer Craig Foster. Some have filed lawsuits to challenge the legality of their detention.

This mobilisation has seemed to work in their favour, at least in the short term.

Freedom yet abandonment

Release from hotel detention has brought enormous relief and joy for the refugees. It comes after more than eight years of physical confinement and legal limbo in offshore detention, and over one year in detention in Australia without visitors or even access to fresh air.

But their new reality is now complex. Their freedom is neither guaranteed, nor accompanied by the necessary financial and social support. They are living precariously.

The government has reportedly given each person up to six weeks of support, including motel accommodation and income support payments, as well as limited casework support.

When this support runs out, these men will effectively be abandoned to fend for themselves. They must either pay for government-provided accommodation or find their own private accommodation. They must also pay for any non-subsidised medical costs out of their own pockets, a difficult proposition for some people with complex medical needs.

This pattern is not new. Increasingly, some countries are actively withdrawing support for asylum seekers and undocumented migrants to make conditions so miserable they surrender their right to seek asylum.

Read more: Could the Biden administration pressure Australia to adopt more humane refugee policies?

As Kurdish writer Behrouz Boochani, who is now living in New Zealand, has commented, this neglect often leads refugees to a “point of hopelessness”, pushing them to “finally decide to return to their country of origin”.

Since their release this year, the medevac refugees have largely relied on support from private individuals (including crowdfunding) and NGOs. The government’s policy is effectively confining them to precarity, dependency and impoverishment in our community.

In response to detailed questions about the refugee release and support systems in place to assist them, a spokesperson for Home Affairs said,

The Australian Government remains committed to regional processing and third country resettlement for persons under these arrangements. Government policy is steadfast – persons under regional processing arrangements will not settle permanently in Australia.

Transitory persons were brought to Australia temporarily to receive medical treatment. Their temporary stay in Australia is not a pathway to settlement.

Status Resolution Support Services (SRSS) providers have been engaged to provide short-term support including case worker support to link individuals to essential services and accommodation.

An uncertain future

For now, the released refugees have been granted what are known as “final departure Bridging Visa Es”. These are usually granted for a six-month period and there is no guarantee they will be renewed.

This visa usually gives people work rights. But finding a job in the current economic climate, coupled with their lack of employment histories after years of detention, make this a herculean ask.

The temporary visa also formally requires people to make arrangements to depart Australia. Home Affairs has said the released refugees have three options:

• resettlement in the US (a virtually impossible option limited to a select few)

• return to their country of origin

• return to Nauru or PNG.

Yet, none of these are feasible long-term solutions. Most of the people have been officially recognised as refugees, so they cannot safely return to their home states. Countries like Iran also refuse to accept involuntary returns.

Lacking any other options, two refugees chose to return to Nauru last week. But those who take this path remain vulnerable due to a lack of adequate medical care and, in the case of PNG, a spiralling COVID crisis.

Given this, the temporary nature of these visas means the threat of future re-detention or deportation is an ongoing risk. This sense of uncertainty is heightened by the mandate that released refugees sign a pernicious code of behaviour.

And to date, many medevac refugees remain in detention in Australia, causing them even more distress. In the words of Refugee Voices spokesman Ahmad Hakim:

They are just seeking answers why have they been left there and others are out. They feel it is a type of torture by Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, to break them down more.

The pandemic offered a chance to reset Australia’s cruelty towards refugees and other temporary migrants, including through a large-scale immigration amnesty.

Releasing refugees from detention on temporary visas is a missed opportunity to give them a permanent home and stable future.

– ref. Scores of medevac refugees have been released from detention. Their freedom, though, remains tenuous – https://theconversation.com/scores-of-medevac-refugees-have-been-released-from-detention-their-freedom-though-remains-tenuous-156952

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sara Dehm, Lecturer, University of Technology Sydney

Over 100 refugees have been abruptly and quietly released from immigration detention in Melbourne, Brisbane and Darwin hotels since early 2021. These releases are welcome and long overdue, following a sustained public campaign for their freedom.

But their newly gained freedom remains conditional and their futures uncertain. What’s more, many other refugees who were also transferred to Australia from offshore detention for medical treatment have yet to be released.

This raises serious concerns for the ongoing welfare of the refugees — those now in the community and those still in detention.

