There is “is much to win by trying” to take action on climate change — that is a key finding in a major new international climate report the UN chief is calling a “survival guide for humanity”.
It is something of a mic drop moment for the army of scientists who wrote it — the culmination of seven years’ work and three previous lengthy reports.
In a nutshell, it said huge changes were needed to stave off the worst climate predictions but it was not too late.
“This Synthesis Report underscores the urgency of taking more ambitious action & shows that, if we act now, we can still secure a liveable sustainable future for all.” – #IPCC Chair Hoesung Lee on the release of #IPCC’s Synthesis Report.
Pacific Climate Warriors Te Whanganui-a-Tara coordinator Kalo Afeaki agrees there is no time for despair.
“My family live in Tonga, my father has an export business, my brother works with [him], his family depends on that livelihood,” he said.
“We do not have the luxury of being able to turn our backs on the climate crisis because we are living with it daily.”
The IPCC authors were optimistic significant change can happen fast — pointing to the massive falls in the price of energy from the sun and wind.
New Zealand has seen a big increase in the number of renewable energy projects in the works.
University of Otago senior lecturer Dr Daniel Kingston said the world had the tools it needed to reduce emission.
“We can still do something about this problem, and every small change that we make makes a difference and decreases the likelihood of major, abrupt, irreversible changes in the climate system.”
Those impacts need to be avoided at all costs — there are tipping points after which comes staggering sea level rise, storms and heat waves that could imperil swathes of humanity.
No country too small Aotearoa New Zealand has an important role to play. It is one of the largest emitters per capita in the OECD, and its emissions, combined with the other smaller countries, adds up to about two-thirds of the world’s total.
New Zealand’s gross emission peaked in 2005 and have essentially plateaued, while other countries, including the UK and US, have actually made reductions.
Dr Kingston said Aotearoa finally had comprehensive emissions reduction plans on the books.
“Now’s the time to be doubling-down on our climate change policies, not pressing pause or scaling them back in any way.”
Action would never be cheaper than it was now, and not making enough cuts would be far more expensive in the long run.
Humans at fault Meanwhile, the reports showed human activities had unequivocally caused global surface temperatures to rise: No ifs, no buts.
Massey University emeritus professor of sustainable energy and climate mitigation Ralph Sims said emissions needed to be slashed in the cities and the countryside alike.
Without a doubt farmers needed to cut methane emissions, but people also needed to eat less meat, he said.
Massey University emeritus professor of sustainable energy and climate mitigation Ralph Sims . . . “Design the cities around… public transport.” Image: RNZ News
Professor Sims said cities had a huge role to play.
“Design the cities around… public transport. [Putting] it onto the cities to plan for a more viable future means that local people can get involved locally.”
Afeaki said some Pacific nations would not survive unless the world got real about cutting emissions.
“When people are feeling disheartened they really need to understand the humans on the other side of this crisis,” he said.
“It is easy to be deterred by numbers, by the science, which isn’t always positive, but you have to also remember that this is happening to someone.”
Afeaki said Pacific communities’ experience living with climate change meant they should be given lead roles in coming up with solutions.
The IPCC scientists have now done their part, there likely will not be another report like this until the end of the decade. It is now time for the government, and for everybody, to act.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Australia’s decision to buy three nuclear-powered submarines and build another eight is so expensive that, for the A$268 billion to $368 billion price tag, we could give a million dollars to every resident of Geelong, or Hobart, or Wollongong.
Those are the sort of examples used by former NSW treasury secretary Percy Allan on the Pearls and Irritations blog, “in case you can’t get your head around a billion dollars”.
Such multi-billion megaprojects almost always go over budget.
For instance, when Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced the Snowy Hydro 2.0 pumped hydroelectricity project in 2017, it was supposed to take four years and cost $2 billion. The latest guess is it’ll actually take 10 years and cost $10 billion.
So to pay for those two megaprojects alone, there’s an awful lot of money we will need to find from somewhere. Or will we?
‘No simple budget constraint’
In the first year of the pandemic, Australians were given a glimpse of a truth so unnerving that economists and politicians normally keep to themselves.
It’s that, for a country like Australia, there is “no simple budget constraint” – meaning no hard limit on what we can spend.
“No simple budget constraint” is the phrase used by Financial Times’ chief economics commentator Martin Wolf, but he doesn’t want it said loudly.
The problem is, he says, “it will prove impossible to manage an economy sensibly once politicians believe there is no budget constraint”.
A quick look at history shows he is correct about there being no simple budget constraint, despite all the talk about the need to pay for spending.
As you can see below, Australia’s Commonwealth government has been in deficit (spent more than it earned) in all but 17 of the past 50 years. The US government has been in deficit for all but four of the past 50.
Commonwealth government surpluses and deficits since 1901
There is no hard limit on how the Commonwealth can spend over and above what it earns, just as there’s no hard limit on how much you and I can spend. But whereas you or I have to eventually pay back what we have borrowed, governments face no such constraint.
Because the Commonwealth lives forever, it can keep borrowing forever, even borrowing to pay interest on borrowing. And unlike private corporations, it can borrow from itself – borrowing money it has itself created.
Governments create money
That’s what the Morrison government did in 2020 and 2021, in the early days of COVID.
To raise the money it needed for programs such as JobKeeper, the government sold bonds (which are promises to repay and pay interest) to traders, which its wholly-owned Reserve Bank then bought, using money it had created.
The government could have just as easily cut out the traders and borrowed directly from its wholly-owned Reserve Bank, using money the bank had created – effectively borrowing from itself. But the Reserve Bank preferred the appearance of arms-length transactions.
And there’s no doubt the Reserve Bank created the money it spent, out of thin air.
Asked in 2021 whether it was right to say he was printing money, Governor Philip Lowe said it was, although the money was “created”, rather than printed.
People think of it as printing money, because once upon a time if the central bank bought an asset, it might pay for that asset by giving you notes, you know, bank notes. I’d have to run my printing presses to do it. We don’t operate that way anymore.
These days the Reserve Bank creates money electronically. It credits the accounts of the banks that bank with it.
One way to think about it (the way so-called modern monetary theorists think about it) is that none of the money the government spends comes from tax.
The government creates money every time it gets the Reserve Bank to credit the account of a private bank (perhaps in order to pay a pension), and destroys money every time someone pays tax and the Reserve Bank debits the account.
If it creates more money than it destroys, it’s called a budget deficit. If it destroys more than it creates, it’s called a budget surplus.
Too much spending creates problems
Can the government create more money than it destroys without limit? No, but where it should stop is a matter for judgement.
If it spends too much money on things for which there is plenty of demand and a limited supply, it’ll push up prices, creating inflation.
Where to stop will depend on how much others are spending.
If there’s little demand (say for builders, as there was during the global financial crisis) the government can safely spend without much pushing up prices (as it did on builders during the global financial crisis).
If it wants to spend really big (say on building submarines), it might have to restrain the spending of others, which it can do by raising taxes.
What matters is what others are spending
But it’s not a mechanical relationship. The main function of tax is not to pay for government spending, but to keep other spenders out of the way.
If the economy is weak in the decades when the subs are being built, the burst of government spending will be welcome, and needed to create jobs. There will be no economic need to offset it by raising tax.
But if the economy is strong, so strong the government would have to bid up prices to get the subs built, it might have to push up tax to wind other spending back.
This truth means there’s no simple answer to the question “how they are going to pay for subs?” – just as there was no simple answer to questions about how to pay for a much-needed increase in the JobSeeker, or anything else.
The deeply unsatisfying answer is that, from an economic perspective, it depends on who else is spending what at the time.
Peter Martin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Australia has 116 new coal, oil and gas projects in the pipeline. If they all proceed as planned, an extra 1.4 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases would be released into the atmosphere annually by 2030.
To put that in perspective, Australia’s total domestic greenhouse gas emissions in 2021–22 were 490 million tonnes. So annual emissions from these new projects would be the almost three times larger than the nation’s 2021-22 emissions. That’s the equivalent of starting up 215 new coal power stations, based on the average emissions of Australia’s current existing coal power stations.
The reason we can get away with this is the current global framework for emissions accounting only considers emissions generated onshore. And almost all of the coal, oil and gas from these new projects would be exported. But as we share the atmosphere with the rest of the people on the planet, the consequences will come back to bite us.
This week the Synthesis Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) described how fossil fuels are wreaking havoc on the planet. The science is clear: the IPCC says fossil fuel use is overwhelmingly driving global warming.
“The sooner emissions are reduced this decade, the greater our chance of limiting warming to 1.5℃ or 2℃. Projected CO₂ emissions from existing fossil fuel infrastructure (power plants, mines, pipelines) without additional abatement exceed the remaining carbon budget for 1.5℃,” the IPCC says, let alone new coal, oil and gas projects.
Our new research, released today by the Australia Institute, reveals the pollution from Australia’s 116 new fossil fuel projects. These are listed among the federal government’s major projects.
The government’s analysts estimate each project’s start date and annual production figures. If they are correct, by 2030 the projects would produce 440 million tonnes a year of coal and 15,400 petajoules of gas and oil.
Then it’s fairly straightforward to calculate emissions. We simply multiplied these enormous new fossil fuel volumes by their “emissions factors”. When one tonne of coal is burned it releases approximately 2.65 tonnes of carbon dioxide or its equivalent (CO₂-e) into the atmosphere, and burning one terajoule (0.001 petejoules) of natural gas results in 51.5 tonnes CO₂-e.
Combined with the 164 million tonnes of emissions that the mining of these fuels would cause, the result is a planet-warming, but spine-chilling, total of 4.8 billion tonnes by 2030.
This amount is 24 times greater than the ambition of the federal government’s key emissions reduction policy, the so-called Safeguard Mechanism. That aims to reduce emissions by 205 million tonnes over the same period.
Author provided
Rather than embrace the task of decarbonising the Australian economy, the Albanese government has continued down the path laid out by the former Coalition government. It’s a path that relies more heavily on the use of carbon offsets than curtailing coal and gas.
Even though the rest of the world is committed to burning less fossil fuels, there are more gas and coal mine project proposals in Australia today than there were in 2021.
Note also that this list does not include several large, advanced projects actively supported by Australian governments, including Santos’s Barossa gas field, Shell’s Bowen Gas Project, Chevron’s Cleo Acme, and several vast new unconventional gas basins including the Beetaloo, Canning and Lake Eyre basins.
3 reasons to change our ways
Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen argues that Australians are not responsible for the emissions from our fossil fuel exports. That’s because the international accounting rules distinguish between the emissions that occur within our borders (known as scope 1 and 2 emissions) and those that occur when other countries burn the coal and gas we sell them (known as scope 3 emissions).
No matter where in the world Australian fossil fuels are burned, the emissions will harm our nation’s wildlife (including endangered koalas), people and properties. DARREN ENGLAND/AAP
But if Bowen really wants to tackle climate change, there are three reasons both he and Australians should bear this responsibility:
First, there’s the moral argument. Australia didn’t ban whaling and asbestos mining because we wanted to stop Australians from eating whales or building hazardous homes. We stopped these activities because they were dangerous. Countries can and do shape the world they live in.
Second, even just the emissions in Australia from these 116 new fossil fuel projects (their methane leaks, fuel use and other relevant emissions in Australia) will pour 344 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere by 2030. That dwarfs the 205 million tonnes of emissions the entire Safeguard Mechanism is supposed to save over that same period.
And finally, leaving aside the risks of catastrophic climate change, which is admittedly a big ask, it is hard to overstate the risks to the Australian economy of continuing to focus our investment on the expansion of export industries that the rest of the world is committed to transitioning away from. If we aimed the $11 billion per year we spend on fossil fuel subsidies at decarbonising our economy, we would slash emissions in no time.
IPCC
No new coal, oil and gas
The Australian government continues to support unlimited growth in fossil fuel production and export, despite clear statements from the United Nations, International Energy Agency (IEA) and IPCC that new fossil fuel projects are incompatible with global temperature goals.
No matter where in the world Australian fossil fuels are burned, they will turn up the heat. We can’t escape the simple truth that humanity must stop burning fossil fuels. It’s the only path to a liveable future.
Richard Denniss is the Australia Institute’s chief economist. He has also worked as a strategy adviser to the Australian Greens when Senator Bob Brown was leader.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dominic O’Sullivan, Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Health and Environmental Sciences, Auckland University of Technology, and Professor of Political Science, Charles Sturt University
A referendum will be held later this year to enshrine a First Nations’ Voice to Parliament into the Australian constitution. The draft question for the referendum is “Do you support an alteration to the Constitution that establishes an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice?”
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in a speech last month the Voice should give First Nations’ people a “say” in public policy. He said “it is common courtesy to consult people when you’re taking a decision that affects them”.
But a “say” is still not the power to make decisions. An ongoing question is whether the proposed Voice should instead make First Nations peoples authoritative participants in the rights and responsibilities of government.
In New Zealand, Māori are represented in parliament through designated seats. This arrangement was established in 1867, to ensure a Māori voice in rather than to parliament. Being in parliament means being able to serve as a minister or, if a member of the oppostion, being able to participate in holding the government to account.
The proposed Voice won’t have the power to make decisions because it won’t be a parliamentary chamber, as the House of Representatives and the Senate are. The government is formed in, and responsible to, the House of Representatives. The Voice won’t be able to pass laws and its members will not be ministers in government.
New Zealand is not a perfect model for good relations between Indigenous people and government. But the Māori seats in parliament at least ensure Māori people can bring distinctive and culturally contextualised perspectives to parliamentary decision-making.
New Zealand public life is influenced by its founding treaty, te Tiriti o Waitangi, signed in 1840. Its terms and contemporary meaning are sharply contested, but Māori seats in parliament mean there is a constant voice to make sure Te Tirit (the treaty) is “always speaking”.
Te Tiriti allowed the British Crown to establish government over its own people. Māori were promised full authority over their own affairs and resources, and granted the rights and privileges of British subjects.
In 2023, New Zealanders are no longer British subjects, but New Zealand citizens. Citizenship is a stronger political status, carrying the right to participate in government. It emphasises political authority belonging to the people rather than a distant sovereign. Te Tiriti means Māori should be distinctively included among the people to whom political authority belongs.
These treaty promises for Māori self-determination pre-date democracy. But they make democracy work better. This is through something political theorist Nancy Fraser calls participatory parity – where everybody has the same opportunity to influence public decisions.
The general idea that Māori are present in the political community is well established in New Zealand. There is a distinctive Māori Health Authority, to make decisions about how to deliver primary health care, and distinctive schools to teach in the Māori language.
Te Tiriti justifies Māori voice at every level of the policy-making process. A major review into the future of local government is considering what it means in that sphere.
But on the other hand, Te Tiriti routinely fails to work as Māori think it should. There are points of difference with government that can be seen in the number and breadth of claims put to the Waitangi Tribunal, which has been established to consider alleged Tiriti breaches.
Since its fist report in 1978, the Tribunal has reported on more than 3,000 claims. A recurring point of contention is over how much authority Te Tiriti gives the government as opposed to how much authority Māori retain.
Recent examples include the tribunal finding government overreach in the care and protection of Māori children, which led to large numbers of children being unjustifiably removed from their families.
Another is that breaches of the agreement have contributed to poorer Māori health outcomes.
There are many reports dealing with the alienation of Māori land and making recommendations for compensation, many of which the NZ government has accepted. Though these never amount to full compensation or the return of everything that was taken.
For example, my colleagues and I developed Critical Tiriti Analysis. This is a policy evaluation method that asks questions about a policy to see if it is consistent with Te Tiriti.
Adapting our questions to the Australian context could see a Voice to Parliament asking questions like these about proposed policies, but also about who makes policy for whom and why:
How have First Nations’ people contributed to this policy?
Does this policy reflect First Nations’ peoples’ priorities?
Could this policy disadvantage First Nations’ people in ways it doesn’t disadvantage other citizens?
Does this policy preserve First Nations’ sovereignty as the relevant communities understand it?
Is this policy consistent with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (and with treaties that may, in time, be negotiated)?
Why is the government presuming to make this decision? Why does the decision not, in part or whole, belong to a First Nation or other Indigenous entity?
Through facilitating questions such as these, the right to be consulted in a government project is replaced by more meaningful political voice. If people have contributed to a policy, rather than just been consulted before somebody else makes the decision, the policy has potential to be better informed and more likely to work.
Although only partially implemented in New Zealand, Te Tiriti supports the expectation that Māori leadership in Māori policy should always occur.
If a policy reflects what First Nations’ people actually want, this would better support their self-determination. This could also be an effective way of avoiding future policies and decision-making that exclusively disadvantages First Nations’ people.
Participatory parity, through political voice, is quite different from governments saying “we will ask you want you think before making the decision for you”.
Dominic O’Sullivan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Since its inception in 1921, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has officially promoted an atheist and materialist ideology. But belief systems in China are making a comeback – and this comeback is largely happening online.
From traditional Taoist rituals conducted via video call to Western-influenced practices like online tarot reading, the digital spiritual market is growing and new online cultures are emerging.
China has a diverse spiritual landscape with five officially recognised religions including Taoism, Buddhism and Islam, as well as various folk belief systems.
Identifying this increasing spiritual trend through official government data is challenging.
Many Chinese people practice spirituality without officially identifying with a religion or belief system. This is because most Chinese have learned practical ways of religion, without necessarily being taught these as part of a specific set of beliefs.
One common practice is burning incense money, believed to provide financial assistance to spirits in the afterlife.
Burning incense money is believed to provide financial assistance to spirits in the afterlife. Shutterstock
The growing popularity of online fortune-telling applications such as Cece, and spiritual influencers on social media, such as the astrologist Uncle Tongtao with millions of followers, provide a glimpse into the diverse and vibrant spiritual landscape in modern China.
Before social media, online religions were limited to static websites with little interaction. Now, social media platforms allow users to connect and engage with others who share similar spiritual interests and beliefs.
This has also enabled practitioners to reach a wider audience.
New practices
Currently, China’s online spirituality market comprises both old and new, indigenous and foreign practices.
Online spiritual services like Taoist talismans and virtual rituals are making more money than traditional temple practices.
As part of my PhD research, Taoist Luosong* told me how 300 rituals were performed for people in the temple during Zhongyuan Jie (Hungry Ghost Festival). During the same time frame, they received more than 2,700 orders on WeChat.
In the past, Taoists would perform lengthy rituals in temple that required worshippers to kneel and bow.
Today, Taoists can offer their services more conveniently by sharing recordings or performing rituals via video call.
Tarot divination is popular among young people. Yanzi*, a Buddhist and tarot reader, provides advice and guidance online for people’s emotions, career and education.
Yanzi explained her service process to me. Texting on WeChat, Yanzi asks her clients what questions they would like to ask. She then texts back a picture of the tarot spread with an interpretation and report.
Tarot readings can now be shared online. Shutterstock
The online divination market in China has created new and unique businesses such as “fortune-telling outsourcing”. Some social media fortunetellers secretly outsource divination work to religious personnel in traditional institutions such as Taoist temples via agents.
Luosong introduced this business to me and showed me his chat with an agent who forwarded birth time and other information of the seeker to him for a financial fortune reading.
Regulation and self-censorship
Despite the rising popularity of spirituality in China, practitioners of both officially recognised and folk belief systems face strict censorship and moderation.
The Chinese government tightly controls online content related to religion and spirituality. Websites and applications that display such content must clearly label it as “entertainment only”.
Online platforms have to actively monitor and remove any material deemed to be in violation of government laws and regulations.
As a result, some spiritual practitioners self-censor their discussions around sensitive topics to avoid being flagged.
This could mean replacing sensitive keywords in text content and using heavy filters in video content. They also avoid posting on specific days such as March 15, a day for cracking down on fraudulent practices. Such measures are taken to prevent their services or products being labelled as fraudulent or in violation of the law.
While there is a tension between the diversified spiritual practices and mainstream ideology in China, the flourishing spiritual market continues to highlight the ongoing evolution of China’s spiritual landscape in the digital era.
Haoyang Zhai does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Google and Microsoft are on a mission to remove the drudgery from computing, by bringing next-generation AI tools as add-ons to existing services.
On March 16, Microsoft announced an AI-powered system called Copilot will soon be introduced to its 365 apps including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams.
The news came about two days after Google published a blog explaining its plans to embed AI into its Workspace apps such as Docs, Sheets, Slides, Meet and Chat.
Collectively, millions of people use these apps each day. Bolstering them with AI could provide a major productivity boost – as long as security isn’t an afterthought.
The advent of generative AI
Until recently AI was mainly used for categorisation and identification tasks, such as recognising a number plate using a traffic camera.
Generative AI allows users to create new content, by applying deep-learning algorithms to big data. ChatGPT and DALL-E, among others, have already taken the world by storm.
Now, Microsoft and Google have found a more concrete way to bring generative AI into our offices and classrooms.
Like other generative AI tools, Copilot and Workspace AI are built on large language models (LLM) trained on massive amounts of data. Through this training, the systems have “learned” many rules and patterns that can be applied to new content and contexts.
Microsoft’s Copilot is being trialled with just 20 customers, with details about availability and pricing to be released “in the coming months”.
Copilot will be integrated across 365 apps to help expedite tedious or repetitive tasks. For example, it will:
help users write, edit and summarise Word documents
turn ideas or summaries into full PowerPoint presentations
identify data trends in Excel and quickly create visualisations
“synthesise and manage” your Outlook inbox
provide real-time summaries of Teams meetings
bring together data from across documents, presentations, email, calendar, notes and contacts to help write emails and summarise chats.
Assuming it executes these tasks effectively, Copilot will be a massive upgrade from Microsoft’s original Office Assistant, Clippy.
Google’s Workspace AI will offer similar capabilities for paying subscribers.
What’s under the hood?
Microsoft described Copilot as a
sophisticated processing and orchestration engine working behind the scenes to combine the power of LLMs, including GPT-4 […].
We don’t know specifically which data GPT-4 itself was trained on, just that it was a lot of data taken from the internet and licensed, according to OpenAI.
Google’s Workspace AI is built on PaLM (pathways language model), which was trained on a combination of books, Wikipedia articles, news articles, source codes, filtered webpages, and social media conversations.
Both systems are integrated into existing cloud infrastructure. This means all the data they are applied to will already be online and stored in company servers.
Microsoft says users’ content and prompts won’t be used to train the Copilot AI. Shutterstock
The tools will need full access to the relevant content in order to provide contextualised responses. For instance, Copilot can’t distil a 16-page Word document into one page of bullet points without first analysing the text.
This raises the question: will users’ information be used to train the underlying models?
[…] private data is kept private, and not used in the broader foundation model training corpus.
These statements suggest the 16-page document itself won’t be used to train the algorithms. Rather, Copilot and Workspace AI will process the data in real-time.
Given the rush to develop such AI tools, there may be temptation to train such tools on “real” customer-specific data in the future. For now, however, it seems this is being explicitly excluded.
As many people noted following ChatGPT’s release, text-based generative AI tools are prone to algorithmic bias. These concerns will extend to the new tools from Google and Microsoft.
The outputs of generative AI tools can be riddled with inaccuracies and prejudice. Microsoft’s own Bing chatbot, which also runs on GPT-4, came under fire earlier this year for making outrageous claims.
Bias occurs when large volumes of data are processed without appropriate selection or understanding of the training data, and without proper oversight of training processes.
For example, much of the content online is written in English – which is likely the main language spoken by the (mostly white and male) people developing AI tools. This underlying bias can influence the writing style and language constructs understood by, and subsequently replicated by, AI-driven systems.
For now, it’s hard to say exactly how issues of bias might present in Copilot or Workspace AI. As one example, the systems may simply not work as effectively for people in non-English-speaking countries, or with diverse styles of English.
One major vulnerability in Microsoft’s and Google’s AI tools is they could make it much easier for cybercriminals to bleed victims dry.
Whereas before a criminal may have needed to trawl through hundreds of files or emails to find specific data, they can now use AI-assisted features to quickly collate and extract what they need.
Also, since there’s so far no indication of offline versions being made available, anyone wanting to use these systems will have to upload the relevant content online. Data uploaded online are at greater risk of being breached than data stored only on your computer or phone.
Finally, from a privacy perspective, it’s not particularly inspiring to see yet more avenues through which the biggest corporations in the world can collect and synthesise our data.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) has called on the international community to “pay serious attention” to the escalated violence happening in West Papua.
Head of ULMWP’s legal and human rights bureau, Daniel Randongkir, said that since the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) — a separate movement — took New Zealand pilot Philip Mehrtens hostage last month, tensions in the Papua’n central mountainous region had escalated.
The New Zealand government is pressing for the negotiated peaceful release of Mehrtens but the Indonesian security forces (TNI) are preparing a military operation to free the Susi Air pilot.
Randongkir said the TPNPB kidnapping was an effort to draw world attention to the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Papua, and to ask the international community to recognise the political independence of West Papua, which has been occupied by Indonesia since May 1, 1963.
Negotiations for the release of Mehrtens, who was captured on February 7, are ongoing but TPNPB does not want the Indonesian government to intervene in the negotiations.
Randongkir said that in the past week, there had been armed conflict between TPNPB and TNI in Puncak Papua, Intan Jaya, Jayawijaya, and Yahukimo regencies. This showed the escalation of armed conflict in Papua.
According to Randongkir, since 2018 more than 67,000 civilians had been displaced from conflict areas such as Intan Jaya, Nduga, Puncak, Puncak Jaya, Yahukimo, Bintang Mountains, and Maybrat regencies.
Fled their hometowns They fled their hometowns to seek refuge in other areas.
On March 16, 2023 the local government and the military began evacuating non-Papuans in Dekai, the capital of Yahukimo Regency, using military cargo planes.
“Meanwhile, the Indigenous people of Yahukimo were not evacuated from the city of Dekai,” Randongkir said in media release.
ULMWP said that the evacuation of non-Papuans was part of the TNI’s preparation to carry out full military operations. This had the potential to cause human rights violations.
Past experience showed that TNI, when conducting military operations in Papua, did not pay attention to international humanitarian law.
“They will destroy civilian facilities such as churches, schools, and health clinics, burn people’s houses, damage gardens, and kill livestock belonging to the community,” he said.
“They will arrest civilians, even kill civilians suspected of being TPNPB members.”
Plea for Human Rights Commissioner Markus Haluk, executive director of ULMWP in West Papua, said that regional organisations such as the Pacific Islands Forum and the African Caribbean Pacific bloc, have called on the United Nations Human Rights Council to immediately send the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to West Papua.
ULMWP hoped that the international community could urge the Indonesian government to immediately stop all forms of crimes against humanity committed in West Papua, and bring about a resolution of the West Papua conflict through international mechanisms that respect humanitarian principles, Haluk said.
Haluk added that ULMWP also called on the Melanesian, Pacific, African, Caribbean and international communities to take concrete action through prayer and solidarity actions in resolving the conflict that had been going on for the past six decades.
This was to enable justice, peace, independence and political sovereignty of the West Papuan nation.
Mourning for Gerardus Thommey RNZ Pacific reports that Papuans are mourning the death of Gerardus Thommey, a leader of the liberation movement.
Independence movement leader Benny Wenda said Thommey was a regional commander of the West Papuan liberation movement in Merauke, and since his early 20s had been a guerilla fighter.
He said Thommey was captured near the PNG border with four other liberation leaders and deported to Ghana, and lived the rest of his life in exile.
Wenda said that even though he had been exiled from his land, Thommey’s commitment to a liberated West Papua never wavered.
This decade is the critical moment for making deep, rapid cuts to emissions, and acting to protect people from dangerous climate impacts we can no longer avoid, according to the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
It reiterates that the world is now about 1.1℃ warmer than during pre-industrial times. This already results in more frequent and more intense extreme weather, causing complex disruption and suffering for communities worldwide.
Key takeaway from #IPCC 2023 Synthesis Report for every nation, business, investor & individual who contributes to #climate change: we must move from climate procrastination to climate activation. And we must do it today.https://t.co/wqPf6CveMB
The report stresses our current pace and scale of action are insufficient to reduce rising global temperatures and secure a liveable future for all. But it also highlights that we already have many feasible and effective options to cut emissions and better protect communities if we act now.
Many countries have already achieved and maintained significant emissions reductions for more than ten years. Overall, however, global emissions are up by 12 percent on 2010 and 54 percent higher than in 1990.
The largest rise comes from carbon dioxide (from the burning of fossil fuels and industrial processes), followed by methane.
The world is expected to cross the 1.5℃ temperature threshold during the 2030s (at the current level of action). Already, the effects of climate change are not linear and every increment of warming will bring rapidly escalating hazards, exacerbating more intense heatwaves and floods, ocean warming and coastal inundation.
These complex events are particularly severe for children, the elderly, Indigenous and local communities, and disabled people.
But in agreeing to this report, governments have now recognised that human rights and questions of equity, loss and damage are central to effective climate action.
New @IPCC_CH Synthesis Report released One of the most impressive figures relates to the fairness across generations. The generation of my kids born in 2010s will face substantially more heatwaves, heavy rainfall and droughts during an average lifetime than their grandparents. pic.twitter.com/hWivpq74iO
This report also breaks emissions down to households — 10 percent of the highest-emitting households contribute 40-45 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, while 50 percent of the lowest-emitting households (including small islands communities), contribute less than 15 percent of overall greenhouse gases.
Climate-resilient development The report points to solutions for climate-resilient development, a process which integrates actions to reduce or avoid emissions with those to protect people to advance sustainability. Examples include health improvements that come from broadening access to clean energy and contribute to better air quality.
But the choices we make need to be locally relevant and socially acceptable. And they have to be made urgently, because our options for resilient action are progressively reduced with every increment of warming above 1.5℃.
This report is also significant for recognising the importance of Indigenous knowledge and local community insights to help advance ambitious climate planning and effective climate leadership.
Cities can make a big difference Cities are key drivers of emissions. They generate around 70 percent of carbon dioxide emissions globally, and this is rising largely through transport systems relying on fossil fuels, building materials and household consumption.
But this also means urban spaces are where we can really exercise climate leadership. Decisions made at the level of local councils are going to be significant globally in terms of bringing national and global emissions down and protecting people.
Cities are sites for solutions where we can decarbonise transport and increase green spaces. While tackling climate risks can feel overwhelming, acting at the city level is a way communities can have more control over reducing emissions and where local action can really make a difference to our quality of life.
We know there is much more money flowing into mitigation than adaptation. But we have to do both now, and move beyond adaptation focused on physical protection (such as sea walls).
We also need to be thinking really carefully about green infrastructure (trees and parks), low-carbon transport and social protection for communities, which includes income replacement, better healthcare, education and housing.
This report was particularly difficult to negotiate because we now live in a changed reality. More and more countries are experiencing very significant losses and damages. As countries face increasingly extreme weather events, the stakes are higher.
Governments everywhere, in my view as a political scientist, are now facing hard choices about how to protect their own national interests while also making significant efforts to tackle our global climate crisis.
In negotiations, larger countries can dominate debate and it can take a long time to get to agreement. This puts enormous pressure on smaller nations, including Pacific delegations with fewer people and diplomatic resources.
This is yet another reason to ensure action is inclusive, fair and equitable.
After working beyond the scheduled conclusion of #IPCC58, exhausted policymakers and authors celebrated the adoption of final outputs of the sixth assessment cycle: the Synthesis of the Sixth Assessment Report and its Summary for Policymakers #AR6
These reports show the choices we make in this decade will impact current and future generations, and the planet, now and for thousands of years.
Fear & Wonder is a new climate podcast, brought to you by The Conversation. It will take you inside the IPCC’s era-defining climate report via the hearts and minds of the scientists who wrote it. The first episode drops on March 23. Learn more here, or subscribe on your favourite podcast app via the icons above.
One bird bucks the stereotype of Australia’s raucous parrots – the mysterious and critically endangered night parrot (Pezoporus occidentalis). Rather than flying around in noisy flocks or eating fruit in trees, the night parrot roosts all day in a clump of sharp spinifex grass. When darkness falls, it scurries about on the ground to forage, almost like a little rodent.
For eight decades, we thought it might be extinct. But then, in 2013, it was photographed. Now we know this vanishingly rare nocturnal bird still lives in parts of the remote outback.
Because it’s so rare, it’s very hard to study. In our work in palaeontology, we recently identified some fossil leg bones as probably belonging to the night parrot. Because there were no modern skeletons to compare them with, we had to CT-scan a museum specimen.
What we intended to do was compare the leg anatomy to our fossil leg bones. But then we found something bizarre. The night parrot’s skull was wonky and the ears were asymmetrical. Predatory owls have this too, as a way to boost their hearing and hunt better. But why would a seed-eating parrot need superb hearing?
The night parrot is one of only two nocturnal parrots, alongside New Zealand’s kakapo. This 1890 illustration is by Elizabeth Gould, illustrator and wife of ornithologist John Gould. Wikimedia, CC BY
Of wonky skulls and offset ears
In our new research, we offer the first anatomical description of the night parrot’s skull. In this, we were fortunate to be allowed to scan the precious type specimen held by the Natural History Museum in London. This is the original skin used by John Gould, the preeminent 19th century English ornithologist, to formally describe and name the night parrot in 1861.
We used high-resolution CT scans to look inside this museum “skin”, a dried specimen with internal organs removed, feathers on the outside and a partial skeleton on the inside.
The scans showed the left side of the skull did not mirror the right. Skull asymmetry isn’t unheard of in nocturnal birds. Many species of owl have offset ears and dramatically distorted skulls, which allows them to pinpoint any sound made by intended prey. But we certainly weren’t expecting it in a parrot.
We CT-scanned the night parrot’s type specimen – and found something unexpected about its skull. Mark Adams, copyright Natural History Museum, UK, Author provided
Wired for sound?
When we looked closely at the night parrot’s skull, we spotted telltale clues of a bird specialising in hearing. Asymmetry is part of it: the left ear opening is flat while the right one arches out to the side.
In uneven-eared owls, one ear is typically placed higher than the other. In flight, sound waves travelling from ground level hit each ear at slightly different times. This tiny difference in timing allows the owl’s brain to calculate precisely the sound’s origin on a vertical plane.
You can see the ears of the night parrot in this digital model created from a CT scan of the night parrot skull.
But night parrots don’t hunt fast-moving prey. They mostly eat seeds, so they probably don’t use asymmetrical ears to locate food.
While owl ears are positioned at different heights on the skull, this isn’t the case for the night parrot. The major difference between the parrot’s ears is how far they stick out sideways. This might help them locate the direction a sound comes from horizontally, which would make sense for a bird living almost entirely at ground level.
This could be useful to listen for predators, keep contact with their mates and young, find new potential mates, or to scan their habitat for competitors.
Adding to the evidence for excellent hearing is the size of this parrot’s ear chambers. Compared to other parrots, an unusually large volume of the night parrot’s skull is devoted to the external ear chamber – fully one third of the length of its head. These enlarged ear chambers may act like amplifiers, increasing the volume of sound transferred to the inner ears. This suggests it would be wise to keep the noise down in their habitat until we know more about their hearing.
Bigger ears, smaller eyes
A previous study found the night parrot has small optic nerves and reduced optic lobes in the brain for processing vision. From this, the researchers inferred the nocturnal parrot probably sees poorly in the dark. Despite this, it expertly navigates its dark world, flying up to a 30 kilometre round trip in a night to find food and water, before returning home to the same spinifex hummock where it roosts before sunrise.
Now that we’ve examined the skull, we can see the same clues. Vision appears to have been traded for hearing. Inside an animal skull, real estate is precious. Heads are heavy and cumbersome, and there’s only so much you can evolve to fit inside one. Enlarged ear chambers appear to constrain the maximum size of a night parrot’s eyes.
Even so, this bird has crammed in as much as it can. It has an outsized head compared to its body. Gould described the parrot’s “thick bluffy head” as one of the features defining the species.
When we measured the scleral ring – the circular bone supporting the eyeball – and compared it to other birds, we found telling differences. A night parrot’s cornea is about as small as it can possibly be while still allowing visually guided nocturnal flight. A millimetre or two smaller and they wouldn’t get enough light into their eyes to see in the dark.
This remarkable parrot is one of 22 threatened birds prioritised by the federal government for recovery. We hope ecologists can make the most of this to find out what we need to do to bring night parrots back from the brink. We’re only beginning to learn how unusual they are.
Elen Shute previously received a PhD scholarship from Flinders University and a fee-waiver scholarship via the Federal Government. She is employed by Flinders University and the Nature Conservation Society of South Australia.
Alice Clement receives funding from the Australian Research Council and is employed by Flinders University.
Gavin Prideaux receives funding from the Australian Research Council and is employed by Flinders University.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sally Gainsbury, Deputy Director, Gambling Treatment and Research Clinic, Senior Lecturer, School of Psychology, University of Sydney
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The Perottett government’s promise to introduce mandatory “cashless gambling” in New South Wales by 2028 – something for which anti-gambling activists and public-health experts have long lobbied – has elicited a strong response from those with an interest in maintaining the revenue that flows from the 86,650 poker machines installed in NSW clubs and hotels.
There are claims and counterclaims. My own research on digital gambling payment methods has even been cited in press releases in support of the status quo, on the grounds that “physical notes and coins are the most powerful harm-minimisation tool available to gamblers”.
While it’s nice for me and my colleague Alex Blaszczynski to be heralded as Australia’s leading anti-gambling researchers, our research absolutely does not “state very clearly that cash has big advantages for gamblers”.
A major factor driving problem gambling is “positivity bias” – the tendency of gamblers to forget their losses but remember their wins.
Electronic payments can lead to greater spending than when a person hands over cash, due to reduced friction (increased ease), reduced awareness of spending, and less “pain of paying”.
However, research also shows electronic gaming machines have the highest association with gambling problems. So cash on its own is no solution to problem gambling.
There is nothing in our research findings that contradicts the rationale for cashless gambling systems. These should more accurately be called account-based gambling systems. Their key feature is not removing cash but requiring gamblers to do their gambling through an identified account.
Such a system could greatly reduce gambling harms if designed well, with mandatory harm-reduction features built in. Anything that enables a gambler to more accurately track their gambling spend should help them spend less. As our research concluded:
In contrast to cash payments, digital transactions contain features that can be effectively used to advantage as a means to prevent or detect excessive expenditure among individuals. As opposed to cash, electronic transactions can be readily
tracked, and expenditure patterns made available through player activity statements.
Greater losses, worse estimates
In more recent research, published in 2022, my colleagues and I sought to quantify the positivity bias in Australian gamblers.
We sent a survey to 40,000 customers of a large Australian online wagering operator. About 500 responded. We then compared their estimates of wins/losses with their actual outcomes (provided by the company).
Just 4% reported their results with any accuracy; 65% underestimated their losses. Significantly, the more they lost, the more they tended to underestimate how much they lost.
Cash-based gambling is likely even harder for individuals to track accurately. We would expect pokies players be even less aware of how much they lose, given the current design of electronic gaming machines and venues does little to discourage problem gambling.
Four key harm-minimisation features
The account-based cashless gambling payment system promised by the Perrottet government would involve an app to verify the gambler’s identity and a digital wallet into which they transfer funds from their bank account.
This is meant to achieve two things: reduce the potential for money laundering, and reduce problem gambling.
First, it should link with a self-exclusion system and allow the user to set their own binding limits on how much they want to spend.
Second, it must enhance awareness of their gambling spend by providing accurate statements clearly summarising wins and losses. These should be supplemented with customised information showing the user how their gambling compares to others and what actions are recommended for them.
Third, it should use algorithms to identify potentially harmful play such as chasing losses or escalating betting (with safeguards against gambling companies accessing and using this data) and notify individuals and venues to enable appropriate intervention.
Fourth, it must be designed to prevent easy access to funds. For example, deposits into a digital wallet should not be allowed from the gaming floor. There could be time limits or delays between deposits on the same day. Restrictions will also be needed on the sources of funds deposited into gambling wallets.
It should be easier to withdraw funds than to make deposits, and customers should be encouraged to regularly withdraw funds from their gambling wallets, potentially even automatically when they win.