It also raises questions about the arbitrary, non-transparent and even cruel nature of ministerial decision-making when it comes to who is released and who isn’t.

Why release these refugees now?

To date, the Department of Home Affairs has not provided any official rationale for the timing of these releases. Nor have they outlined any criteria or policy explaining the decisions to grant some refugees temporary visas to live in the Australian community and not others.

By our estimation, about 80 people transferred under the now-repealed medevac legislation remain in detention. But it is hard to get precise figures due to lags and gaps in government statistics and its longstanding lack of transparency.

Read more: Hotels are no ‘luxury’ place to detain people seeking asylum in Australia

In January, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton explained the initial releases as a cost-saving measure, stating it was “cheaper” for people to live in the community than in a hotel.

While this has long been true, it seems a hollow line from a government that continues to maintain a policy of offshore detention in Nauru and Papua New Guinea to the cost of over $1.2 billion per year (that’s roughly $4 million per person this financial year).

Sadly, refugees are all too used to the inconsistent and arbitrary use of power under Australia’s migration laws.

Under federal law, the minister can issue a visa to any non-citizen in immigration detention at any time. This even applies to people who have been transferred from offshore detention for medical reasons and are prohibited from applying for any visa while in Australia.

Yet, even at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic last year, Dutton largely refused to issue temporary visas to people from immigration detention. This was despite the impossibility of social distancing and heightened risk of infection for people detained in prisons, immigration detention and hotels.

Read more: A COVID ‘vaccine passport’ may further disadvantage refugees and asylum seekers

In fact, Dutton fought tooth and nail to stop the courts from ordering the release of refugees from detention. This included forcibly moving an elderly man to a Western Australian detention centre rather than release him to live with his family in Melbourne.

It is highly likely the decision to release people from hotel detention now is in response to political pressure and social mobilisation.

Refugees in hotel detention have persistently drawn attention to their incarceration through social media, community protests and with the support of high-profile advocates like former footballer Craig Foster. Some have filed lawsuits to challenge the legality of their detention.

This mobilisation has seemed to work in their favour, at least in the short term.

Freedom yet abandonment

Release from hotel detention has brought enormous relief and joy for the refugees. It comes after more than eight years of physical confinement and legal limbo in offshore detention, and over one year in detention in Australia without visitors or even access to fresh air.

But their new reality is now complex. Their freedom is neither guaranteed, nor accompanied by the necessary financial and social support. They are living precariously.

The government has reportedly given each person up to six weeks of support, including motel accommodation and income support payments, as well as limited casework support.

When this support runs out, these men will effectively be abandoned to fend for themselves. They must either pay for government-provided accommodation or find their own private accommodation. They must also pay for any non-subsidised medical costs out of their own pockets, a difficult proposition for some people with complex medical needs.

This pattern is not new. Increasingly, some countries are actively withdrawing support for asylum seekers and undocumented migrants to make conditions so miserable they surrender their right to seek asylum.

Read more: Could the Biden administration pressure Australia to adopt more humane refugee policies?

As Kurdish writer Behrouz Boochani, who is now living in New Zealand, has commented, this neglect often leads refugees to a “point of hopelessness”, pushing them to “finally decide to return to their country of origin”.

Since their release this year, the medevac refugees have largely relied on support from private individuals (including crowdfunding) and NGOs. The government’s policy is effectively confining them to precarity, dependency and impoverishment in our community.

In response to detailed questions about the refugee release and support systems in place to assist them, a spokesperson for Home Affairs said,

The Australian Government remains committed to regional processing and third country resettlement for persons under these arrangements. Government policy is steadfast – persons under regional processing arrangements will not settle permanently in Australia.

Transitory persons were brought to Australia temporarily to receive medical treatment. Their temporary stay in Australia is not a pathway to settlement.

Status Resolution Support Services (SRSS) providers have been engaged to provide short-term support including case worker support to link individuals to essential services and accommodation.

An uncertain future

For now, the released refugees have been granted what are known as “final departure Bridging Visa Es”. These are usually granted for a six-month period and there is no guarantee they will be renewed.

This visa usually gives people work rights. But finding a job in the current economic climate, coupled with their lack of employment histories after years of detention, make this a herculean ask.

The temporary visa also formally requires people to make arrangements to depart Australia. Home Affairs has said the released refugees have three options:

• resettlement in the US (a virtually impossible option limited to a select few)

• return to their country of origin

• return to Nauru or PNG.