Trials will be needed to ensure account-based gambling payment systems do not have unintended negative consequences. There are important issues to test and consider, including which interventions and system design are most effective to reduce harm, but this need should not be used as a delaying tactic for what is an important and long-overdue reform.
About 1% of Australian adults experience severe gambling problems. About 7% of them experience moderate harm. For every person with a gambling problem, an estimated six to ten people are affected. This is a large proportion of the community.
The aim of account-based digital gambling payment systems is to reduce gambling harms by putting the customer in charge of their gambling. The focus is on helping customers monitor and manage their own play.
They will not prevent problem gambling. But they can help reduce the harm done.
Sally Gainsbury has received funding (2019-2023) from the Australian Research Council, Star Entertainment, KPMG, GambleAware, Behavioural Insights Team. QBE, Australian Cricketer’s Association, Norths Collective, Senet Legal, Washington State Council, Leagues Clubs Australia, CAMH, Entain, Sportsbet, Aristocrat, NSW Office of Responsible Gambling, Cambridge Health Alliance, Responsible Wagering Australia, Wymac Gaming Solutions.
She is holds voluntary positions with NSW Liquor & Gaming, QLD Office of Liquor & Gaming Regulation, Behavioural Insights Council, International Gambling Studies, Asian Racing Federation Council on Anti-Illegal Betting and Related Financial Crime
The number of electric vehicles (EVs) in Australia doubled in 2022 and Tesla’s Model 3 emerged as the best-selling mid-size car, the first time an EV has held this title. Despite these headlines, Australia is off to a slow start with electric vehicles. They accounted for only 3.8% of all vehicle sales in 2022, rising to 6.8% of new car sales in February 2023.
As the numbers grow, an increase in electricity demand for charging is inevitable. Careful planning is needed to manage this growth at a time when concerns have been raised about the power grid’s capacity to meet the demand for electricity.
However, early findings from our ongoing research on the use and charging of electric vehicles suggest they will have a more limited impact during peak demand periods than some have feared. Ultimately, they could improve grid stability, with “batteries on wheels” feeding in electricity at times of need.
The impact on the grid depends on the number of electric vehicles and how much and when they are driven and charged. Another factor in the future will be how they transfer energy back into the grid.
To date, information on how these vehicles are being driven and charged in Australia is limited. The UQ Teslascope Project, launched in 2021, aims to fill this knowledge gap. Our new report offers preliminary insights.
We collected and analysed minute-by-minute data on driving and charging from 230 electric cars across Australia. We found the average daily distance driven is 30 kilometres. That’s about the same as for all passenger vehicles in Australia.
On weekdays, most driving happens during morning and evening peak hours. On the weekends, a relatively high proportion of driving is in the daytime.
Importantly, only 25% of energy consumption from charging occurs during peak hours (6-8am and 4-8pm) when the grid is under the most strain. This suggests owners are generally charging their cars in a grid-friendly manner.
Around 31% of charging occurs overnight (8pm-6am). This could be a result of people taking advantage of lower electricity costs overnight on time-of-use tariffs and/or charging their vehicles at a convenient time and place.
About 44% of charging happens during non-peak daytime hours (8am-4pm). As more than half the study participants had rooftop solar, this suggests owners are already timing their charging to take advantage of solar energy.
Average energy use is higher on weekdays than weekends. As expected, more top-up charges (small volume charges that don’t necessarily fill the battery) occur on weekdays.
What does this mean for the future?
Our research reveals electric car users are, consciously or not, mostly charging them in ways that don’t stress the grid. As the numbers of these vehicles grow, encouraging a higher proportion of charging events outside peak hours will be beneficial.
Proper management of charging could help better integrate renewable electricity sources with the grid, save millions of dollars in grid investment and open up low-cost charging opportunities to electric vehicle users.
In Australia, almost one-third of homes having installed panels, one of the highest rates in the world. By 2050, two-thirds are expected to have rooftop solar. As the number of electric vehicles and the share of renewable energy increases, incentives to encourage users of these vehicles to charge during specific hours of the day are likely to be beneficial.
In the future, these vehicles may help integrate renewables into the grid by acting as batteries on wheels. The vast majority of cars in our study have 50% or higher battery charge at the start of a driving event. That’s much more charge than an average trip requires. This suggests a good amount of spare battery capacity is available.
This spare capacity could help to smooth variable electricity output from renewables. Vehicles could charge at times of high renewable production, then supply energy back to their homes or the grid during peak demand hours or times of low renewable output. In this way, they could help support a grid with high renewable penetration.
We’ve received funding from the Energy Consumers Australia’s Grants Program to continue exploring how shifting EV charging can benefit consumers and the grid. If you have an electric vehicle, you can help with this research by signing up on our website.
We would like to acknowledge Dr Jake Whitehead’s efforts in establishing the UQ Teslascope project in 2021, and for continuing to provide external advisory support.
Thara Philip receives funding from iMOVE CRC and Energy Consumers Australia’s Grants Program.
Andrea La Nauze receives funding from Energy Consumers Australia’s Grants Program.
Kai Li Lim is the inaugural St Baker Fellow in E-Mobility at The University of Queensland’s Dow Centre for Sustainable Engineering Innovation. His position is endowed through the St Baker Energy Innovation Fund, but he does not receive any income from it or any of its portfolio companies.
As part of this project, Kai Li Lim receives funding from Energy Consumers Australia’s Grants Program.
A year after Russia’s invasion, Ukraine is in ruins. At least 8,000 civilians have died, with millions displaced. Generations of infrastructure have been destroyed. Large tracts of the environment and agricultural land have been devastated. A world food shortage has been created. The global economy is in crisis mode. The world has drawn closer to the unspeakable catastrophe of a nuclear war.
To paraphrase the classical Roman historian Tacitus, the war is producing a wasteland that will be called peace.
In this lose-lose situation, it would be reasonable to suppose that desperate efforts were being made on all sides to engage in productive dialogue and end the devastation. Incredibly, exactly the opposite is occurring.
In the West, apart from Germany, the media have settled into war-propaganda mode. Instead of calls for peace, demands for more weapons prevail, with any tempering of militant urgency treated as akin to appeasement of Russia.
NATO countries have already provided well over a hundred billion dollars in aid, a large proportion of which is for military purposes. They’ve also sent the message the flow will continue “for as long as it takes”. It is impossible to guess the cost for the Ukrainian and Russian people, just as we never read of the numbers of deaths of Ukrainian or Russian soldiers.
Despite the critical need for negotiations, none of the protagonists is able to take even small steps. Where there should be careful analysis of differences and proposals for addressing them, there are mutual taunts, threats and insults. A peace proposal by China has been met – by some, at least – with derision, scorn and cynicism.
Why have peace negotiations stalled?
What has gone wrong? Any well-informed observer can trace how trust was eroded. It has given rise to diametrically opposite narratives to which the warring sides are committed.
From the Russian point of view, repeated warnings that the eastward expansion of NATO would be seen as an existential threat were ignored. The failure to honour the 2015 Minsk agreements and the refusal of the western powers to negotiate on Russia’s strongly stated concerns exposed NATO’s underlying objective to enforce military and economic dominance.
On the Western and Ukrainian sides, the Russian invasion is seen as the work of a cruel dictator who aspires to destroy democracy, disregard the sovereign rights of a neighbouring country and rebuild Russian imperial control of post-Soviet eastern Europe.
The protagonists are undoubtedly far apart, but why have the global institutions of peace been unable to bring them together?
The United Nations — which was founded precisely to prevent such disasters — has been paralysed. This is partly because the conflict directly involves Russia –and, by proxy, the US, France, Britain and even China, all permanent members of the Security Council – and partly because member states have conflicting interests and divided loyalties.
Russia’s UN ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, listens before the General Assembly vote in February upholding Ukraine’s territorial integrity and calling for a cessation of hostilities. Bebeto Matthews/AP
Sporadic attempts by countries such as France, Germany, Israel, Turkey and now China to encourage negotiations have failed. No country is prepared to respond to the global forces driving the conflict, which include competition between the great powers for economic and political hegemony. Diplomats – arguably those with the skills most finely honed to respond to such challenges – have been blocked by their primary obligations to advocate for their governments’ interests.
As events have spun out of control, the expression in the media of dissenting points of view about the causes of the war and how to end it has been subdued in many countries, including the United States, Ukraine, Russia and Australia, to a remarkably similar degree.
Disastrous policies continue to be pursued by all sides even when the elements of a workable solution are readily apparent. As many external observers acknowledge, ultimately, there is a path toward ending the conflict if all parties can find agreement on a neutral and secure Ukraine, a degree of autonomy for the eastern Donbas region, and a process to heal the wounds and re-establish economic and cultural ties.
The inevitability of these outcomes notwithstanding, the runaway logic of the conflict for the moment appears to place them far out of reach.
How can the stalemate be broken? In principle, a government, such as Australia’s, could call the warring parties together to initiate a process of reconciliation. Sadly, the chances of such an imaginative leap appear remote.
Could a humanitarian organisation such as the Red Cross facilitate peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine? International Committee of the Red Cross/AP
The alternative is an initiative from civil society itself. Since the formation of the Red Cross in 1863, the concept that non-state entities can help alleviate the effects of crises has been carefully refined.
Although focused almost entirely on protecting the victims of violence and disasters and delivering humanitarian assistance, hundreds of non-governmental organisations around the world — including the Red Cross, Médecins Sans Frontières, Save the Children and others — also engage in private and public dialogues to mitigate the impacts of conflicts.
The practitioners of such humanitarian diplomacy are skilled at facilitating ethical conversations and fashioning mutually beneficial compromises. Unlike the UN and formal diplomatic processes, humanitarian diplomats can engage with the full range of stakeholders, including religious, cultural, professional and other civil society organisations.
Now is the time for this resource to be mobilised to establish reconciliation dialogue in Ukraine. Humanitarian diplomacy, which views the safety and welfare of civilians as a high priority, is key to this effort.
The Ukraine conflict, like many others in the world today, has highlighted the need for a new mechanism led by trusted neutrals to come into effect. Let us hope we can move forward in this way.
Paul Komesaroff is Executive Director of Global Reconciliation, an international NGO that administers the Desmond Tutu Reconciliation Fellowship which is currently seeking nominations of people working to promote reconciliation in Ukraine.
Paul James is affiliated with Global Reconciliation, an organization that works in this area, and is currently seeking nominations for the Desmond Tutu Reconciliation Fellowship for creative activity in relation to ending the war in Ukraine.
Christopher Lamb does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Political Roundup: Shining a bright light on lobbyists in politics
Political scientist, Dr Bryce Edwards.
Four out of the five people who have held the top role of Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff since 2017 have been lobbyists. That’s a fact that should worry anyone who believes vested interests shouldn’t have a place at the centre of decision making.
Chris Hipkins’ newly appointed Chief of Staff, Andrew Kirton, started in the role just one day after finishing with corporate lobbying firm Anacta, where his role included lobbying the Labour government over political decisions. In other countries, such shifts would be illegal due to the glaring potential for conflicts of interests and corruption. In New Zealand, it is so commonplace that it is generally not even reported on.
New evidence on lobbying
Fortunately, yesterday RNZ investigative journalist Guyon Espiner launched a series of exposés about the role of lobbyists in government. Today he reveals Andrew Kirton’s lobbying of the government on behalf of alcohol companies. Espiner details how, six weeks after Kirton was employed to run the Beehive, Hipkins announced he was ditching a proposed reform that would introduce recycling obligations on drinks manufacturers – something Kirton had lobbied against on behalf of alcohol industry players. See Espiner’s story today: Prime Minister’s chief of staff Andrew Kirton led lobbying firm that fought against reforms now binned by Chris Hipkins.
Espiner publishes some of the attempts Kirton made to push what his clients wanted in terms of watering down the proposed reforms.
The Prime Minister’s Office has responded to Espiner’s story by denying that Kirton had any involvement in the decision to add the recycling initiatives to Hipkins’ policy bonfire. However, according to Espiner, “RNZ asked whether Kirton told the Prime Minister which clients he had lobbied for and what conflicts of interests he had declared but those questions were not addressed.”
Today’s story also looks at two other lobbyists who worked as Chief of Staff for Jacinda Ardern during her time as Prime Minister. GJ Thompson was Ardern’s Chief of Staff in 2018, and his clients now include the Brewer’s Association. Neale Jones – briefly the Labour Chief of Staff in 2017 – now lobbies for Countdown on alcohol sales regulations.
Espiner’s stories show a disturbingly close relationship between major vested interests and the policy process.
“Mate, Comrade, Brother” – cosiness in New Zealand government
Espiner reveals that universities are also a major user of lobbyists, with Massey University paying Neale Jones’ lobbying firm a retainer of $6900 each month just to be on their books. Massey has paid former Labour MP Clayton Cosgrove “nearly $64,000 since 2020” for his company’s lobbying services. The University of Auckland use the lobbying firm Sherson Willis. That firm is also employed by AUT, who also use a second lobbying firm, Thompson Lewis, which is owned by GJ Thompson and which employs another former Beehive Chief of Staff, Wayne Eagleson – who was the righthand man to both John Key and Bill English from 2008 to 2017.
Other government agencies are paying large amounts to these lobbying/PR firms. For example, according to Espiner, “In March 2020 Transpower agreed to pay Thompson Lewis up to $50,000 a year, based on a retainer of $6000 a month, and for crisis projects nearly $2000 a day.”
Manipulation of the media and public
The main focus of Espiner’s story from yesterday was on the lobbying and PR work of leftwing political commentator David Cormack, who co-owns the government relations business Draper Cormack. Cormack, who regularly appears as a commentator on TV and radio, also works for Pharmac, advising them how to navigate select committee processes and manage their dealings with the media.
Espiner uncovered “300 pages of communications with Draper Cormack”, showing how Cormack was advising the government agency to manipulate the media. Most controversially, he devised a strategy in which some media outlets and journalists would be given preferential treatment because they were perceived as friendly to Pharmac, and other outlets would be refused access to information.
Advance copies of Pharmac reports were “given to journalists from Stuff and Newshub”, with journalists perceived to be less friendly having to wait a day. Today FM broadcaster Rachel Smalley, and TVNZ Breakfast host Indira Stewart were singled out as negative towards Pharmac.
Lobbyists and communications advice was aimed at preventing information getting out to the public, especially through manipulation of the processes around the Official Information Act used by journalists to hold officials and politicians to account.
Some of the lobbyists detailed in Espiner’s series are also high profile political commentators and columnists. For example, David Cormack has written columns on politics – including about health policy and Pharmac – and regularly appears on TV and radio to give his analysis. Lobbyists do not usually disclose who their clients are so it is often impossible to know whose vested interests these lobbyists are pursuing in their political commentary roles.
Like Cormack, Neale Jones is used regularly by RNZ as a commentator, but does not disclose who his company is lobbying for. Likewise, Kris Faafoi has just been employed as a weekly politics columnist for Stuff, after leaving his Cabinet job to be a lobbyist last year. Such lobbyists use their media platforms to advertise their influence and win over corporate clients.
At the very least, if lobbyists are to be given such a large platform to influence political debate and policies, they should be required to disclose who their lobbying clients are.
Time for a Royal Commission into Vested Interests
There has historically been very little public interest and debate about the role of lobbying in New Zealand politics. But perhaps with Guyon Espiner’s RNZ series we will now see a lot more light shone on these activities. At the moment, it is very difficult to know how much impact lobbying has on government policies. In other countries there is much more regulation of lobbyist’s activities, and much of what goes on here – especially in terms of the revolving door of lobbyists going in and out of senior public roles, including in the Beehive – would be illegal.
We are used to being told that there is no corruption in New Zealand, and that everyone in the country has the same political power through the electoral process. But this is not true.
It’s time that we woke up to the role of vested interests in our political processes. The role of political donations, too. However, don’t expect that the politicians will initiate a reform agenda on this – it’s not in their interests.
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has been in the media today defending his own use of lobbyists, as well as the lack of lobbying regulation. He admitted to RNZ’s Kim Hill that the Labour Government hasn’t done anything to tighten the rules, and it has no plans to. Hipkins is spinning the line that the public essentially has the same access to politicians as lobbyists. Explaining the close access that lobbyists currently have, Hipkins to decision-makers, Hipkins suggests this isn’t because they are lobbyists but simply because they happen to personally know those in power.
On whether lobbyists should be allowed to go in and out of the Beehive-lobbying revolving door, Hipkins merely says, “everyone is entitled to earn a living”, as if the integrity of the system of government means nothing.
The landscape of lobbying and political donations in New Zealand is the wild west, with politicians unwilling to clean it up. Surely the problem is now so extreme that politicians need to be forced to set up a Royal Commission into Vested Interests in Politics.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Denis Fougerouse, Research Fellow, School of Earth and Planetary Sciences and The Institute for Geoscience Research (TIGeR), Curtin University
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Thirty-seven years ago, on April 26 1986, the reactor of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant suffered a catastrophic meltdown. In the weeks that followed, the deadly event drove hundreds of thousands of people to relocate from the surrounding area, which is still a deserted “exclusion zone” today.
The Chernobyl nuclear accident was caused by an unfortunate cocktail of human error and flawed reactor design. It was the worst nuclear disaster in history, releasing more than 400 times as much radioactive material as the Hiroshima atomic bomb.
An uncontrollable chain reaction inside the reactor caused a sharp increase in temperature that ultimately resulted in the fusion of the fuel rods, a steam explosion and a fire. The melted fuel rods pooled temporarily at the bottom of the reactor chamber before making their way into the deeper levels of the power plant.
This hellish molten soup has proved an unexpected source of insight for geologists like me. In new research published in American Mineralogist, my colleagues and I show tiny zircons formed at Chernobyl change our understanding of how these crystals behave – and what they tell us about Earth’s past.
Corium and the elephant’s foot
Molten reactor material is called corium, and it’s a serious contender for the most dangerous substance on Earth.
Nearby radiation exposure to corium can kill within minutes, but that is not all. Corium is extremely hot and generates its own heat from radioactivity. It’s very difficult to cool it down.
The corium at Chernobyl reached 2,600℃, almost twice as hot as the surface temperature of the space shuttle during atmosphere re-entry or half the temperature at the surface of the Sun. For comparison, the temperature of natural lava from volcanoes ranges from 500 to 1,000℃.
Corium is so hot, it eats everything in its way. It can dissolve steel, sand and concrete, and it transforms water into radioactive steam almost instantly.
At Chernobyl, it was estimated 1,500 tons of corium was generated, flowing like lava and eating its way through metres of concrete in the basement of the power plant.
A second, even more devastating explosion was only just avoided by pumping the water used to extinguish the fire from the basement levels. Ultimately, the corium incorporated enough foreign building materials that it could not generate enough heat to keep its liquid state, and solidified into a lump that looks like the foot of an elephant.
Zircon and geologists: a love story
Uranium fuel rods are made of enriched uranium oxide, clad in zirconium alloy. Corium dissolved sand and concrete, which have a high silicon composition.
Zirconium, silicon and oxygen: all the ingredients were present in the Chernobyl melt to crystallise zircons (ZrSiO₄) about the width of a human hair.
Geologists and Earth scientists love zircon, because studying it can reveal the age when rocks formed and what geological process formed them. It is also very resilient to harsh geological conditions and is stable for billions of years.
Zircons sampled from the solidified corium at Chernobyl are special because we know a lot about the conditions in which they formed and their history.
In many ways they can be considered analogous to controlled experiments, but from an extremely dangerous setting that cannot be reproduced safely in a laboratory environment. On the contrary, zircons from natural rocks have long, convoluted histories that are hard to untangle.
A zircon crystal from the Chernobyl melt shows surprising ‘re-equilibration textures’ that geologists had previously assumed were created by contact with water. Denis Fougerouse, Author provided
Surprisingly, the zircons from Chernobyl displayed features called “re-equilibration textures”, which are also found in many natural zircons. Until now, these features were attributed to the action of water dissolving the mineral.
However, the Chernobyl melt contained little or no water. This tells us the features were created by the melt directly, without the influence of water.
The zircons from Chernobyl taught geologists that zircons are not as resilient as they thought and this should be considered when studying complex rocks.
Nuclear forensics: CSI for nuclear safety
Studying the aftermath of nuclear incidents is a kind of detective work called nuclear forensics. It’s not just useful for geologists.
Nuclear power plant reactor meltdowns have happened only three times in history: at Chernobyl, at Three Mile Island in the USA in 1979, and at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi in 2011.
Modern nuclear power reactors have incorporated more safety features to avoid another Chernobyl disaster.
Using extremely complex instrumentation, it is possible to measure the exact composition of uranium and other radioactive elements found at the site of an incident.
By measuring the proportion of the isotopes of uranium and plutonium, information about the type of fuel used in the reactor can be determined.
This is not only useful for understanding accidents and improving safety. Answering questions about the kind of fuel in use can help us draw many other conclusions as well, including the causes of the accident and how to mitigate them.
Nuclear forensics is also helpful in controlling nuclear facilities overseen by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), promoting the safe, secure and peaceful use of nuclear technologies.
Denis Fougerouse is affiliated with the School of Earth and Planetary Sciences and The Institute for Geoscience Research at Curtin University. He receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
This decade is the critical moment for making deep, rapid cuts to emissions, and acting to protect people from dangerous climate impacts we can no longer avoid, according to the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
It reiterates that the world is now about 1.1℃ warmer than during pre-industrial times. This already results in more frequent and more intense extreme weather, causing complex disruption and suffering for communities worldwide. Many are woefully unprepared.
The report stresses our current pace and scale of action are insufficient to reduce rising global temperatures and secure a liveable future for all. But it also highlights that we already have many feasible and effective options to cut emissions and better protect communities if we act now.
Many countries have already achieved and maintained significant emissions reductions for more than ten years. Overall, however, global emissions are up by 12% on 2010 and 54% higher than in 1990. The largest rise comes from carbon dioxide (from the burning of fossil fuels and industrial processes), followed by methane.
The world is expected to cross the 1.5℃ temperature threshold during the 2030s (at the current level of action). Already, the effects of climate change are not linear and every increment of warming will bring rapidly escalating hazards, exacerbating more intense heatwaves and floods, ocean warming and coastal inundation. These complex events are particularly severe for children, the elderly, Indigenous and local communities, and disabled people.
But in agreeing to this report, governments have now recognised that human rights and questions of equity, loss and damage are central to effective climate action.
This report also breaks emissions down to households – 10% of the highest-emitting households contribute 40-45% of global greenhouse gas emissions, while 50% of the lowest-emitting households (including small islands communities), contribute less than 15% of overall greenhouse gases.
Climate-resilient development
The report points to solutions for climate-resilient development, a process which integrates actions to reduce or avoid emissions with those to protect people to advance sustainability. Examples include health improvements that come from broadening access to clean energy and contribute to better air quality.
But the choices we make need to be locally relevant and socially acceptable. And they have to be made urgently, because our options for resilient action are progressively reduced with every increment of warming above 1.5℃.
This report is also significant for recognising the importance of Indigenous knowledge and local community insights to help advance ambitious climate planning and effective climate leadership.
Cities are key drivers of emissions. They generate around 70% of carbon dioxide emissions globally, and this is rising largely through transport systems relying on fossil fuels, building materials and household consumption.
But this also means urban spaces are where we can really exercise climate leadership. Decisions made at the level of local councils are going to be significant globally in terms of bringing national and global emissions down and protecting people.
Cities are sites for solutions where we can decarbonise transport and increase green spaces. While tackling climate risks can feel overwhelming, acting at the city level is a way communities can have more control over reducing emissions and where local action can really make a difference to our quality of life.
We know there is much more money flowing into mitigation than adaptation. But we have to do both now, and move beyond adaptation focused on physical protection (such as sea walls). We also need to be thinking really carefully about green infrastructure (trees and parks), low-carbon transport and social protection for communities, which includes income replacement, better healthcare, education and housing.
This report was particularly difficult to negotiate because we now live in a changed reality. More and more countries are experiencing very significant losses and damages. As countries face increasingly extreme weather events, the stakes are higher.
Governments everywhere, in my view as a political scientist, are now facing hard choices about how to protect their own national interests while also making significant efforts to tackle our global climate crisis. In negotiations, larger countries can dominate debate and it can take a long time to get to agreement. This puts enormous pressure on smaller nations, including Pacific delegations with fewer people and diplomatic resources. This is yet another reason to ensure action is inclusive, fair and equitable.
These reports show the choices we make in this decade will impact current and future generations, and the planet, now and for thousands of years.
Bronwyn Hayward is a member of the IPCC Core Writing Team, coordinating lead author of Cities and Instrastructure IPCC adapation Report 2022 and a lead author of the Special Report 1.5. She had been funded by the UK Conomic and Scocial research council and Deep South Science Challenge
Since time immemorial, humans around the world have gazed up in wonder at the night sky. The starry night sky has not only inspired countless works of music, art and poetry, but has also played an important role in timekeeping, navigation and agricultural practices in many traditions.
For many cultures, the night sky, with its stars, planets and the Milky Way, is considered just as important a part of the natural environment as the forests, lakes and mountains below. Countless people around the world gaze at the night sky: not only amateur and professional astronomers, but also casual observers who enjoy looking up at the stars to contemplate our place in the cosmos.
However, the night sky is changing. Not only is ground-based light pollution increasing rapidly, but growing numbers of satellites and space debris in orbit around Earth are also impacting the night sky.
Earlier research showed that satellites and space debris may increase the overall brightness of the night sky. In a new paper in Nature Astronomy, my colleagues and I applied this knowledge to predicting the performance of a major astronomical sky survey. We found this phenomenon may make the survey 7.5% less efficient and US$21.8 million more expensive.
A brighter sky
As a cultural astronomer, I am interested in the role of the night sky in cultural traditions around the world. In particular, I am interested in how light pollution and increasing satellite numbers affect different communities.
The number of satellites in orbit is growing rapidly. Since 2019, the number of functional satellites in orbit has more than doubled to around 7,600. The increase is mostly due to SpaceX and other companies launching large groups of satellites to provide high-speed internet communications around the world.
Starlink satellites already leave streaks on astronomical photographs – but growth in satellites and debris will make the whole sky brighter. Rafael Schmall / NOIRLab, CC BY
By the end of this decade, we estimate, there may be 100,000 satellites in orbit around the Earth. Collisions that generate space debris are more likely as space fills with new satellites. Other sources of debris include the intentional destruction of satellites in space warfare tests.
Increasing numbers of satellites and space debris reflect ever more sunlight towards the night side of Earth. This will almost certainly change the appearance of the night sky and make it harder for astronomers to do research.
One way satellites impact astronomy is by appearing as moving points of light, which show up as streaks across astronomers’ images. Another is by increasing diffuse night sky brightness. This means all the satellites that are too dim or small to be seen individually, as well as all the small bits of space debris, still reflect sunlight, and their collective effect is to make the night sky appear less dark.
Hard times for astronomers
In our research, we present the first published calculations of the aggregate effects of satellites and space debris in low-Earth orbit on major ground-based astronomy research facilities.
We looked at the effect on the planned large-scale survey of the night sky to be carried out at the Vera Rubin Observatory starting in 2024. We found that, by 2030, reflected light from objects in low-Earth orbit will likely increase the diffuse background brightness for this survey by at least 7.5% compared to an unpolluted sky.
This would diminish the efficiency of this survey by 7.5% as well. Over the ten-year lifetime of the survey, we estimate this would add some US$21.8 million to the total project cost.
Brighter night skies mean longer exposures through telescopes are needed to see distant objects in the cosmos. This will mean that for projects with a fixed amount of observing time, less science will be accomplished, and there will be increased competition for telescope access.
In addition, brighter night skies will also reduce the detection limits of sky surveys, and dimmer objects may not be detected, resulting in missed research opportunities.
Some astrophysical events are rare and if researchers are unable to view them when they occur, there might not be an opportunity to easily see a given event again during a survey’s operational period. One example of faint objects is near-Earth objects – comets and asteroids in orbits close to Earth. Brighter night skies make it more likely such potentially hazardous objects may remain undetected.
A dramatic and unprecedented tranformation
Increases in diffuse night sky brightness will also change how we see the night sky with the unaided eye. As the human eye cannot resolve individual small objects as well as a telescope can, an increase in satellites and space debris will create an even greater increase in the apparent brightness of the night sky. (When using a telescope or binoculars, one would be able to make out more of the dimmer satellites individually.)
The projected increase in night sky brightness will make it increasingly difficult to see fainter stars and the Milky Way, both of which are important in various cultural traditions. Unlike “ground-based” light pollution (which tends to be the worst near large cities and heavily populated areas), the changes to the sky will be visible from essentially everywhere on Earth’s surface.
Our models give us a conservative lower limit for a likely increase in night sky brightness. If numbers of satellites and space debris continue to grow at the expected rate, the impacts will be even more pronounced.
As we note in our paper, “we are witnessing a dramatic, fundamental, and perhaps semi-permanent transformation of the night sky without historical precedent and with limited oversight”. Such a transformation will have profound consequences for professional astronomy as well as for anyone who wishes to view an unpolluted night sky.
Jessica Heim does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
A gambler would probably feel the odds favour a Labor win at the upcoming New South Wales election. But, as Scott Morrison proved in 2019, underdog status is prized in politics. Favouritism brings its own challenges, especially when the game takes an unanticipated twist. In this setting, the wide path to victory can quickly become a narrow track to defeat.
NSW voters go to the booths on March 25 with Premier Dominic Perrottet seeking to lock in 16 years of Liberal-National incumbency. The Labor opposition under Chris Minns is polling well. Despite this, Perrottet isn’t playing to type.
This campaign is recasting the state’s typically combative political culture. Peace has broken out. Major campaign promises, from both sides, are converging on a shared political centre. Be it toll relief, health infrastructure, energy vouchers or other rebates, only strategic nuances separate the two.
Funding commitments, too, are broadly on par. The Coalition’s “future fund” promises education and housing co-investment to individuals, while Labor’s “education future fund” directly targets the schools system.
On public sector wages, neither side is promising increases. Both leaders will thin the ranks and freeze the pay of senior public servants. And Perrottet has ruled out further privatisation, ending nearly a decade of “asset recycling” and bringing the Coalition into line with Labor.
With commonality abounding, real difference is emerging on unanticipated terrain. The NSW cabinet’s decision to introduce cashless gaming within five years is providing Perrottet a moral profile that typically takes time for a new leader to build. It also acts as a reset following revelations of his Nazi costume choice at his 21st birthday.
In contrast, Labor won’t back gambling reform, seemingly untroubled by the issue from a campaign standpoint. These divergent stances could weigh on undecided voters wondering what kind of a premier Minns might be. Would he stand up to powerful lobbyists? It’s not an insignificant question given Labor’s past in NSW. It may be a factor in marginal electorates.
Several seats in western Sydney are shaping as tight contests. With roughly one-third of total votes cast at the election to be lodged in Sydney’s west, there is no path to victory for the Coalition or Labor without the region’s support.
East Hills, which the Liberals hold by just 0.1%, is a campaign focal point. In an announcement confined almost entirely to social media, the premier committed $1.3 billion to construct a hospital in the electorate.
Ordinarily, a hospital pledge would be a widely promoted commitment. Keeping it local may be a deliberate strategy to emulate isolated success at last year’s federal election. In the western Sydney seat of Lindsay, the federal Liberals bucked the national trend and secured a positive swing. Hyper-local, street-by-street campaigning fuelled that unexpected surge.
Lindsay overlays the marginal NSW seat of Penrith, where former minister Stuart Ayres is defending a margin of just 0.6%. Here, too, the Liberals are upending wider campaign tactics for a local pitch, with the help of former premier Gladys Berejiklian.
Continuing his moral stance, Perrottet endorsed the Independent Commission of Corruption’s investigation of her and continues to disavow her it’s “not illegal” rationale for pork-barrelling.
Other factors ramp up the unpredictability. The new seat of Leppington – nominally Labor (1.7%) – takes in many highly mortgaged areas of Campbelltown, Liverpool and surrounds. The pace of housing development has far eclipsed the construction of education, health and transport links.
Similar growing pains are evident in electorates like Riverstone, where existing services are unable to cope with surging housing estates. Labor is, accordingly, promising to address these challenges, committing to a range of investments such as a $700 million hospital for Rouse Hill.
The retirement of several senior Liberal members brings additional opportunities for Labor in key seats. Kevin Connolly in Riverstone and Geoff Lee in Parramatta are departing, along with cabinet members David Elliott, Brad Hazzard and Rob Stokes.
Stokes’ seat of Pittwater is among a clutch of northern Sydney electorates facing challenges by independent candidates. However, a repeat of the federal “teal wave” is unlikely, given the optional flow of preferences, and mitigating budget measures from Treasurer Matt Kean with a focus on women and sustainability.
In the regions, the transition to clean energy is challenging the Nationals’ hold on the Upper Hunter, while the retirement of Liberal Shelley Hancock has put the seat of South Coast in the frame for Labor. And the Nationals’ grip on the bellwether electorate of Monaro will be closely watched, with former Labor representative Steve Whan making a comeback.
This is an unusual election. Conventional analysis – and the bookies – suggest a Labor win, likely in minority government. But the Coalition are rolling the dice in narrowly targeted areas and on atypical issues.
While the heat has gone out of NSW politics, many voters will struggle to make sense of the peace. Others are understandably sceptical it will last.
Andy Marks does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Vaping regularly makes headlines, with some campaigning to make e-cigarettes more available to help smokers quit, while others are keen to see vaping products banned, citing dangers, especially for teens.
So just how dangerous is it? We have undertaken an evidence check of vaping research. This included more than 100 sources on tobacco harm reduction, vaping prevalence and health effects, and what other countries are doing in response. Here’s what we found.
Nicotine, a mild stimulant, is the active ingredient in both cigarettes and nicotine vaping products. It’s addictive but isn’t the cause of cancer or the other diseases related to smoking.
Ideally, people wouldn’t be addicted to nicotine, but having a safe supply without the deadly chemicals, for instance by using nicotine patches or gum, is safer than smoking. Making these other sources available is known as “harm reduction”.
Vaping is not risk-free, but several detailed reviews of the evidence plus a consensus of experts have all estimated it’s at least 95% safer to vape nicotine than to smoke tobacco. The risk of cancer from vaping, for example, has been estimated at less than 1%.
These reviews looked at the known dangerous chemicals in cigarettes, and found there were very few and in very small quantities in nicotine vapes. So the argument that we won’t see major health effects for a few more decades is causing more alarm than is necessary.
Smoking is the #1 preventable cause of death in Australia. pawel czerwinski/unsplash, CC BY
Is ‘everyone’ vaping these days?
Some are concerned about the use of vaping products by teens, but currently available statistics show very few teens vape regularly. Depending on the study, between 9.6% and 32% of 14-17-year-olds have tried vaping at some point in their lives.
But less than 2% of 14-17-year-olds say they have used vapes in the past year. This number doubled between 2016 and 2019, but is still much lower than the rates of teen smoking (3.2%) and teen alcohol use (32%).
It’s the same pattern we see with drugs other than alcohol: a proportion of people try them but only a very small proportion of those go on to use regularly or for a long time. Nearly 60% of people who try vaping only use once or twice.
Smoking rates in Australia have declined from 24% in 1991 to 11% in 2019 because we have introduced a number of very successful measures such as restricting sales and where people can smoke, putting up prices, introducing plain packaging, and improving education and access to treatment programs.
But it’s getting harder to encourage the remaining smokers to quit with the methods that have worked in the past. Those still smoking tend to be older, more socially disadvantaged, or have mental health problems.
So we have a bit of a dilemma. Vaping is much safer than smoking, so it would be helpful for adults to have access to it as an alternative to cigarettes. That means we need to make them more available and accessible.
But ideally we don’t want teens who don’t already smoke to start regular vaping. This has led some to call for a “crackdown” on vaping.
But we know from a long history of drug prohibition – like alcohol prohibition in the 1920s – that banning or restricting vaping could actually do more harm than good.
Banning drugs doesn’t stop people using them – more than 43% of Australians have tried an illicit drug at least once. And it has very little impact on the availability of drugs.
But prohibition does have a number of unintended consequences, including driving drugs underground and creating a black market or increasing harms as people switch to other drugs, which are often more dangerous.
The black market makes drugs more dangerous because there is no way to control quality. And it makes it easier, not harder, for teens to access them, because there are no restrictions on who can sell or buy them.
In 2021, Australia made it illegal to possess and use nicotine vaping products without a prescription. We are the only country in the world to take this path.
The problem is even after more than a year of this law, only 8.6% of people vaping nicotine have a prescription, meaning more than 90% buy them illegally.
Anecdotal reports even suggest an increase in popularity of vaping among teens since these laws were introduced. At best, they are not helping.
It may seem counterintuitive, but the way to reduce the black market is to make quality-controlled vapes and liquids more widely available, but restricted to adults. If people could access vaping products legally they wouldn’t buy them on the black market and the black market would decline.
We also know from many studies on drug education in schools that when kids get accurate, non-sensationalised information about drugs they tend to make healthier decisions. Sensationalised information can have the opposite effect and increase interest in drugs. So better education in schools and for parents and teachers is also needed, so they know how to talk to kids about vaping and what to do if they know someone is vaping.
What have other countries done?
Other countries allow vapes to be legally sold without a prescription, but impose strict quality controls and do not allow the sale of products to people under a minimum age. This is similar to our regulation of cigarettes and alcohol.
The United Kingdom has minimum standards on manufacturing, as well as restrictions on purchase age and where people can vape.
Aotearoa New Zealand introduced a unique plan to reduce smoking rates by imposing a lifetime ban on buying cigarettes. Anyone born after January 1 2009 will never be able to buy cigarettes, so the minimum age you can legally smoke keeps increasing. At the same time, NZ increased access to vaping products under strict regulations on manufacture, purchase and use.
As of late last year, all US states require sellers to have a retail licence, and sales to people under 21 are banned. There are also restrictions on where people can vape.
A recent study modelled the impact of increasing access to nicotine vaping products in Australia. It found it’s likely there would be significant public health benefits by relaxing the current restrictive policies and increasing access to nicotine vaping products for adults.
The question is not whether we should discourage teens from using vaping products or whether we should allow wider accessibility to vaping products for adults as an alternative to smoking. The answer to both those questions is yes.
The key question is how do we do both effectively without one policy jeopardising the outcomes of the other?
If we took a pragmatic harm-reduction approach, as other countries have done, we could use our very successful model of regulation of tobacco products as a template to achieve both outcomes.
Nicole Lee works as a consultant in the health sector and a psychologist in private practice. She has previously received funding by Australian and state governments, NHMRC and other bodies for evaluation and research into alcohol and other drug prevention and treatment.
Brigid Clancy is an Associate at 360Edge, a drug and alcohol consultancy company.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dominic O’Sullivan, Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Health and Environmental Sciences, Auckland University of Technology, and Professor of Political Science, Charles Sturt University
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As part of its aspiration to be “Tiriti-led”, the University of Otago has embarked on a consultation process to re-brand. The proposed change involves a new logo and a new, deeply symbolic Māori name: Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka.
Universities occasionally change logos, names and marketing strategies. All New Zealand institutions have added te reo Māori to their original titles, often opting for a literal translation – “Te Whare Wānanga” – to describe their status as a university. But Otago is taking it a step further.
Metaphorically, “whakaihu” refers to the university’s place as the country’s oldest university, as well as its Māori students often being the first to graduate from their whanau and communities. And it symbolically includes everyone on the “waka”.
That is exactly what a university is supposed to be, of course – a place for everyone. A place where people are free to think and develop ideas, even contested or unpopular ones. As the Education and Training Act 2020 says, universities must operate as the “critic and conscience of society”.
But being “Tiriti-led” is not as straightforward. It throws into sharp relief where universities sit in relation to the Crown under te Tiriti o Waitangi/Treaty of Waitangi. This, in turn, raises quite fundamental questions about what a university is in the first place.
Essentially, te Tiriti o Waitangi was the Māori language agreement in 1840 between Māori hapu and the British Crown which set out the terms of British settlement. Britain could establish government over its own people, hapu would retain authority over their own affairs.