Yet, none of these are feasible long-term solutions. Most of the people have been officially recognised as refugees, so they cannot safely return to their home states. Countries like Iran also refuse to accept involuntary returns.

Lacking any other options, two refugees chose to return to Nauru last week. But those who take this path remain vulnerable due to a lack of adequate medical care and, in the case of PNG, a spiralling COVID crisis.

Given this, the temporary nature of these visas means the threat of future re-detention or deportation is an ongoing risk. This sense of uncertainty is heightened by the mandate that released refugees sign a pernicious code of behaviour.

And to date, many medevac refugees remain in detention in Australia, causing them even more distress. In the words of Refugee Voices spokesman Ahmad Hakim:

They are just seeking answers why have they been left there and others are out. They feel it is a type of torture by Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, to break them down more.

The pandemic offered a chance to reset Australia’s cruelty towards refugees and other temporary migrants, including through a large-scale immigration amnesty.

Releasing refugees from detention on temporary visas is a missed opportunity to give them a permanent home and stable future.

– ref. Scores of medevac refugees have been released from detention. Their freedom, though, is an illusion – https://theconversation.com/scores-of-medevac-refugees-have-been-released-from-detention-their-freedom-though-is-an-illusion-156952

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Greg Barton, Chair in Global Islamic Politics, Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University

Words matter. And when you are the director-general of ASIO, and one of the few people in the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation that can talk to the public about what you do at work without being in breach of the law, then your words really matter. To his credit, Mike Burgess has made it his mission to “to make ASIO more open and transparent”.

His second annual threat assessment, for all its droll, candid delivery, was provocative and revealing in its carefully chosen words. And yet, on one point, it was also unexpectedly perplexing.

Read more: ASIO to avoid ‘left’, ‘right’ and ‘Islamic’ in an overhaul of its descriptions of extremism

When Burgess delivered his first annual threat assessment in February last year, shortly after assuming the leadership of ASIO, he spoke with refreshing frankness about the rising threat posed by right-wing extremism:

Right-wing extremism has been in ASIO’s sights for some time, but obviously this threat came into sharp, terrible focus last year in New Zealand.

In Australia, the extreme right-wing threat is real and it is growing. In suburbs around Australia, small cells regularly meet to salute Nazi flags, inspect weapons, train in combat and share their hateful ideology.

His deputy director, Helen Cook, continued this pattern of plain speaking when she addressed a parliamentary inquiry last September. She pointed out the parallels between the ways in which right-wing extremists were recruiting online and the methods used by Islamic State.

By September 2020, violent right-wing extremism accounted for around one-third of ASIO’s counterterrorism case load, Cook said, tripling since 2016.

Last week, Burgess said that proportion was now 40%. Internet recruitment had spiked during during pandemic lockdowns:

For those intent on violence, more time at home online meant more time in the echo chamber of the internet on the pathway to radicalisation.

Given the recent spate of right-wing extremist incidents, and a spike in anti-Asian racism and Islamaphobia, this was not particularly surprising. As Burgess said,

The online environment is a force multiplier for extremism; fertile ground for sharing ideology and spreading propaganda.

Ideological extremists are now more reactive to world events, such as COVID, the Black Lives Matter movement and the recent American presidential election.

What was unexpected, however, on the second anniversary of the Christchurch terror attack, was a radical pivot in ASIO’s official terminology for terrorist threats.

From today, ASIO will be changing the language we use to talk about the violent threats we counter. We will now refer to two categories: religiously motivated violent extremism, and ideologically motivated violent extremism.

Why are we making a change?

Put simply, it’s because the current labels are no longer fit for purpose; they no longer adequately describe the phenomena we’re seeing.

That “our language needs to evolve” makes sense. There are very clearly some threats that we need to do a much better job of recognising, such as “the violent misogynists who adhere to the involuntary celibate or ‘incel’ ideology”.

Read more: To shut down far-right extremism in Australia, we must confront the ecosystem of hate

And clearly many extremists are, as Burgess said, “motivated by a fear of societal collapse or a specific social or economic grievance or conspiracy”. But the argument that they “don’t fit on the left–right spectrum at all” is much less convincing. What he is describing very much does fit with what is well recognised as far-right extremism. Despite being eclectic and variegated, it nevertheless coheres around a central core of victimhood and conspiratorial fear of replacement by dangerous, unclean outsiders.