Māori would enjoy the “rights and privileges” of British subjects, a legal status which continues to evolve as New Zealand citizenship. The Treaty of Waitangi is an English language version of the agreement with different and less favourable emphases for Māori.
By wanting to become “Tiriti-led”, Otago has decided it is part of the Crown party to this agreement. This makes Kai Tahu, as mana whenua (people of the land), the university’s “principal Tiriti partner”.
By contrast, when Massey University says it’s Tiriti-led, it doesn’t explicitly say it’s part of the Crown. Auckland University of Technology’s vice-chancellor has said his university is Tiriti-led, but there’s no definition to be easily found on the public record.
Styling a relationship in this way is significant – but not necessarily in ways that keep faith with te Tiriti o Waitangi, or with the essential purposes of a university.
Universities are owned and principally funded by the Crown. But their obligation to independent scholarship means they can’t be part of the Crown in the same way as a government department. Universities don’t take direction from ministers in the same way, and their staff are not public servants. They are not part of the executive branch of government.
Together with their students and graduates, academics are the university – a community of scholars obliged to contribute to the discovery and sharing of knowledge, but not obliged to serve the government of the day.
In the same waka but on different sides of the partnership: Prime Minister Chris Hipkins at Waitangi this year. Getty Images
Us and them
Parliament and the executive (government ministers) together decide what te Tiriti means to the Crown side of the relationship. Public servants offer advice, but ultimately take ministers’ instructions on giving effect to whatever is the Crown’s Tiriti policy.
Academics, however, can take a different view. They’re not bound by what the Crown side of the agreement thinks. And, as developments in te Tiriti policy show, academic independence makes a difference.
In 1877, New Zealand’s Supreme Court found the Treaty was legally a “simple nullity” because it had not been incorporated into domestic law. It wasn’t the public servant’s role to object, at least not in public. That kind of intellectual freedom belongs elsewhere. Explicitly, it’s one of the reasons universities exist.
Academics – Māori and others – have contributed significantly to developments in te Tiriti policy since 1877, especially in more recent years. Their contributions have often contested prevailing political thought. Universities have given Māori academics – and through them, Māori communities – the kind of voice unavailable to public servants working for the Crown partner.
Partnership is one of the “Treaty principles”, developed legally and politically as an interpretive guide to the agreement. But partnership creates a “them” and “us” binary.
In my book, Sharing the Sovereign: recognition, treaties and the state, I show how this binary encourages people to think of the Crown as exclusively Pākehā. Any institution that is not solely Māori is an institution that belongs to “them”.
This reinforces Māori separation from the university as an institution that should belongs to all of us – and to each of us in our own ways.
Academics are not public servants
If an institution represents one side of a partnership, that institution cannot be a “place for everyone”. A Māori student or staff member should be able to say, “I belong here as much as anybody else, with the same rights, opportunities and obligations to contribute to the institution’s culture, values and purpose.”
That includes the right to study and teach te Tiriti with an independence that is not available to public servants.
In 2020, I helped develop “Critical Tiriti Analysis”, a policy evaluation method that could be used to assess public policy consistency with te Tiriti. While anecdotally it seems now to be widely used across the public service, it’s not something likely to have been written by a public servant. The Crown is a cautious Tiriti partner.
Thoroughness and objectivity – but not political caution – guide academic contributions to policy debate. Such contributions are different in style and purpose from the kind of policy making that it is the duty of the public service to undertake.
Universities are not the Crown in the same sense, and this is why they are not Tiriti partners.
Dominic O’Sullivan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Bedazzled white Crocs are being worn with wedding dresses, #crocs has more than 7.3 billion views on TikTok, and diehard fans can buy mini Crocs to decorate their Crocs with.
Even supermodel Kendall Jenner admitted on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon that she is not ashamed of her comfy Crocs.
But the most common place you’re likely to see Crocs today is on the feet of Generation Z. They grew up with ugly fashion, and are now making it their own.
Crocs premiered their shoe at the Fort Lauderdale Boat Show in 2002. Made from a tough form of injection-moulded ethylene-vinyl acetate (EVA) foam, which moulds to the wearer’s foot, all 200 pairs at the show sold out.
Crocs were easy to clean, non-slip, could easily be pulled on and off, and would not suffer from continued exposure to water.
But they weren’t popular in all corners. Time magazine included Crocs in their 2010 list of the 50 worst inventions.
And from the outset, even Crocs’ cofounders considered them ugly.
Ugly fashion
The 21st century’s love of deliberately ugly fashion can be traced to 1996, with Miuccia Prada launching her “Bad Taste” collection.
The early 2000s gave us ugly comfort dressing in the form of the bright, velour Juicy Couture tracksuit. Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake’s iconic matching double denim moment at the 2001 American Music Awards embodied the era’s ugliness.
Generation Z grew up in this ugly fashion world. Many rocked their first brightly coloured pair of Crocs as toddlers.
This generation also learned to express themselves online, where Internet Ugly – a deliberately grotesque, anti-authoritarian and amateurish aesthetic – is a key look of memes.
Memes celebrate ugliness as a relatable, authentic foil against the slickly perfect images generated by filters, Hollywood and self-serious corporate design. Memes evolve, but the images, templates and looks of memes stays similar and the ugly aesthetic continues to spread and be enjoyed.
Crocs are, in a sense, wearable memes for Gen Z.
Like memes, Crocs have changed and returned through nostalgic affectation.
In the two decades since their launch, Crocs have constantly reinvented themselves. There have been new colours and collaborations with popular brands, including computer games and high fashion houses like Liberty of London.
Each generation rediscovers the objects of its youth and replicates these objects in new ways. The resulting objects – in this case, Crocs – are passed around and either made uglier or beautified in the eye of the beholder. Every pair of Crocs can be customised with “Jibbitz”, a small ornament that fits into the holes throughout the shoe to beautify Crocs for their owner.
In the United Kingdom, Crocs paired with fast-fashion retailer Primark and high-street bakery Greggs to create ugly, fur-lined, black £9 Crocs with Greggs’ logo.
At the other end of the budget, you can buy Balenciaga’s lime green Crocs with a black sole and black stiletto heel.
Ugliness lets viewers laugh and release tensions in situations where they are helpless to act.
Adrian Holloway, Crocs’ general manager, told Vogue:
In times of stress and uncertainty, consumers seem to want comfort […] Everything was so heavy and scary, it felt good to treat yourself to something cheerful and inexpensive, but also practical and comfortable.
The COVID pandemic left Gen Z unable to participate in important social rites of passage like graduations, milestone birthdays, weddings and funerals.
Global lockdowns also left people feeling a strange blend of shock, boredom and irritation.
Like laughing at ugly memes, laughing at cute, ugly Crocs helped release feelings of powerlessness.
Here to stay
Popular predictions of post-pandemic fashions suggest there are two options: we will continue to dress for comfort, or we will embrace eye-catching colours and patterns and strange silhouettes.
The popularity of Crocs among Gen Z suggests a third option: a combination of the comfortable with the crazy.
Worn today, these shoes signal the wearer’s capacity for casualness, irony, rebellion, and a desire to forge their own fashion rules in an Internet Ugly world.
Emily Brayshaw does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Frank Jotzo, Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy and Head of Energy, Institute for Climate Energy and Disaster Solutions, Australian National University
The world is in deep trouble on climate change, but if we really put our shoulder to the wheel we can turn things around. Loosely, that’s the essence of today’s report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The IPCC is the world’s official body for assessment of climate change. The panel has just released its Synthesis Report, capping off seven years of in-depth assessments on various topics.
The report draws out the key insights from six previous reports, written by hundreds of expert authors. They spanned many thousands of pages and were informed by hundreds of thousands of comments by governments and the scientific community.
The synthesis report confirms humans are unequivocally increasing greenhouse gas emissions to record levels. Global temperatures are now 1.1℃ above pre-industrial levels. They’re likely to reach 1.5℃ above pre-industrial levels in the early 2030s.
IPCC
This warming has driven widespread and rapid global changes, including sea level rise and climate extremes – resulting in widespread harm to lives, livelihoods and natural systems.
It’s increasingly clear that vulnerable people in developing countries – who have generally contributed little to greenhouse gas emissions – are often disproportionately affected by climate change.
Intergenerational inequities are also likely. A child born now is likely to suffer, on average, several times as many climate extreme events in their lifetime as their grandparents did.
The world is up the proverbial creek – but we still have a paddle. Climate change is worsening, but we have the means to act.
Climate change is worsening, but we have the means to act. Shutterstock
So much at stake
Over the past week in Interlaken, Switzerland, several hundred representatives from most of the world’s governments scrutinised the IPCC report’s 35-page summary.
The scrutiny happens sentence by sentence, often word by word, and number by number. Sometimes it’s subject to intense debate.
We were both involved in this process. The role of the reports’ authors and IPCC bureau members is to stay true to the underlying science and chart a way between different governments’ preferences. It is a unique process for scientific documents.
The approval process usually goes right to the wire, in meetings running through the night. This Synthesis Report was no exception. The scheduled time for the meeting was extended by two days and nights, wearing down government representatives and the IPCC teams.
The process reflects how much is at stake. The IPCC’s assessments are formally adopted by all governments of the world. That in turn reverberates in the private sector – for example, in the decisions of boards of major companies and investment funds.
An afternoon session of the IPCC. The meetings can drag on overnight as the final wording of IPCC reports is debated. IISD/ENB
The latest on greenhouse gas emissions
The Synthesis Report confirms both emissions and atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases are now at record highs.
To keep warming within 2℃ above pre-industrial levels, global greenhouse gas emissions must decline by around 21% by 2030 and around 35% by 2035. Keeping warming below 1.5℃ requires even stronger emissions reduction.
This is a very tall order in light of emissions trajectories to date. Annual global emissions in 2019 were 12% higher than in 2010, and 54% higher than in 1990.
IPCC
But success in reducing emissions has been demonstrated. The IPCC says existing policies, laws, technologies and measures the world over are already reducing emissions by several billion tonnes of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, compared to what would otherwise be the case.
Most importantly, it’s clear global emissions could be reduced deeply if existing policy instruments were scaled up and applied broadly. The report shows large potential for emissions-reduction options across all parts of the world economy.
Many of these come at low cost. And many bring side benefits, such as reduced air pollution. If all technically available options were used, global emissions could be at least halved by 2030, at manageable costs.
As today’s report states, the global economic benefit of limiting warming to 2℃ exceeds the costs of emissions reduction. That’s without even taking into account the avoided damages of climate change or the side benefits that sensible action could generate.
We have the collective experience to turn the corner. As the report spells out, a great many regulatory and economic policy instruments have been used successfully. And we know how to design climate policies to make sure they’re politically acceptable and do not disadvantage the poorer parts of society.
The report also draws out the importance of good institutions for climate change governance – such as laws and independent bodies – and for all groups in society to be meaningfully involved.
Atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gas emissions are now at record highs. Olivia Zhang/AP
Adaptation falls short
Rapid action on climate change is the economically sensible thing to do. If we fail to rein in emissions, adapting to the damage it causes will be more difficult and expensive in future. What’s more, our existing adaptation options will become less effective.
Every increment of warming will intensify climate-related hazards such as floods, droughts, heatwaves, fires and cyclones. Often, two or more hazards will occur at the same time.
Unfortunately, overall global adaptation has not kept up with the pace and degree of increasing impacts from climate change. Most responses have been fragmented, incremental and confined to a specific sector of the economy. And most are unequally distributed across regions and vary in their effectiveness.
The barriers to more effective adaptation responses are well-known. Chief among them is a widening gap between costs of adaptation and allocated finance. We can, and should, do a lot better.
IPCC
As today’s IPCC report confirms, there are ways to make adaptation more effective. More investment in research and development is needed. So too is a focus on long-term planning as well as inclusive, equitable approaches that bring together diverse knowledge.
Many adaptation options bring significant side benefits. Better home insulation, for instance, can help us deal with extreme weather as well as reduce heating and cooling costs and related greenhouse gas emissions.
Moving people off flood-prone areas and returning these areas to more natural systems can reduce flood risk, increase biodiversity and store carbon dioxide in plants and soil.
And climate adaptation policies that prioritise social justice, equity and a “just transition” can also help achieve other global ambitions, such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
Climate adaptation policies that prioritise social justice can also help achieve other global ambitions. Asim Tanveer/AP
We can close the gap
On both climate change mitigation and adaptation, a massive gap remains between what’s needed and what’s being done.
Countries’ current climate commitments do not add up to the shared ambition to keep temperature rise to below 2℃. And for many countries, current trajectories of emissions would also overshoot their targets.
What’s more, current total investments in low-emissions technology and systems is three to six times lower than what would be needed to keep temperatures to 1.5℃ or 2℃, according to modelling.
Likewise, on the whole not nearly enough effort is being made to understand, prepare and implement measures to adapt to climate changes. The gaps are generally biggest in developing countries, which can much less afford to invest in climate change action than rich parts of the world.
Developing countries are calling for large-scale climate finance to be provided by developed countries, and this is not happening to anywhere near the extent needed.
Predictably, issues of international equity and justice were among the thorniest in the approval of the Synthesis Report. The final version of the report frames the issue not as an irresolvable conflict, but as the opportunity for “shifting development pathways towards sustainability”.
The vision of most governments is for all the world to attain high standards of living, but to do so with “climate neutral” technologies, systems and patterns of consumption. And systems must be built so they’re robust to future climate change, including the nasty surprises that may come.
It must be done. It can be done. By and large, we know how to do it – and it makes economic sense to do so. In this report, the governments of the world have acknowledged as much.
Frank Jotzo is a Lead Author of the IPCC’s latest assessment report on climate change mitigation and member of the core writing team for the Synthesis Report. Mark Howden is a Vice Chair of the IPCC Working Group on climate impacts and adaptation and a Review Editor of the synthesis report. Both were involved in the government approval session for the IPCC Synthesis Report.
Fear & Wonder is a new climate podcast, brought to you by The Conversation. It will take you inside the IPCC’s era-defining climate report via the hearts and minds of the scientists who wrote it. The first episode drops on March 23. Learn more here, or subscribe on your favourite podcast app via the icons above.
Frank Jotzo is a lead author of the IPCC’s latest Assessment Report and member of the core writing team for the Synthesis Report. There are no conflicts of interest for him regarding this article.
Mark Howden is a Vice Chair of the IPCC Working Group II covering climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerability and was a Review Editor on the IPCC Synthesis Report. There are no conflicts of interest for him regarding this article.
New Caledonia’s only daily newspaper, Les Nouvelles Calédoniennes, has folded after the commercial court accepted the publishing company’s request for its liquidation.
The court had deferred its decision by a day after an injunction by the public prosecutor who wanted to see if there was still a possibility to rescue Les Nouvelles.
The prosecutor had argued that it was worth preserving LesNouvelles as a tool of pluralism and freedom of expression.
The last edition of the 52-year-old Les Nouvelles Calédoniennes.
However, there has been no interest in taking over the loss making enterprise.
The paper was launched in 1971 and owned by the French Hersant group until 2013 when it was sold to New Caledonia’s Melchior Group.
Faced with losses, the newspaper became an online only publication at the end of last year but has now closed, with more than 100 people losing their jobs.
The last edition of Les Nouvelles Calédoniennes appeared last Thursday.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The installation of the Turaga Bale na Vunivalu Na Tui Kaba, Ratu Epenisa Cakobau, clearly indicates that Fiji’s traditional chiefly system still has a strong footing and chiefs still command respect among the country’s citizens.
This is the view of Dr Paul Geraghty, the University of the South Pacific’s associate professor of linguistics.
Dr Geraghty said even though the previous government had downplayed the role of chiefs, the population at large did not belittle their roles in society.
“Although Ratu Epenisa has been the de facto Vunivalu for a number of years, this confirmation by the vanua is important not only for ethnic Fijians, but also as the late National Federation Party leader, Jai Ram Reddy, pointed out to the Bose Levu Vakaturaga, for all races for whom Fiji is home,” he said.
“It is confirmation that the traditional chiefly system, though viewed by some as anachronistic, still has a place in Fiji society, and that chiefs still command respect among all citizens of Fiji.”
Dr Geraghty explained that the recent traditional installation was also met with approval by most segments of society and this was a solemn occasion worth celebrating.
He said given that those who had opposed Ratu Epenisa had passed on, he was the oldest available candidate and one who knew Bau and its people well.
Meanwhile, iTaukei Affairs Minister Ifereimi Vasu said the installation of Ratu Epenisa was significant to the reinstatement of the GCC.
Arieta Vakasukawaqais a Fiji Times reporter. Additional reporting by Elena Vucukula. Republished with permission.
🧵 ‘I kept my promise’
Watching the pomp and pageantry of the installation of the Turaga Bale na Vunivalu, na Tui Kaba on Friday took me back some 42 years. pic.twitter.com/1jWm7nbih4
The long-running row between the former Fiji government and the Suva-based regional University of the South Pacific (USP) has come back to haunt former Fiji Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama, who spent a night in a police cell on March 9 before appearing in court, charged with abuse of office.
Not only did the “USP saga”, as it came to be known, cause a major rift between Fiji and the other 12 USP-member countries, but it may have contributed to the narrow loss of Bainimarama’s FijiFirst Party (FFP) in the December 2022 election.
Bainimarama’s abuse of office charges included accusations of interfering with a police investigation into financial malpractices at USP. If convicted, he would face a maximum sentence of 17 years in jail.
But there are also serious questions about the future of the party that he co-founded, and which won successive elections in 2014 and 2018 on the back of his popularity.
A day before his indictment, there were surreal scenes at the Suva Central Police Station, as police officers marched an ashen-faced Bainimarama to his cell to spend the night before his court appearance the next morning.
This, under the full glare of live media coverage, with journalists tripping over themselves to take pictures of the former military strongman, who installed himself as prime minister after the 2006 coup and ruled for 16 years straight.
Arrested, detained and charged alongside Bainimarama was his once-powerful police chief, Sitiveni Qiliho, who managed a wry smile for the cameras. Both were released on a surety of F$10,000 (about NZ$7300) after pleading not guilty to the charges.
Shut down police investigation It is alleged that in 2019, the duo “arbitrarily and in abuse of the authority of their respective offices” shut down a police investigation into alleged irregularities at USP when former vice-chancellor Rajesh Chandra was in charge.
Former Fiji prime minister Voreqe Bainimarama spent a night in a police cell on March 9 before appearing in court, charged with abuse of office. Image: The Interpreter/Pita Simpson/Getty Images
In November 2018, Chandra’s replacement, Professor Pal Ahluwalia, revealed large remuneration payments to certain USP senior staff, some running to hundreds of thousands of dollars. The Fiji government, unhappy with Ahluwalia’s attack on Chandra, counter-attacked by alleging irregularities in Ahluwalia’s own administration.
As the dispute escalated, the Fiji government suspended its annual grant to the USP in a bid to force an inquiry into its own allegations.
When an external audit by the NZ accountants BDO confirmed the original report’s findings, the USP executive committee, under the control of the then Fiji government appointees, suspended Ahluwalia in June 2020.
This was in defiance of the USP’s supreme decision-making body, the USP Council, which reinstated him within a week.
Samoa’s then Deputy Prime Minister Fiamē Naomi Mataʻafa (who is now prime minister, having won a heavily contested election of her own) said at the time that Ahluwalia’s suspension had been a “nonsense”.
The then Nauruan President Lionel Aingimea attacked a “small group” of Fiji officials for “hijacking” the 12-country regional university.
Students threatened boycott The USP Students’ Association threatened a boycott of exams, while more than 500 signatures supporting the suspended vice-chancellor were collected and students protested across several of USP’s national campuses. All these events played out prominently in the regional news media as well as on social media platforms.
With Fiji’s national elections scheduled for the following year, the political toll was becoming obvious. However, Bainimarama’s government either did not see it, or did not care to see it.
Instead of backing off from what many saw as an unnecessary fight, it doubled down. In February 2021, around 15 government police and security personnel along with immigration officials staged a late-night raid on Professor Ahluwalia’s Suva home, detained him with his wife, Sandra Price, and put them in a car for the three-hour drive to Nadi International Airport where, deported, they were put on the first flight to Australia.
The move sent shockwaves in Fiji and the region.
To many, it looked like a government that had come to power in the name of a “clean-up campaign” against corruption was now indulging in a cover-up campaign instead. The USP saga became political fodder at opposition rallies, with one of their major campaign promises being to bring back Professor Ahluwalia and restore the unpaid Fiji government grant that stood at F$86 million (about NZ$62 million) at the time.
A month before the 2022 polls, a statement targeting the estimated 30,000 staff and student cohort at USP, their friends and families, urged them to vote against FijiFirst, which would go on to lose government by a single parliamentary vote to the tripartite coalition led by another former coup leader, Sitiveni Rabuka.
Albanese official visit It was Rabuka who greeted Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on his first official visit to Fiji last week. During talks at the Australian-funded Blackrock military camp, Albanese reportedly secured Rabuka’s support for the AUKUS deal.
Australia is keen for stability in Fiji, which has not had a smooth transition of power since independence, with democratically elected governments removed by coups in 1987, 2000 and 2006. Any disturbance in Fiji has the potential to upset the delicate balance in the region as a whole.
For Bainimarama and his followers, there is much to rue. His claimed agenda — to build national unity and racial equality and to rid Fiji of corruption — earned widespread support in 2014.
His margin of victory was much narrower in 2018 but Bainimarama managed to secure a majority in Parliament to lead the nation again.
His electoral loss in 2022 was followed by a series of dramatic events, which first saw Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, his deputy in all but name, disqualified from holding his seat in Parliament.
Bainimarama went next, suspended for three years by Parliament’s privileges committee for a speech attacking head of state Ratu Wiliame Katonivere. He chose to resign as opposition leader.
Following his March 10 hearing, Bainimarama addressed the media and a few supporters outside court, adamant that he had served the country with “integrity” and with “the best interests” of all Fijians at heart. The former leader even managed to smile for the cameras while surrounded by a group of followers.
With nearly double the personal votes of the sitting PM Rabuka under Fiji’s proportional representation voting system, Bainimarama’s supporters still harboured some hope that he could return as the country’s leader one day.
However, his health is not the best. He is now out of Parliament and bogged down by legal troubles. Is the sun now setting on the era of Bainimarama and FijiFirst?
Dr Shailendra Bahadur Singh is a frequent contributor to Asia Pacific Report and is on the editorial board of the associated Pacific Journalism Review. This article was originally published by the Lowy Institute’s The Interpreter and is republished here with the author’s permission.
About 3000 activists of French Polynesia’s pro-independence Tavini Huiraatira party met for six hours at the weekend with the executives insisting that they were “united’ after a recent upheaval over leadership.
The party also presented a “renewed” slate of 73 candidates for next month’s territorial elections which includes many new and younger faces in the lineup for the ballot on April 16 and 30.
Party chair Oscar Temaru got the ball rolling at Motu Ovini in Faa’a on Saturday. Appearing tired, he nevertheless remained on the stage for the entire congress along with the other party executives.
Antony Géros, the party’s number two, delivered a long-awaited speech after the recent party rift over the candidacy of Moetai Brotherson for the territorial presidency if the party wins the elections.
“It created a stir in the party because the Tony-Moetai divide started to be felt. And it was necessary to sort that out,” he explained after his speech.
Calling for “union”, “unity” and even respect for the new vision of “rising youth ” within the party, Géros ruled out any hint of a possible challenge to Brotherson’s candidacy.
A call for unity was also echoed in the two speeches by young deputies Tematai Le Gayic and Steve Chailloux in the French National Assembly, both once again impressive in their mastery of public speaking.
Tavini Huiraatira leaders Antony Géros, Oscar Temaru and Moetai Brotherson . . . patching up their differences befire next month’s territorial elections. Image: Tahiti Infos
Tributes by Brotherson The third and leading deputy Brotherson, emphasised respect and gave tributes to the “elders” of Tavini huiraatira.
“It’s something to walk in the footsteps of these giants,” he said, before also paying tribute to the man who was his chief-of-staff between 2011 and 2013 — Antony Géros.
Géros, mayor of Paea, will lead section 2 (Mahina, Hitia’a o te Ra, Taiarapu East and West, Teva i Uta, Papara and Paea).
Deputy Brotherson heads of the Leeward Islands section.
Section 1 (Papeete, Pirae, Arue, Moorea) will be led by the young deputy Temata’i Le Gayic.
Elections treated as ‘referendum’ RNZ Pacific reports that Temaru had said last December that he would treat the elections as if they would be an independence referendum.
He said that if his party won the election by a large margin, he questioned the point in holding a vote on independence from France.
Temaru said in the case of such a victory he would visit neighbouring Pacific countries and the United Nations to secure support for French Polynesia’s sovereignty.
He said Kosovo and Vanuatu became independent countries without a referendum.
In the last territorial election in 2018, the Tavini won less than 20 percent of the seats, but in the French National Assembly election in June, it secured all three of French Polynesia’s seats in the run-off round.
Brotherson has questioned Temaru’s stance, saying a local election should not be “mixed up” with a decolonisation process under the auspices of the United Nations.
In 2013, the UN General Assembly re-inscribed the French territory on its decolonisation list, but Paris has rejected the decision and keeps boycotting the annual decolonisation committee’s debate on French Polynesia.
While France has partially cooperated with the UN on the decolonisation of New Caledonia, the French government has ignored calls by the Tavini to invite the UN to assess the territory’s situation.
Republished from Tahiti-Infos and RNZ Pacific with permission.
The first arrest has been made following the Brereton inquiry into allegations that Australians committed war crimes in Afghanistan.
Former SAS soldier, Oliver Schulz, 41, has been remanded in custody after his arrest by police in regional NSW.
He is expected to appear in Downing Centre Local Court.
The arrest follows a joint investigation between the Office of the Special Investigator and the Australian Federal Police.
The man is charged with the war crime of murder under the Criminal Code Act. In a joint statement the OSI and the AFP said: “It will be alleged he murdered an Afghan man while deployed in Afghanistan with the Australian Defence Force.” The maximum penalty is life in prison.
The OSI was set up in 2021 as part of the response to the Brereton report. The OSI and the police are jointly investigating allegations of criminal offences by Australian soldiers in Afghanistan between 2005 and 2016.
The Brereton inquiry into Australian Special Forces” misconduct in Afghanistan reported in 2020. It found “credible information” of 23 incidents in which one or more non-combatants or prisoners of war “were unlawfully killed by or at the direction of members of the Special Operations Task Group, in circumstances which, if accepted by a jury, would be the war crime of murder”.
Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert Park, Judith and David Coffey Chair in Sustainable Agriculture, Plant Breeding Institute, University of Sydney
Shutterstock
Some 70% of the World Heritage-listed Lord Howe Island has been closed to non-essential visitors in response to a recurrence of the plant disease myrtle rust.
Myrtle rust, native to South America, was first detected in Australia on the Central Coast of NSW in April 2010. It is caused by a fungus that belongs to a group of plant pathogens known as the rusts.
Rusts are among the most feared of all plant pathogens. They spread rapidly over thousands of kilometres on wind currents and can cause huge losses in plant production.
For example, wheat rust research over the past 100 years at the University of Sydney has shown clear evidence of wind-borne rust spores travelling from central Africa to Australia. Wheat production losses due to rust have at times totalled hundreds of millions of dollars.
Myrtle rust rapidly invaded the entire east coast of Australia in the years after it was first detected. It has caused the near extinction of at least three rainforest species, including the native guava (Rhodomyrtus psidioides) and the scrub turpentine (Rhodamnia rubescens).
The disease was detected at Lord Howe Island in 2016, and eradicated. Now it has managed to spread there once again. There are concerns if the disease is left unchecked, it could seriously alter the unique ecology of the island. Lord Howe is home to some 240 native plant species, of which more than 100 are not found anywhere else.
Lord Howe Island has around 100 native plant species that are found nowhere else. Shutterstock
Rust diseases in agriculture are controlled by the cultivation of genetically resistant plants, or by use of fungicides. These fungicides can kill existing recent infections and provide protection for up to four weeks. In other situations, such as horticulture and native plant communities, fungicides are used together with removal and destruction of infected plants.
The 2010 detection of myrtle rust in Australia followed its detection in Hawaii in 2005 and China in 2009. It was later found in New Caledonia (2013) and New Zealand (2017). Research has shown the same strain – known as the “pandemic strain” – has appeared in all of these countries. Several other strains occur in South America.
It is likely the fungus spread to Lord Howe Island from eastern Australia on wind currents. The especially wet conditions along the east coast of much of Australia in 2022 led to an increase in the disease there. This, in turn, increased rust spore load and hence the chance of long-distance spore dispersal.
In addition to being spread on the wind, the rusty coloured spores produced by these fungal pathogens stick readily to clothing. These spores remain viable for at least two weeks under ambient conditions. Several wheat rusts of exotic origin are believed to have been accidentally brought in to Australia on travellers’ clothing from North America and Europe.
The chance of inadvertent spread of myrtle rust on contaminated clothing is why access to Lord Howe island has been restricted since last week.
The second incursion into the island clearly shows how incredibly difficult rust diseases are to manage once they reach a new region. It points to possible recurrences of the disease there in years to come even should current efforts to eradicate it succeed.
On top of the ability of rust diseases to spread rapidly over large distances, a further complication in controlling myrtle rust is it infects a wide range of native plants. Some of these species hold great cultural significance and/or are endangered.
Endemic species of the myrtle plant family Myrtaceae that are dominant in many of the plant communities on Lord Howe Island are highly vulnerable to myrtle rust infection. Of critical concern are two species that occur only on the island: the mountain rose (Meterosideros nervulosa) and the rainforest tree scalybark (Syzigium fullagarri). The rust infects young leaves and also flowers, where it causes sterility.
Australia has some of the best plant pathologists in the world and has long been a leader in controlling rust diseases in agriculture. This expertise, combined with world-leading scientists in the ecology of Australian native plants, has enabled solid progress in understanding myrtle rust in the Australian environment. Australian scientists have joined hands with New Zealand scientists to boost efforts to control the pathogen in both countries.
Research is also under way at the University of Sydney and Australian National University to develop new DNA-based diagnostics to allow rapid identification of the different strains of the pathogen. These tests are especially important given only one strain of myrtle rust occurs in the Asia-Pacific and Oceania regions.
The success of managing the impact of myrtle rust on the region’s iconic flora against a backdrop of climate change will rely heavily on undertaking the research needed to gain a much better understanding of this damaging plant pathogen. Recognising this, staff at the University of Sydney have convened a conference for June 21-23 this year. It will bring together myrtle rust experts to exchange their latest research findings and identify priority areas for research.
Robert Park no recibe salario, ni ejerce labores de consultoría, ni posee acciones, ni recibe financiación de ninguna compañía u organización que pueda obtener beneficio de este artículo, y ha declarado carecer de vínculos relevantes más allá del cargo académico citado.
Are you tired of receiving SMS scams pretending to be from Australia Post, the tax office, MyGov and banks? You’re not alone. Each year, thousands of Australians fall victim to SMS scams. And losses have surged in recent years.
In 2022 SMS scam losses exceeded A$28 million, which is nearly triple the amount from 2021. This year they’ve already reached A$4 million – more than the 2020 total. These figures are probably much higher if you include unreported losses, as victims often won’t speak up due to shame and social stigma.
Last month, the federal government announced plans to fight SMS-based scams by implementing an SMS sender ID registry. Under this system, organisations that want to SMS customers will first have to register their sender ID with a government body.
What kinds of scams would the proposed registry help prevent? And is it too little, too late?
One of the more concerning types of SMS scams is when fraudulent messages creep into legitimate message threads, making it difficult to differentiate between a legitimate service and a scam.
SMS is an older technology that lacks many modern security features, including end-to-end encryption and origin authentication (which lets you verify whether a message is sent by the claimed sender). The absence of the latter is the reason we see highly believable scams like the one below.
An example of a scam SMS message ending up in a legitimate message thread. Luu Y Nhi Nguyen
There are two main types of SMS:
peer-to-peer (P2P) is what most people use to send messages to friends and family
application-to-person (A2P) is a way for companies to send messages in bulk through the use of a web portal or application.
The problem with A2P messaging is that applications can be used to enter any text or number (or combination) in the sender ID field – and the recipient’s phone uses this sender ID to group messages into threads.
In the example above, the scammer would have simply needed to write “ANZ” in the sender ID field for their fraudulent message to show up in the real message thread with ANZ. And, of course, they could still impersonate ANZ even if no previous legitimate thread existed, in which case it would show up in a new thread.
Web portals and apps offering A2P services generally don’t do their due diligence and check whether a sender is the actual owner of the sender ID they’re using. There are also no requirements for telecom companies to verify this.
Moreover, telecom providers generally can’t block scam SMS messages due to how difficult it is to distinguish them from genuine messages.
How would sender ID registration help?
Last year the Australian Communications and Media Authority introduced new rules for the telecom industry to combat SMS scams by tracing and blocking them. The Reducing Scam Calls and Scam Short Messages Industry Code required providers to share threat intelligence about scams and report them to authorities.
In January, A2P texting solutions company Modica received a warning for failing to comply with the rules. ACMA found Modica didn’t have proper procedures to verify the legitimacy of text-based SMS sender IDs, which allowed scammers to reach many mobile users in Australia.
Although ACMA’s code is useful, it’s challenging to identify all A2P providers who aren’t following it. More action was needed.
In February, the government instructed ACMA to explore establishing an SMS sender ID registry. This would essentially be a whitelist of all alphanumeric sender IDs that can be legitimately used in Australia (such as “ANZ”, “T20WorldCup” or “Uber”).
Any company wanting to use a sender ID would have to provide identification and register it. This way, telecom providers could refer to the registry and block suspicious messages at the network level – allowing an extra defence in case A2P providers don’t do their due diligence (or become compromised).
It’s not yet decided what identification details an Australia registry would collect, but these could include sender numbers associated with an organisation, and/or a list of A2P providers they use.
So, if there are messages being sent by “ANZ” from a number that ANZ hasn’t registered, or through an A2P provider ANZ hasn’t nominated, the telecom provider could then flag these as scams.
An SMS sender ID registry would be a positive step, but arguably long overdue and sluggishly taken. The UK and Singapore have had similar systems in place since 2018 and last year, respectively. But there’s no clear timeline for Australia. Decision makers must act quickly, bearing in mind that adoption by telecom providers will take time.
Remaining alert
An SMS sender ID registry will reduce company impersonation, but it won’t prevent all SMS scams. Scammers can still use regular sender numbers for scams such as the “Hi Mum” scam.
Also, as SMS security comes under increased scrutiny, bad actors may shift to messaging apps such as WhatsApp or Viber, in which case regulatory control will be challenging.
These apps are often end-to-end encrypted, which makes it very difficult for regulators and service providers to detect and block scams sent through them. So even once a registry is established, whenever that may be, users will need to remain alert.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Thanks in no small part to the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), today few people would be foolish enough to dispute the scientific consensus on the climate crisis.
But as recently as a decade ago that wasn’t the case. The IPCC is a vast scientific enterprise that has transformed public understanding of global warming, but much of its work remains hidden from view.
Can you name any of the thousands of scientists who contribute to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)? Do you know what fields they work in, or how they gather their data, or how they know they what they know?
And what is it like to be an expert working on something so incredibly consequential?
Fear & Wonder is a new climate podcast, brought to you by The Conversation. It will take you inside the United Nations’ era-defining climate report via the hearts and minds of the scientists who wrote it.
It is hosted by Joelle Gergis, a climate scientist and lead author for the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and her friend Michael Green, an award-winning journalist.
Green says the podcast came about after he visited Gergis on New Year’s Day 2020, right in the middle of Australia’s Black Summer bushfires. She was hard at work on an IPCC report at the time.
“My in-laws’ house had burned down in the fires the day before and it was kinda lucky that they both escaped with their lives,” says Green. “Seeing Joelle at such an intense moment made me realise that I never actually talk to her about the nitty gritty of the science, and that I actually have no idea how we know what we know about global warming. I wanted to find out.”
“It’s terrifying and fascinating to be a climate scientist at this critical moment in history,” says Gergis. “And the science itself – how we know what we know – it’s just so interesting.”
Fear & Wonder will unpack the IPCC Synthesis Report which draws together the findings of the previous IPCC Working Groups and Special Reports. There couldn’t be a better time to learn about how climate scientists do their vital work, and what it feels like to carry that knowledge.
The first episode will be released on March 23. Listen and subscribe by clicking on your favourite podcast app in the graphic above.
Fear and Wonder is sponsored by the Climate Council, an independent, evidence-based organisation working on climate science, impacts and solutions.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Eric Windholz, Senior Lecturer and Associate, Monash Centre for Commercial Law and Regulatory Studies, Monash University
Inadequate, inequitable, and in some cases possibly in breach of workers’ compensation laws. That’s how bad the current insurance arrangements are for Australia’s professional sports people, who get less support for long-term injuries than other workers, and less support than if they’d been playing in New Zealand.
That is part of what I told the current Senate inquiry into concussion and repeated head trauma in sport, speaking as a researcher in work health and safety law in professional sport, and as a former general counsel and general manager with the Victorian WorkCover Authority and WorkSafe Victoria.
The AFL has been in the spotlight following news of a class action led by retired Geelong premiership player Max Rooke, on behalf of more than 60 former Australian Football League players. The law firm leading the class action claims Rooke suffered “permanent, life-altering injuries” from concussion.
However, as my submission to the inquiry pointed out, the issue of workplace safety and injury support affects far more than just Australia’s football codes.
Players are employees – who aren’t covered for long enough
Last month, I told the Senate inquiry that professional sporting organisations were employers, and their players employees.
Under work health and safety law, employer sporting organisations have a statutory duty to do what is reasonably practicable to prevent injuries to their employees.
Because eliminating all injuries is not a realistic expectation, employers provide insurance to support injured players.
The first symptoms of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) take years to decades to develop, by which time the players who have them are usually no longer playing professionally and no longer insured.
Their employer-supported insurance arrangements usually lapse either when their contracts expire or shortly after. This means they don’t adequately support the treatment of injuries that become evident years after the athlete’s career ends.
There are many stories of former AFL players and players in other leagues who suffer such severe memory loss that they can no longer recall their achievements and their clubs and leagues won’t help.
Joe Castro/AAP
No workers’ compensation, unlike NZ
Worse still, exemptions from state and territory employer-funded workers’ compensation schemes deny professional sportspeople the fallback protection afforded to other workers.
In the absence of workers’ compensation, the primary medical obligation transfers to Medicare, shifting it from employers and state governments to taxpayers and the federal government.
The exemptions were introduced in the 1970s at a time when athletes first started to be paid well and leagues and clubs were concerned about their financial capacity to pay workers’ compensation premiums.
There also were perceptions that sport was not “normal” work, and (part-time) athletes were not workers. The arguments are redundant in a world in which sport has been corporatised and commercialised.
Confusing things still further is that some of the exemptions from workers’ compensation are ineffective, failing in NSW and Tasmania to exclude professional players whose contracts remunerate them for activities other than sport such as promotions.
In the Northern Territory, players who earn more than 65% of average weekly earnings are not excluded. There, the intention is to ensure coverage for professional players who derive a substantial part of their livelihood from sport, the opposite of the intention in other jurisdictions.
The exemptions stand in stark contrast to New Zealand, where its accident compensation scheme draws no distinction between sport and other injuries.
Sporting organisations with operations in NSW, Tasmania and the Northern Territory that have not taken out workers’ compensation policies for their players may be operating in breach of their obligations.
This should not come as a total surprise. Sporting organisations have a history of failing to comply with their obligations as employers.
For many, the reality is even worse
Down the hierarchy from elite sports, to sports where professionals are part-time (including many women’s sports), the insurance offered shrinks.
It has time limits to payments for lost income – the highest I have seen is 104 weeks. It has excesses. For payment of medical expenses, it often requires the athlete to take out private health insurance. And while many sports pay out-of-pocket gap fees, that obligation usually expires on, or shortly after, termination of the contract.