Some are concerned this shift in language reflects pressure from political conservatives who have been vocal in their rejection of the term “right-wing extremism”.

Read more: Two years on from the Christchurch terror attack, how much has really changed?

It is also possible Burgess wishes to shine a light on this and subject the issue to greater scrutiny.

Nevertheless, there is a clear and welcome case for taking greater care to avoid burdening the Muslim community with prejudicial language when so many are working so hard to counter extremism. As Burgess said,

Understandably, some Muslim groups — and others — see this term as damaging and misrepresentative of Islam, and consider that it stigmatises them by encouraging stereotyping and stoking division.

It also needs to be recognised that the shift in terminology that Burgess introduced relates to “umbrella terms – and there may be circumstances where we need to call out a specific threat that sits underneath them”.

This willingness to speak about specific threats was very much in evidence when Burgess spoke about the fact that IS had

released a video last year referencing the Australian bushfire crisis to encourage arson attacks in the West.

This specific reference came on the same day that two brothers, just 19 and 20 years old, and a 16-year-old relative, were arrested in connection with an arson incident in bushland north of Melbourne in mid-February, and a violent assault in the Melbourne CBD weeks later.

Police had responded to these incidents as regular crimes but subsequently found evidence of links with IS and engaged the joint counter-terrorism task force. The brothers have since been charged with trying to plan a terrorist act.

It is important that the director-general and others in positions of power and influence continue to speak clearly about the threats they are dealing with every day.

We should welcome the statement that

At ASIO, we’re conscious that the names and labels we use are important.

Informing and educating the public, and building trust and fostering social cohesion, are vitally important aspects of their work.

To be effective, this needs to be done without fear or favour and with respect and sensitivity. Words have a significant effect on how we think about, and respond, to issues.

Read more: Journalists and security agencies don’t need to be friends. But can they at least talk to each other?

– ref. ASIO’s language shift on terrorism is a welcome acknowledgment of the power of words – https://theconversation.com/asios-language-shift-on-terrorism-is-a-welcome-acknowledgment-of-the-power-of-words-157400

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Meera Atkinson, Adjunct Lecturer in Writing, University of Notre Dame Australia

Originating in the medical sciences, where it referred to physical injury, the term “trauma” is now often used in popular and scholarly discussion to refer to psychological injury. While large-scale mental health surveys consistently find sexual assault is a major risk factor for traumatic illness, it’s often assumed pre-existing mental illness is the cause of the allegation itself.

Arguments around the truthfulness of assault claims can hinge on stereotypical portrayals of people living with mental illness as untrustworthy witnesses to their own experience.

The recent sexual assault allegation against Attorney-General Christian Porter, which he has strenuously denied, has been accompanied by speculative commentary relating to memory and the mental health of Porter’s now deceased accuser. Some journalists have pointed to her mental health status in a manner designed to raise questions about her account, and to suggest her allegation was a post-hoc confabulation.

The complainant’s bipolar diagnosis, her seeking mental health care, her fragmented journal entries, and her accessing a book on the neuroscience of trauma have been emphasised as evidence she invented her account or was suffering from so-called “repressed” or “recovered” memories.

This type of argument reflects longstanding myths that prevail within journalism and the community about trauma, memory and mental illness. Below, we tackle three key misunderstandings.

1. Trauma and bipolar disorder aren’t mutually exclusive

Apparent links in media commentary between a bipolar diagnosis and false allegations of sexual assault reflect a misunderstanding of the diagnosis.

People with bipolar disorder experience significant fluctuations in mood, including low depressive states and active “manic” states. A range of studies have found childhood trauma increases the risk of developing bipolar disorders, and contributes to the severity and complexity of symptoms, including earlier age of onset, and increased suicidal ideation and substance abuse. One clinical study of bipolar patients found they were significantly more likely to report sexual assault in childhood or adulthood than patients with a depressive illness. This evidence suggests sexual assault is a risk factor for developing bipolar, and people with a bipolar diagnosis may be more vulnerable to sexual assault.

Bipolar has been somewhat overlooked in research into the relationship between sexual assault and mental illness, and these findings underscore the need for further exploration.

Read more: What is bipolar disorder, the condition Kanye West lives with?

2. “Recovered memory therapy” doesn’t exist

The psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk authored a bestselling book, The Body Keeps Score. This book was noted in the journal of Porter’s alleged victim. Media commentators have repeatedly reported it as controversial.

Within the field of trauma studies, this book is not considered controversial and is not associated with “repressed” or “recovered” memory theories or practices. Furthermore, “recovered memory therapy” is a fallacy.

“Recovered memory therapy” is a pejorative term invented in the early 1990s to describe trauma therapy. People who use the term claim a significant number of therapists use improper techniques designed to “recover” forgotten or repressed memories of sexual abuse, which creates “false memories” and false allegations. However, there is no therapy called “recovered memory therapy”, and the term has been described by trauma experts as a form of disinformation created by advocates of people accused of sexual offences.

In 2004, the Victorian health regulator initiated an inquiry into “recovered memory therapy” (RMT) at the urging of “false memory” activists. The inquiry concluded “reports of the practice of RMT are often based on speculation” and “there is no reliable evidence for the practice of RMT” in the state. The inquiry demonstrates how inflated claims of RMT have been advanced in Australia despite a lack of evidence.

Since the early 1990s, “best practice” trauma therapy has focused on establishing emotional and physical safety, processing and narrating experiences of trauma, and moving forward from abuse and violence.

Read more: Dissociative identity disorder exists and is the result of childhood trauma

3. Memory error and journalling are not necessarily evidence of false allegations

Some coverage has focused on specific details of the victim’s allegation with the implication that any discrepancy of detail invalidates the claims.

Details matter in establishing the legitimacy of claims. But recent evidence on the neuroscience of memory demands a rethink of public and legal understanding of memory. According to researchers from the United States, memory is commonly perceived as “akin to a video recorder”. But, they argue, memory is fundamentally “imperfect and is susceptible to distortion and loss”. They conclude “there needs to be greater education and awareness of memory processes in judicial settings and in daily life”.

Dori Laub, eminent Israeli-American psychiatrist and Yale University Professor, recalled a woman describing her experience at Auschwitz for the Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale in his famous essay on witnessing. The woman said four chimneys exploded and went up in flames during the Auschwitz uprising. When he presented this interview at a cross-disciplinary conference, historians pronounced her recollection incorrect; only one chimney had blown. Her memory was fallible, unreliable, and therefore inadmissible.

Laub, the psychoanalyst who interviewed the woman for the video, disagreed. He said: “The woman was testifying not to the number of the chimneys blown up, but to something else, something more radical, more crucial: the reality of an unimaginable occurrence.” Accuracy regarding the number, he maintained, “mattered less than the occurrence” and therefore, the woman’s testimony stood as “historical truth” despite her factual error.

The private journal entries of Porter’s alleged victim have been exhibited by some journalists as lacking coherence, and a reference to her initially overlooking the assault in the hope of marrying Porter has been foregrounded. Many sexually assaulted people know their abuser. Being bonded to an assailant to any degree can increase the common traumatic shock symptoms of denial and minimisation.

Journalling is often less than coherent. It’s not intended to be read but to help process highly complex personal experiences. Many women relate to these messy journal entries.

Media coverage has been integral to driving social change and highlighting the plight of victims and survivors of sexual violence.

However, the media also harbours entrenched cultures of resistance to developments in trauma science, reflecting personal and professional biases as well as common attitudes and misunderstandings in the community.

Commentary reinforcing existing stigmatisation of traumatic and mental health conditions negatively affects a significant proportion of the Australian population.

Journalists should consult professionals with trauma expertise and people living with mental illness when reporting on sensitive issues such as the impact of trauma on memory, according to best practice guidelines. Trauma and mental health are public health issues, and people with media platforms have a responsibility to get it right.

Read more: Evidence shows mental illness isn’t a reason to doubt women survivors

– ref. 3 trauma takes the media gets wrong – https://theconversation.com/3-trauma-takes-the-media-gets-wrong-157403

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christian Downie, Associate professor, Australian National University

Former Australian finance minister Mathias Cormann was last week elected Secretary-General of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), after campaigning on a platform with climate action as a central plank.

In a statement following his appointment, Cormann pledged to “drive and promote global leadership on ambitious and effective action on climate change to achieve global net-zero emissions by 2050”.