The longest obligation I’ve seen after the termination of a contract – and these contracts are generally not public – is 18 months.
That’s shorter than it takes for many traumatic brain injuries to become evident, and those injuries last a lifetime, well beyond 18 months after playing.
Legal action isn’t the best solution
The rationale for the continued exclusion of professional players from workers’ compensation rests on the assumption that employers are making alternative arrangements, and that they are adequate.
This clearly isn’t the case for long-term and long-latency injuries arising from concussions and repeated head trauma. Expensive, time-consuming and unpredictable litigation of the kind now underway is a poor substitute for properly compensating athletes for injuries suffered in their line of work.
The insurance and compensation arrangements for professional players ought to be no less than that provided to other Australian workers. The starting point should be their inclusion in workers’ compensation schemes.
The Senate inquiry presents an opportunity to construct a scheme tailored to the unique circumstances of professional sport – one that is no less generous than those applying to other Australian workers.
Eric Windholz does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Millions of dead fish float on the surface of the river. Native bony herring and introduced young carp, as well as a few mature Murray cod and golden perch. History is repeating on the Darling River at Menindee. This new fish kill is even worse than the enormous 2018–2019 fish kill. And it’s in almost the same location.
But how can so many fish die when we’ve been having so much rain and floods? What’s killing them?
In both 2018 and 2023, the immediate answer is the same: the fish ran out of oxygen. Five years ago, it was because the river was almost dry. This time, it’s likely to be factors like the heatwave days earlier, receding floodwaters, bacteria pulling oxygen from the water – and no escape.
But two events like this in five years speaks to a deeper cause. The Darling River – known as the Baaka by Barkandji Traditional Owners – is very sick. Too much of its water is siphoned off for agriculture. Our native fish are hardy. They’re used to extremes. But this is too much, even for them.
Short term pressure, long term pain
I was a member of the expert panel investigating the 2018–2019 Menindee fish kills. Everyone agreed the fish ran out of oxygen. It was a very dry period, and a cool front arriving after a heat wave mixed deep low-oxygen river water with the thin top layer which had oxygen.
But our panel also examined the long-term changes to the river. We found the long-term cause for the river’s decline was simple: too much water was being diverted upstream.
It wasn’t just climate change – it was irrigation. We warned it could happen again. Now it has.
Native bony bream died in their millions, as did young carp, golden perch and even Murray cod. Bill Ormonde, Author provided
When faced with such environmental disaster, our leaders tend to reach for Dorothea MacKellar’s famous poem, My Country, and its line about a land “Of droughts and flooding rains.” Coalition water ministers at both federal and state level confidently blamed the drought for the first fish kill. Now, NSW premier Dominic Perrottet has linked this kill to the recent floods.
This is part of the reason. But only part. When floodwaters engorged the Darling and its tributaries, it was a bonanza for bacteria that broke down dead wood lying on the floodplain. Unfortunately, this explosion of microorganisms had a devastating side effect: they sucked oxygen out of the water.
This is what’s known as a blackwater event (in reality, more greeny-brown). As the floodwaters moved downstream and the Darling’s flow decreased, millions of fish fled the floodplains and found themselves crammed back in the narrow river channel where they were hit by plummeting oxygen levels.
Desperate, the fish looked to escape. But upstream, their exit was blocked. In December, authorities had fully opened the gates to the Menindee main weir for the first time in a decade to let fish migrate. But now the gates are shut.
Fish could swim up river past the Menindee main weir in December – but as flows slowed, the gates have been shut. Richard Kingsworth, Author provided
They couldn’t get into the main Menindee Lakes, where they might have found water with more oxygen, as they were blocked by the regulators – large taps used mainly to let water out.
Could they escape downstream? Perhaps some did. But for millions of fish, there was no time. Their bodies will only make the problem worse, as tonnes of rotting fish deposit vast quantities of nutrients into the river. That’s great for bacteria, algae and some fish-eating birds. But it’s not healthy for the river, its fish, or its people.
Yes, fish kills have always occurred but not at this scale. The fundamental reason the fish of the Darling keep dying is because there is not enough water allowed to flow.
Since the 1980s, the Darling’s tributaries have steadily shrunk. The Macquarie, the Namoi, the Gwydir, the Border Rivers and the Condamine-Balonne are all shadows of the rivers they once were. Much of their water is captured in large dams, like Burrendong Dam, or intercepted by floodplain harvesting, which was legalised only last year by the NSW Government to the dismay of environmentalists and farmers downstream.
Just last week, before news of the fish kills at Menindee, water allocations in the Namoi and Gwydir Rivers were a staggering 113% and 275% respectively. That is to say, all the water farmers and other users could take from these rivers is well beyond the total flows left in the rivers.
River red gums rely on periodic flooding. Without floodwaters, they can die. Shutterstock
The fish kills at Menindee are the clearest sign yet of how policy and management have failed the Darling. These catastrophes were inevitable. And the pain isn’t limited to fish. We are suffering too.
Taxpayers forked out nearly half a billion dollars for a pipeline from the Murray to Broken Hill, which nearly ran out of water in 2019. Why? Because the Darling was no longer dependable. In 2019, the towns of Wilcannia and Brewarrina ran out of water, significantly affecting Aboriginal communities. Why? Because the Darling was so low.
Fish kills like this one make news for a few days, and then get forgotten. But unless we tackle the fundamental problem of a lack of water in our rivers, there will be many more to come. This is not a natural disaster. It is man-made.
Richard Kingsford receives funding from the Australian Research Council, New South Wales, Queensland, Victorian and South Australian Governments, the Murray-Darling Basin Authority and a range of non-government organisations, including World Wide Fund for Nature, The Nature Conservancy and philanthropic sources. He is a member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists and a councillor on the Biodiversity Council. He is also part of the Next Generation Water Management Hub led by Charles Sturt University (funded through the Regional Research Collaboration Program of the Department of Education of the Australian Government), focusing on fish ecology and management.
Sydney World Pride and Mardi Gras 2023 were a huge success. Sydney was activated in a way rarely seen – block and street parties, cultural festivals and dance parties for all tastes. Now that the beats have diminished and the glitter has settled, viewing Pride (R)evolution at the State Library of New South Wales made it all the more richer and remarkable for me. This show is an astonishing survey of the importance of difference.
Pride (R)evolution is one of just five serious, in-depth exhibitions about queer culture held in Sydney during Pride: the others were curator Margot Riley’s William Yang’s Sydneyphiles Reimagined,
University of New South Wales’ The Party – about the rich seam of Sydney’s club and dance parties from the 1970s to the 1990s, National Art School’s Queer Contemporary, including Richard Perram’s major exhibition, and the Powerhouse’s Absolutely Queer, with a focus on non-binary dressing and the current generation. It was the smaller, more agile spaces that held these significant shows, and not the larger, prominent galleries, such as has been happening in Melbourne.
Pride (R)evolution at the State Library of New South Wales is an astonishing survey of the importance of difference. Photography by Zoe J Burrell, courtesy of State Library NSW
Libraries and archives are incredibly important spaces as they can actively work to reflect the diversity of their constituents. The State Library of NSW has been collecting and analysing queer stories for decades. As gay life in NSW was criminalised until 1984 and policed much longer, much of the story survives in court records, sensationalist reporting, and traces left behind by queers themselves. Pride (R)evolution is remarkable for seeking out new voices via the queer community and reconnecting a whole series of broken threads.
It also tells the story of “good people” who are queer-friendly or queer-adjacent and who believed these stories deserved to to be saved. At the height of the AIDS crisis, many gay men died without a legal will and their life records were often destroyed. Some of those trailblazers include former Mitchell Librarian Margy Burns, an out lesbian who believed in “voices from below”, and library curator Sally Gray, who developed protocols to preserve the work of creatives.
Since Margot Riley lead-curated Coming Out in the 70s in 2019, State Library staff have been involved in a major push to bring in new collections and voices in time for World Pride. At the same time, the queer community itself has become intent on conserving its archives and memories – such as a major archivebuilding opened in Melbourne in 2021.
A curatorial collective worked with a consultation group of 30 community figures, activists and creators to bring in stories from across Sydney, including western suburbs and South Asian voices.
Curators such as Bruce Carter distilled the most powerful words and images from hundreds of metres of archives and thousands of images.
Exhibit from Pride (R)evolution. State Library NSW
Queering the State Library
The exhibition opens by queering the whole organisation: we have a section on Ida Leeson, the sapphic-appearing Mitchell Librarian (1932-46) who was the first woman to hold a senior post in an Australian library and who lived openly with Florence Birch, YWCA official – Leeson’s private papers were burned by her family.
A multi-path layout allows visitors to take any path they wish, complex and tracking in different directions like many queer lives. Bright, primary colours reflect the energy and activism of the lives we are about to meet.
How did we meet before apps? We learn about communication in the pre-digital age with the formation of both gay and lesbian presses, examples of classified ads, phone lines, and computer dating services.
Who was present? We learn about Indigenous Australian involvement in Mardi Gras: Malcolm Cole, who featured as Captain Cook in the 1988 Mardi Gras, and who was the first Indigenous man to be commemorated with a death notice in the gay press in 1995.
What about anti-violence initiatives? I had forgotten we were encouraged to wear whistles, as the violence had become so bad by the early 1990s. The whistle necklace became a fashion cue, an example of resistance merged with style politics.
Whistle culture remains at pride marches today. Shutterstock
Authentic and domestic lives
How was all this social change cobbled together in the pre-internet age? Original painted and collaged designs for Mardi Gras posters highlight a messy materiality.
There is a strong “Do it yourself” and agitprop aspect to much of the work that meshes with postmodern irreverence and the blurring of boundaries.
Art, craft, design, jewellery, performance, fashion, fun: labels didn’t matter, and no one really cared what they were doing or wearing so long as it enabled them to better live an authentic life.
Gay lives are also domestic lives. There is that great rarity, a 1938 photo album of the modern furnished Astor apartment of Fred James and George Anderson, a couple who had met in Hollywood and were in the beauty business.
There is also a terrific section on 1970s gay share houses as spaces for “reinvention and kinship”.
The apartment of Fred James and George Anderson. State Library of NSW
Sound and voices
Sound features strongly in the exhibition. There are voices drawn from oral histories and even soundbites from gay community radio and helplines. We can listen to a recreated lecture by important gay activist and historian Garry Wotherspoon. These digital assets allow for intergenerational understanding and transfer.
Drag queens have been called the “social workers” of the gay community for the work they undertook advocating for queer people during the AIDS crisis. Their stories, including of the sex work they often undertook, are told respectfully with reference to figures including famous Whanganui Mâori trans woman Carmen Rupe (I miss her darting around on her motorised scooter, tropical flowers in hair).
Carmen Rupe was a New Zealand drag performer, anti-discrimination activist, would-be politician and HIV/AIDS activist. Wikimedia Commons
Not alone in history
Incredible 1970s photographs of the transfeminine community of Kings Cross taken by the theatrical designer Bary Kay are shown for the first time. We learn about Roberta Perkins, a trans woman who advocated for sex workers’ rights. NSW was the first jurisdiction in the world to decriminalise sex work in 1995.
“Predecessors confirm that you are not alone in history”, notes Archie Barrie. Pride (R)evolution is a live example of how collections and archives enable citizenship.
People have a right to be seen and find themselves in public institutions: “you are each living your own stories”. This intergenerational dialogue permits us to see how far we have come, how the “personal is always political, and the private often becomes public”.
Peter McNeil does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hal Pawson, Professor of Housing Research and Policy, and Associate Director, City Futures Research Centre, UNSW Sydney
Pandemic-generated pressures have left our rental housing market reeling. Australia-wide, vacancy rates are at rock-bottom levels. Rents are soaring at record rates.
Our report for Queensland Council of Social Service (QCOSS), released today, outlines the huge scale of the state’s housing challenge. Our analysis shows that unmet need for social housing in Queensland now exceeds 100,000 households. That’s five times the official waiting list number.
Little wonder Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk convened an extraordinary housing summit in October 2022. Yet, while partly primed by the pandemic, many current housing policy challenges, for both Queensland and Australia, have been building for decades. Perhaps the most important of these have been the ongoing fall in home ownership rates, especially among younger adults, and our increasingly inadequate social housing system.
A camp set up by people without homes in Queensland, where recent increases in homelessness have outpaced all other states. Shutterstock
None of this is to say that Queensland’s current situation can simply be blamed on state government inaction in the immediate past. Our report recognises the state government has made progress, for example, on significant rental reforms in its current term.
The Queensland treasurer also announced substantial new funding for social housing as part of the state’s 2021 post-pandemic economic recovery package. This investment built on commitments made before the public health crisis.
Then, at the 2022 housing summit, Palaszczuk pledged to double the government’s Housing Investment Fund to $2 billion. This will generate a flow of investment subsidies for social and affordable house-building. This is housing available at subsidised rents to very low-income households and workers on modest incomes respectively.
The 2022 change of government in Canberra means there is also now a prospect of renewed Commonwealth investment in such housing. Some of this funding will flow to Queensland.
But such initiatives follow a decade of generally intensifying housing stress. Only recently have federal and (some) state governments woken up to this policy challenge.
For example, social housing construction in Queensland averaged only around 500 dwellings a year in the decade to 2020. While the state’s population grew by 17% in the decade to 2021, social housing stock expanded by just 2%. So, effectively there has been a big cut in capacity.
Recently-promised Queensland and Commonwealth investments in social housing signal a welcome supply boost in coming years. But there’s a vast amount of ground to make up.
The Queensland government’s expanded use of private rental assistance products, such as bond loans and rental grants, is unlikely to greatly reduce housing need in current market conditions.
Likewise, recently-pledged social housing investment is only a start. By our calculations, even to prevent an increase in the current scale of need, at least 1,500 new units per year – and possibly as many as 2,700 – are needed. Either way, that’s well above annual output expected under existing state commitments.
Our report argues that the scale, intricacy and deep-rootedness of Australia’s housing problems demand radical, wide-ranging and sustained action by both levels of government.
In some cases, it’s mainly a matter of building on recent or ongoing state initiatives. For example, Queensland could – and should – further expand the Housing Investment Fund to ramp up social housing construction. It should also extend rental reform.
Some other recommended measures partially echo proposals by construction and real estate industry bodies. The government could, for example, encourage purpose-built – “build to rent” – rental housing. While not directly contributing to low-cost housing, these projects will expand overall housing supply and broaden consumer choice.
Another recommended measure is for Queensland to follow the ACT by phasing in a broad-based land tax to replace stamp duty. Overwhelmingly backed by mainstream economists, this change would remove a barrier to moving house. It would also promote more efficient use of existing housing stock and discourage speculative investment.
Importantly, many desirable measures would benefit the housing system, yet at little or no cost to government. For example, regulatory reforms are needed to better protect hard-pressed private renters by reducing insecurity and limiting rent increases. The state could also use its supervisory powers more purposefully to reduce underlying pressure on rents resulting from unchecked flows of long-term rental properties into short-term Airbnb lets.
In tackling the complexities of Australia’s housing crisis, governments must recognise that one-off, cherry-picked initiatives are liable to be ineffective or even counter-productive. If they are serious about tackling the problem, they must commit to a coherent package of reforms within a meaningful overarching strategy.
We can only hope the Commonwealth’s National Housing and Homelessness Plan – the first of its kind in Australia – opens up a pathway to rebalancing our housing system. Mobilising all of the many tools at its disposal, Queensland must act in concert.
Hal Pawson receives funding from the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI), the Australian Research Council (ARC), the Queensland Council of Social Service (QCOSS) and Crisis UK. He is a non-executive director of Community Housing Canberra
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne
Dan Himbrechts/Paul Braven/AAP
The New South Wales state election will be held on Saturday. I had a preview of both the lower and upper houses last week.
A Resolve poll for The Sydney Morning Herald, conducted March 14-19 from a sample of 1,000, gave the Coalition 38% of the primary vote (up six since late February), Labor 38% (steady), the Greens 8% (down three), independents 8% (down five) and others 8% (up one).
No explicit two party estimate was given, but the SMH article talks about a 4.5% swing to Labor from the 2019 election, implying a 52.5-47.5 lead for Labor; this would be a 3.5% gain for the Coalition since the late February Resolve poll.
As I have predicted previously, the use of actual ballot papers in this poll sharply reduced independent support. Not every seat has strong independent candidates.
In late February, Resolve was a pro-Labor outlier, with Newspoll, Freshwater and Morgan NSW polls giving Labor between 52 and 53% two party. Since Labor won the May 2022 federal election, Resolve has usually had better results for state and federal Labor than other polls.
As my preview article suggested, Labor would probably not win a lower house majority if this poll were replicated on election day, and a hung parliament would be a strong chance.
Incumbent Liberal Dominic Perrottet led Labor leader Chris Minns by 40-34 as preferred premier (38-34 in late February). Perrottet’s net good rating improved 15 points to +20, with 52% rating his performance good and 32% poor. Minns’ net good rating also improved seven points to +20.
AUKUS and defence federal Resolve questions
A federal Resolve poll for Nine newspapers was conducted March 12-16 from a sample of 1,600. So far only questions on AUKUS and defence have been released.
By 50-16, voters supported the specific AUKUS deal to buy nuclear submarines. On generic support for nuclear submarines, 25% said they actively supported them (up three since November 2021), 39% said they didn’t have strong feelings, but nuclear submarines were acceptable (up five), and 17% were opposed (down three).
On defence spending, 39% said we should spend more than our current 2% of GDP on defence, 31% the same amount and 9% less or nothing. By 65-8, respondents thought Taiwan was an independent state over being part of China.
On threats to Australia, 52% thought Russia and/or China are a threat, but one that can be managed with careful relationships over time (up three since January), 28% that they are a major threat that will need to be confronted soon (down three) and 6% they are not a threat at all (down one).
Additional Newspoll question: Voice support drops
In the last federal Newspoll that I covered two weeks ago, an additional question, reported by The Poll Bludger, had 53% supporting the Indigenous Voice to parliament (down three since the early February Newspoll) and 38% opposed (up one).
Early March Essential poll
In the federal Essential poll, conducted before March 7 from a sample of 1,141, voters were asked to rate Albanese and Dutton from 0 to 10. Ratings of 0-3 were counted as poor, 4-6 as neutral and 7-10 as positive. Albanese had a 40-27 positive rating (47-22 in February), while Dutton was at 33-26 negative (35-26 previously).
By 50-19, voters supported the super changes that would limit tax concessions for those with over $3 million in super. By 42-22, voters supported cancelling the stage three tax cuts when told they disproportionately benefit those earning incomes over $180,000.
By 70-23, voters did not think it likely they would have over $3 million in super when they retired. By 51-49, voters said they were financially struggling rather than secure (53-47 in February). By 51-49, they thought they would be struggling when they retire.
WA poll: McGowan’s ratings slump but are still high
The Poll Bludger reported on March 14 that a Painted Dog Western Australian poll of 1,052 respondents gave Labor Premier Mark McGowan a 63% approval rating (down seven since October), and a 24% disapproval (up six). New Liberal leader Libby Mettam had a 24% approval rating, 18% disapproval.
NT Labor easily holds Arafura at byelection
A byelection in the Northern Territory occurred on Saturday in the NT seat of Arafura owing to the death of the previous Labor member. Labor defeated the Country Liberal Party (CLP) by an emphatic 68.9-31.1 (53.6-46.4 at the 2020 NT election). Primary votes were 66.3% Labor, 29.6% CLP and 4.1% Federation Party.
Arafura has a large Indigenous population, and has been held by Labor since its creation in 1983, except for one term in 2012, when the CLP gained it. Labor is the incumbent NT government, and this is a great result for a government in a government-held seat at a byelection.
Adrian Beaumont does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The controversial 2021 decision by the government drug-buying agency Pharmac to prioritise Māori and Pacific patients in its funding of two game-changing new diabetes drugs appears to have paid off.
At the time, Pharmac wanted to restrict funding to those diabetes patients who met certain health criteria. The Diabetes Foundation, however, warned that hundreds of New Zealanders would die earlier than they should without full funding for everyone.