Cormann’s selection came despite concerns his climate track record in federal parliament made him an unsuitable candidate.

It’s said the best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour. If that proves correct with Cormann, we shouldn’t expect much on climate change. But his new gig does present an opportunity for Cormann to change his stripes.

A poor climate record

From 2013 to 2020, Cormann was finance minister in the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison governments – an administration with arguably one of the worst records on climate change of any OECD government.

Just last week, Australia ranked last on a list of the world’s 50 largest economies for “green” spending to aid economic recovery after the COVID pandemic, according to a United Nations report.

The litany of the Coalition’s indictments is too long to list in full here. But dubious highlights include:

• abolishing Labor’s carbon price in 2014
• abolishing the Climate Commission
• unsuccessfully seeking to kill off the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.

And Cormann has also discouraged the climate action of others. For example, in 2017 he described Westpac’s lending restrictions on coal projects as “very, very disappointing”.

The OECD itself has condemned Australia as “one of the most carbon-intensive OECD countries and one of the few where greenhouse gas emissions (excluding land use change and forestry) have risen in the past decade”.

It is not hard to see why many around the globe lobbied against Cormann’s new appointment, including the British Labour Party.

In stark contrast to his political record, Cormann embraced the need for climate action during his campaign for the OECD job. This included an opinion piece in support of net-zero emissions by 2050 – a target Prime Minister Scott Morrison has yet to commit to.

So if Cormann really has had a genuine change of heart, what can he do on climate action in his new role?

Cormann’s climate opportunity

Cormann may be used to being a cabinet minister, but his new role is more like a departmental secretary, but with new political masters.

The Paris-based OECD consists of 37 member states which run the organisation. Cormann answers to them, and many – including the United States and the United Kingdom – have adopted strong climate targets.

With a budget of around A$600 million and a permanent secretariat of more than 2,500 staff, the OECD has at its disposal significant resources to set international agendas and standards that can shape climate policies around the globe.

It regularly does so in other domains. For example, since the global financial crisis in 2008 the OECD has led the way on taxation reform. It helped forge new rules governing how national tax authorities share information, and how they might address multinational tax avoidance.

Cormann in a tight spot

If Cormann is genuine about his climate action agenda, he may be forced to take positions at odds with the Morrison government.

The first potential pressure point involves carbon prices and carbon tariffs, for which the OECD could be called upon to play a coordinating role.

A carbon price sets a price on carbon pollution at home. Carbon tariffs do so at the border. Crudely speaking, these are taxes on imports that produce considerable carbon pollution, and which originated in countries not pulling their weight on climate change.

The agenda of US President Joe Biden includes a “carbon adjustment fee” for countries failing to meet climate and environmental obligations. The European Union is also pressing ahead with a similar proposal.

Given even the OECD has concluded Australia is a climate action laggard, we look likely to be slugged. Predictably, Energy Minister Angus Taylor has declared his government is “dead against” such tariffs, and there are early signs Cormann will back his former colleagues on the tariff issue.

He last week urged caution, saying the measure entailed “many downside implications for global trade and the world economy”.

Read more: No point complaining about it, Australia will face carbon levies unless it changes course

The second pressure point is fossil fuel subsidies. In 2009, G20 countries agreed to phase out trillions of dollars in government handouts that prop up the oil, gas and coal industries. Since then, the OECD has campaigned against the subsidies, describing them as “environmentally harmful, costly, and distortive”.

OECD countries may come under growing international pressure to eliminate the handouts. This includes Australia which, according to IMF estimates, maintains US$29 billion in fossil fuel subsidies each year.

The third, lesser known point involves the rules governing export financing for fossil fuel infrastructure. In 2015 the US Obama administration pushed for OECD countries to restrict financing for new coal power plants in overseas countries. The bid succeeded, despite opposition from Australia and a handful of other nations.

While not perfect, the rules were a first step in phasing out coal. Many environmental groups are now campaigning for these rules to be tightened and to extend to oil and gas. It is not hard to guess what Australia’s position will be.

A new chapter?

The outgoing head of the OECD, Ángel Gurría, last month said tackling the world’s environmental crises was “the single most important intergenerational responsibility […] We are on a collision course with nature and we have to change course for future generations”.

He urged countries to “put a big fat price on carbon” – a position clearly at odds with the Morrison government.

Unsurprisingly, Cormann’s rhetoric so far has been more restrained. But if he is to match the climate ambition of the OECD’s biggest member states, his future behaviour will have to be very different to that of his past behaviour.

Read more: Six questions about Mathias Cormann, newly appointed Secretary General of the OECD

– ref. Genuine about climate action, Mr Cormann? Here’s how to turn over a new leaf – https://theconversation.com/genuine-about-climate-action-mr-cormann-heres-how-to-turn-over-a-new-leaf-157404

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Louis-Philippe Beland, Assistant Professor of Economics, Carleton University

The effects of mobiles phones and other technology at school is a hotly debated topic in many countries. Some advocate for a complete ban to limit distractions, while others suggest using technology as a teaching tool.

Kids in public South Australian primary schools started the school year without being allowed to bring their mobile phones to class, unless they are needed for class activity. All students in public Western Australian Victorian, and Tasmanian schools have a mobile phone ban in place since for all or some of 2020. New South Wales also banned mobile phones in public primary schools, with secondary schools having the option to opt in, since the start of 2020.

Education departments have introduced the bans for various reasons including to improve academic outcomes and decrease bullying.

Several recent papers point to positive impact of banning mobile phones at school on student performance and other outcomes. Understanding the evidence is crucial for best policy.

Read more: No, Education Minister, we don’t have enough evidence to support banning mobile phones in schools

In a 2015 paper, we used a method — called a difference-in-difference strategy — as well as student data from England to investigate the effect of banning mobile phones on student performance. In this method, we compared schools that have had phones removed to similar schools with no phone bans. This allowed us to isolate the effect of mobiles phones on student performance from other factors that could affect performance.

We found banning mobile phones at school leads to an increase in student performance. Our results suggest that after schools banned mobile phones, test scores of students aged 16 increased by 6.4% of a standard deviation. This is equivalent to adding five days to the school year or an additional hour a week.

The effects were twice as large for low-achieving students, and we found no impact on high achieving students.

Our results suggest low-performing students are more likely to be distracted by the presence of mobile phones, while high performing students can focus with or without mobile phones.

The results of our paper suggest banning mobile phones has considerable benefits including a reduction in the gap between high- and low- achieving students. This is substantial improvement for a low-cost education policy.

Other studies show similar results

Recent studies from Spain and Norway, using a similar empirical strategy to ours, also show compelling evidence on the benefit of banning mobile phones on student performance, with similar effect size.

In Spain, banning mobile phones has been shown to increase students’ scores in maths and science. Researchers also documented a decrease in incidences of bullying.

In Norway, banning phones significantly increased middle school students’ grade point average. It also increased students’ likelihood of attending an academic high school rather than choosing a vocational school. And it decreased incidents of bullying.

Evidence from Belgium suggests banning mobile phones can be beneficial for college student performance. This context might be different, but still informative as students are of similar age to those in high school.

Research from Sweden, however, suggests little effect of banning mobile phones in high school on student performance. It is worth noting, however, the study did not find any detrimental effect of banning mobile phones.

Read more: Don’t blame the teacher: student results are (mostly) out of their hands

A similar conclusion can be drawn from the literature on the effect of computers used at school. Evidence from the US suggests using laptops in class is detrimental to learning, and the effects are large and more damaging for low-performing students.

Potential psychological mechanisms involved

The psychological literature might shed lights on the potential mechanisms as to why mobile phones and other technology in school might affect student performance. This literature finds multitasking is detrimental to learning and task execution.

Many recent experimental papers present evidence mobile phone use while executing another task decreases learning and task completion. Research also shows computers might be a less efficient way to take notes than pen and paper.

It may be that taking notes by hand allows you to remember the material better than typing those notes on a computer. This may be because students are not just typing out every word said, but thinking of how to summarise what they’re hearing.

Read more: What’s the best way to take notes on your laptop or tablet?

These findings do not discount the possibility mobile phones and other technology could be a useful structured teaching tool. However, ignoring or misunderstanding the evidence could be harmful to students and lead to long term negative social consequences.

– ref. Banning mobile phones in schools can improve students’ academic performance. This is how we know – https://theconversation.com/banning-mobile-phones-in-schools-can-improve-students-academic-performance-this-is-how-we-know-153792