After sustained lobbying, Pharmac decided to prioritise funding for Māori and Pacific patients without needing to meet additional criteria. It described the decision as an important step forward in improving equity for these groups.
Our recent research, to be published later this year, shows Pharmac has indeed been able to significantly improve access for these communities, which are over-represented in diabetes statistics.
Health costs of old medicines
An estimated 11% of New Zealand’s annual health budget goes towards treating diabetes. Māori are three times more likely to be affected by diabetes than Pākehā, and Pacific people are five times more likely.
Mortality rates for Māori with type 2 diabetes are also seven times higher than for non-Māori. And it is predicted that one in four Pacific people will have the disease within 20 years.
Traditional approaches to managing diabetes in New Zealand include medications such as metformin and insulin. These are both relatively cheap and fully funded.
However, despite the fact they are both affordable and accessible, they’re not always sufficient to maintain optimal long-term blood sugar levels. This puts patients at a much higher risk of diabetes-related complications, including cardiovascular disease and hospitalisation.
Costly but effective
Insulin also tends to lead to weight gain, which can be frustrating beacuse maintaining a healthy weight is important to managing diabetes.
However, the two new diabetes drugs approved for use in New Zealand have both been shown to cause dramatic improvements in blood glucose levels and weight. They also protect the heart and kidney from diabetes-related damage.
These drugs are relatively expensive, with the approved options in New Zealand costing approximately NZ$58 a pill (Jardiance and Jardiamet, for example) or $115 per injection pen (Trulicity).
But these treatments have the advantage of not only optimising diabetes management and quality of life for patients, but also potentially reducing the likelihood of diabetes-related hospital costs down the track.
The decision to fund the drugs for some
With a limited annual budget of just over $1 billion, Pharmac has declined to fund these new diabetes medications for everyone. It’s an understandable position. Across the board, many lifesaving drugs are extremely expensive. Just 10% of people receiving subsidised medications account for over 80% of the money spent.
Initially, Pharmac opted to fund the new diabetes drugs by special authority, requiring funded patients to meet specific clinical criteria. However, this would not have addressed health inequality for Māori and Pacific patients.
Eventually, Pharmac agreed to focus its funding on the groups hit hardest by the illness. In a first for the agency, all Māori and Pacific patients with current type 2 diabetes could access these drugs without the need to meet any further clinical criteria.
The decision was not without criticism, with the Diabetes Foundation accusing Pharmac of “penny pinching” on drugs. There is also the concern that some patients can only get funding for one of the drugs, when a combination of both might achieve better results.
Targeted funding works
But has the decision to fund with ethnicity as a criterion worked? Have we seen more Māori and Pacific patients prescribed these drugs?
Long story short – yes. Pharmac’s decision does appear to have made a significant difference in the number of Māori and Pacific patients accessing the new medications.
In a 2021/2022 review of over 50,000 patients with type 2 diabetes from Auckland and Waikato – 20% of whom were Māori and 20% Pacific peoples – the proportion of Māori and Pacific patients with cardiovascular and renal disease who were prescribed these drugs was significantly higher than other groups (42% versus 30%).
In those without cardiovascular and renal complications, the rates were even higher (55% versus 30%). These figures are a big step towards ensuring equitable health outcomes for our tangata whenua and Pacific peoples.
The next step to assess the efficacy of this new funding model will be to look at whether there has been a reduction in hospitalisations and GP visits. While it is too soon to tell, data from overseas – where these drugs have been available for around 15 years – suggest this will be the case.
Of course, this does not solve the issues around longstanding inequities in healthcare in Aotearoa New Zealand. But the targeted funding appears to have achieved some improvements in the management of diabetes. Considering this success, will Pharmac consider ethnicity as a criterion for other medicines as well?
Lynne Chepulis receives funding from the Health Research Council of New Zealand. She is an executive member of the New Zealand Society for the Study of Diabetes.
New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.
Analysis by By Geoffrey Miller.
Political Roundup: NZ’s Middle East strategy, 20 years after the Iraq War
This week marks the twentieth anniversary of the Iraq War.
While it strongly opposed the US-led invasion, New Zealand’s then Labour-led government led by Prime Minister Helen Clark did deploy military engineers to try to help rebuild Iraq in mid-2003.
With violence soaring, their 12-month deployment ended without being renewed further, in 2004.
However, New Zealand re-entered Iraq in 2015 as part of the international coalition against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) terrorist group.
The emergence and growth of ISIS was one of many unintended consequences of the Iraq War’s disastrous and bloody aftermath.
The Government announced last year that the remaining two New Zealand personnel deployed as part of the coalition will be withdrawn by the end of June.
New Zealand first opened an embassy in Baghdad in 1975 – one of its first missions in the Middle East – only to close it again in 1983.
An embassy was re-established in Iraq in 2015 to support military operations, but the post was again closed in 2020 as the anti-ISIS mission wound down.
The time might be right for New Zealand to take another look at Iraq.
The past twenty years have been a long bloody road – but there is now a little optimism in the air.
Monthly civilian deaths caused by conflict in Iraq are now at their lowest levels since the US invaded in 2003, according to the Iraq Body Count group.
And the surprise pledge by Iran and Saudi Arabia to restore diplomatic ties has the potential to reshape the region.
Behind the unexpected deal was an unexpected mediator – China – but much of the groundwork had also been laid by Iraq in talks that began in 2021. The Gulf state of Oman has also played a pivotal role.
In theory, Iraq – which has significant Sunni, Shia and Kurdish populations and sits geographically between Saudi Arabia and Iran – is perhaps a natural location for attempts to de-escalate regional tensions.
Baghdad hosted a major new summit initiative co-organised with French President Emmanuel Macron in 2021, which inspired a follow-up event in Jordan in December that was dubbed ‘Baghdad II’.
The Iranian and Saudi foreign ministers spoke to each other on the sidelines of the conference in Amman, the Jordanian capital.
Iran has arguably been the big winner of ongoing turmoil and unrest in Iraq since 2003.
Many political parties have the backing of Tehran, as do militia groups that operate under the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) banner.
Last year, the PMF managed to quell protests outside Baghdad’s powerful Green Zone area from supporters of Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose party had won the biggest share of the vote in 2021 elections.
Sadr has now withdrawn from the political process. The outcome has been the formation of a government by the Coordination Framework bloc of anti-Sadr Shiite parties, led by new Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ Al Sudani.
It remains to be seen whether a government that excludes the most popular party led by Sadr can gain legitimacy in the eyes of Iraqis, or whether it can solve long-standing problems including rampant corruption, general economic malaise, poverty and high unemployment.
Around a quarter of Iraq’s population of 43 million live below the poverty line, while over a third of young people aged under 24 are unemployed.
It is also unclear whether the Saudi-Iranian resumption of diplomatic ties will grow into something more – and whether Iran will dial down its role in Iraqi domestic politics.
But China’s involvement in the deal suggests that Iran and Saudi Arabia may have realised there is more to be gained from working together than fighting old battles.
In addition to being a major player in Iraq, Iran has also been a key actor in long-running civil wars in Syria and Yemen.
The war in Syria has killed over 300,000 civilians and created over five million refugees – with many others displaced internally. The conflict in Yemen – called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis by the UN’s World Food Programme, has led directly or indirectly to some 400,000 deaths.
In both conflicts, Iran and Saudi Arabia have backed opposing sides – and supplied ample weaponry.
However, the civil wars may finally be coming to an end.
Reports have suggested that Tehran agreed to stop sending arms to Houthi rebels in Yemen as part of the deal with Saudi Arabia, while there are signs that Riyadh is facing up to the fact that President Bashar al-Assad has defeated Saudi-backed rebels in Syria.
Peace would be good news for the Middle East.
However, a deal involving China, Iran and Saudi Arabia – matched with Assad’s likely victory in Syria – shows the shifts will probably come without democracy.
The commitment by Tehran and Riyadh to at least contemplate burying the hatchet – with Beijing’s assistance – shows that a more economic focus could be on the horizon.
For New Zealand, which has maintained embassies in Beijing, Tehran and Riyadh for decades, any rapprochement could boost long-term trade prospects in the Middle East.
Iran – now home to 80 million people – was once the second-biggest buyer of New Zealand lamb.
For its part, Iraq holds the fifth-largest proven oil reserves in the world.
Newly-built skyscrapers in the Kurdish-controlled northern city of Erbil show that this wealth is already being felt by some – if not by all.
Syria – which also suffered enormously from last month’s Turkish earthquake – and Yemen will need much greater reconstruction efforts. However, the rebuild could happen faster than expected, especially if Chinese investment is forthcoming.
Iraq, Syria and Yemen are also likely to benefit from their relative proximity to the wealthy Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries of the Arabian Peninsula, which already constitute New Zealand’s seventh-biggest export market.
However, not everything is straightforward with the Saudi-Iran deal.
For one, Iran is supplying dozens of killer Shahed drones to Russia for use in its unrelenting war on Ukraine.
And Amnesty International last week said Iran’s security forces have used ‘horrific’ tactics – including torture and rape – to crush recent human rights protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini in September.
Nanaia Mahuta, New Zealand’s foreign minister, recently condemned Iran’s ‘violent repression of protest activity’ in a speech to the UN Human Rights Council – and imposed travel bans and other restrictions on members of the country’s leadership.
New Zealand may be wary of getting involved too deeply in the Middle East.
Change is clearly underway – but the region is likely to remain a diplomatic minefield.
But if Beijing is interested, Wellington probably should be too.
New Zealand may want to think about re-opening its embassy in Baghdad – again.
Geoffrey Miller is the Democracy Project’s geopolitical analyst and writes on current New Zealand foreign policy and related geopolitical issues. He has lived in Germany and the Middle East and is a learner of Arabic and Russian. He is currently working on a PhD on New Zealand’s relations with the Gulf states.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Leah Ruppanner, Professor of Sociology and Founding Director of The Future of Work Lab, The University of Melbourne
You’ve probably heard about the “great resignation” which saw large numbers of people resigning from their jobs in the US in 2021 and 2022.
We didn’t see resignations over and above what is normal in Australia. However, we did see workers resisting the post-COVID return to the office.
To better understand these trends, we conducted a study of 1,400 employed Australians in 2022 to see how they were faring two years after the start of the pandemic.
And the answer is: not great.
Australian workers are in poorer physical and mental health since the pandemic across all ages and stages. And prime-aged workers – those between 25 and 55 – are reporting the greatest burn-out.
Some 50% of prime-aged workers in our survey feel exhausted at work. About 40% reported feeling less motivated about their work than pre-pandemic, and 33% found it more difficult to concentrate at work because of responsibilities outside of work.
They also see fewer opportunities for advancement than older workers and are more likely to feel like they don’t have enough time at work to do everything they need to do.
It’s perhaps no surprise 33% of this prime-aged workforce is thinking about quitting. These workers may be showing up to their jobs but they are definitely burnt out. They are the “quiet quitters” and they are sounding the alarm bell.
The pandemic, particularly lockdowns, took a significant toll on the mental health of the Australian workforce. Although we’ve been desperately waiting for life to return to “normal”, pandemic-related disruptions remain.
Our previous research during the pandemic showed women and parents were particularly vulnerable. We found mothers stepped into the added childcare and housework driven by pandemic lockdowns. We discovered fathers also did more housework and child care over the first year of the pandemic.
The consequence of all of this added work was poorer mental health – worse sleep, less calm, more anxiety.
We also showed this intensified women’s economic precarity, leading to reduced contributions to superannuation and fear of jobs being lost without the skills to re-enter employment.
Women are increasingly concentrated in industries such as nursing, childcare workers and primary school teachers, all of which were particularly impacted by the pandemic. Young prime-aged women were particularly impacted during the early period of the pandemic and lockdowns.
The pandemic was unforeseen, severe and detrimental to our working lives. Many Australia workplaces and workers continue to be impacted as the pandemic continues. Higher numbers of workers are taking sick leave, which may in part be driven by exhaustion and other COVID-related reasons.
Women took on more of the housework and care burden during the pandemic. pexels/kampus production, CC BY
Where do we go from here?
Australian workers in our survey have some clear solutions. They found access to flexible work particularly valuable for their working lives. In our study, we found flexible workers had more energy for their work and a greater motivation to do their jobs. They reported more time to complete their tasks.
Around 40% of all flexible workers reported feeling more productive since the start of the pandemic, compared to around 30% of non-flexible workers.
And 75% of workers under the age of 54 reported that a lack of flexible work options in their workplace would motivate them to leave or look for another job.
Flexible work is working for many in the Australian workforce. Australian employers would do well to identify ways to expand its reach to a larger segment of the workforce or risk suppressed productivity and loss of their workers.
As we rush to return to pre-pandemic “normal”, our report identifies two critical points.
The Australian workforce is burnt-out and exhausted. We need to acknowledge the trauma of the pandemic is lingering and identify clear solutions to support this exhausted, fatigued and overexerted workforce.
We must understand pre-pandemic ways of working didn’t work for many. It especially didn’t work for mothers. It didn’t work for caregivers. It didn’t work for people living with chronic illness. It didn’t work for groups vulnerable to discrimination at work. It didn’t work for people forced to commute long distances. So, going “back to normal” means continued disadvantage for these groups.
This means creating new ways of working, including flexible work, is essential to ensuring the Australian workforce has the energy for tomorrow and the next major challenge we will face.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Beckett, Senior Lecturer (Food Science and Human Nutrition), School of Environmental and Life Sciences, University of Newcastle
You’ve probably heard about the medication Ozempic, used to manage type 2 diabetes and as a weight loss drug.
Ozempic (and the similar drug Wegovy) has had more than its fair share of headlines and controversies. A global supply shortage, tweets about using it from Elon Musk, approval for adolescent weight loss in the United States. Oscars host Jimmy Kimmel even joked about it on film’s night of nights last week.
But how much do we really need drugs like Ozempic? Can we use food as medicine to replace them?
How does Ozempic work?
The active ingredient in Ozempic is semaglutide, which works byinducing satiety. This feeling of being satisfied or “full”, suppresses appetite. This is why it works for weight loss.
Semaglutide also helps the pancreas produce insulin, which is how it helps manage type 2 diabetes. Our body needs insulin to move the glucose (or blood sugar) we get from food inside cells, so we can use it as energy.
Semaglutide works by mimicking the role of a natural hormone, called GLP-1 (glucagon like peptide-1) normally produced in response to detecting nutrients when we eat. GLP-1 is part of the signalling pathway that tells your body you have eaten, and prepare it to use the energy that comes from your food.
The nutrients that trigger GLP-1 secretion are macronutrients – simple sugars (monosaccharides), peptides and amino acids (from proteins) and short chain fatty acids (from fats and also produced by good gut bacteria). There are lots of these macronutrients in energy-dense foods, which tend to be foods high in fat or sugars with a low water content. There is evidence that by choosing foods high in these nutrients, GLP-1 levels can be increased.
This means a healthy diet, high in GLP-1 stimulating nutrients can increase GLP-1 levels. This could be foods with good fats, like avocado or nuts, or lean protein sources like eggs. And foods high in fermentable fibres, like vegetables and whole grains, feed our gut bacteria, which then produce short chain fatty acids able to trigger GLP-1 secretion.
This is why high fat, high fibre and high protein diets can all help you feel fuller for longer. It’s also why diet change is part of both weight and type 2 diabetes management.
However, it’s not necessarily that simple for everyone. This system also means that when we diet, and restrict energy intake, we get more hungry. And for some people that “set point” for weight and hunger might be different.
Some studies have shown GLP-1 levels, particularly after meals, are lower in people with obesity. This could be from reduced production of GLP-1, or increased breakdown. The receptors that detect it might also be less sensitive or there might be fewer receptors. This could be because of differences in the genes that code for GLP-1, the receptors or parts of the pathways that regulate production. These genetic differences are things we can’t change.
Foods with ‘good fats’ include eggs, avocados and salmon. Shutterstock
So, are injections the easier fix?
While diet and drugs can both work, both have their challenges.
Medications like Ozempic can have side effects including nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, and issues in other organs. Plus, when you stop taking it the feelings of suppressed appetite will start to go away, and people will start to feel hungry at their old levels. If you’ve lost lots of weight quickly, you may feel even hungrier than before.
Dietary changes have much fewer risks in terms of side effects, but the responses will take more time and effort.
In our busy modern society, costs, times, skills, accessibility and other pressures can also be barriers to healthy eating, feeling full and insulin levels.
Dietary and medication solutions often put the focus on the individual making changes to improve health outcomes, but systemic changes, that reduce the pressures and barriers that make healthy eating hard (like shortening work weeks or raising the minimum wage) are much more likely to make a difference.
It’s also important to remember weight is only one part of the health equation. If you suppress your appetite but maintain a diet high in ultra-processed foods low in micronutrients, you could lose weight but not increase your actual nourishment. So support to improve dietary choices is needed, regardless of medication use or weight loss, for true health improvements.
The old quote: “Let food be thy medicine” is catchy and often based on science, especially when drugs are deliberately chosen or designed to mimic hormones and compounds already naturally occurring in the body. Changing diet is a way to modify our health and our biological responses. But these effects occur on a background of our personal biology and our unique life circumstances.
For some people, medication will be a tool to improve weight and insulin-related outcomes. For others, food alone is a reasonable pathway to success.
While the science is for populations, health care is individual and decisions around food and/or medicine should be made with the considered advice of health care professionals. GPs and dietitians can work with your individual situation and needs.
Emma Beckett has received funding for research or consulting from Mars Foods, Nutrition Research Australia, NHMRC, ARC, AMP Foundation, Kellogg, and the University of Newcastle. She also works for Nutrition Research Australia. She is a member of committees/working groups related to nutrition or the Australian Academy of Science, the National Health and Medical Research Council and the Nutrition Society of Australia.
Human life on Earth is utterly dependent on biodiversity but our activities are driving an increase in extinctions. Yet some extinct species continue to hold our fascination. New methods in genetics and reproductive biology hold the promise that de-extinction – resurrecting extinct species – could soon be possible.
But bringing back extinct species is costly. Shouldn’t our focus be on preventing further extinctions?
Almost 20 years ago, for instance, it was looking like impending doom for the Tasmanian devil. It’s the world’s largest surviving marsupial carnivore after the loss of the thylacine. In the words of Oscar Wilde, “to lose both looks like carelessness”.
The enigmatic thylacine, also known as the Tasmanian tiger, continues to capture people’s attention. The size of a wolf, it was officially declared extinct in its last stronghold in Tasmania. Lost before it was ever appreciated or studied, the thylacine is known only from anecdotes.
An iconic symbol of extinction for many but also a symbol of hope, the thylacine has high cultural significance. This iconic animal might still be here if the European colonisers of Tasmania had appreciated a few decades earlier just how unique the thylacine was, as the last member of the marsupial carnivore family Thylacinidae, and stopped persecuting it.
A new book, Thylacine: The History, Ecology and Loss of the Tasmanian Tiger, presents new evidence-based knowledge about the thylacine in 78 contributions (I wrote the introduction). New scientific and historical methods and large databases mean we can learn much about the ecology and history of this animal from remains it left behind – bones, DNA in skin and bones, rock art, oral histories and historical records.
To stem the rate of extinctions we need to better understand the processes of extinction and the species we have lost. To restore species and ecosystems, we need to know the context of how loss of species and their ecological functions has already changed the natural world.
Preventing further extinctions and recovering threatened species need to be the priority. Even common species can slip away rapidly before we notice.
The Tasmanian devil was widespread and abundant before a unique transmissible cancer emerged, cause unknown. Within 30 years of its appearance in the mid-1990s, it spread across the devil’s island range. The population was reduced by 80%.
European colonists’ hunting of the thylacine was not the sole cause of its extinction. AAP/Supplied image
The final demise of the thylacine in the early 1900s appeared rapid and is not easily explained by persecution for alleged sheep killing or disease.
Many of us still hold out hope the thylacine will be found again. We rarely know the exact date and time of a species extinction. And more than half of Tasmania is remote and unchanged – rugged country that would have supported low numbers of thylacines.
The thylacine’s former strongholds in productive parts of Tasmania are now farmed and humans have dramatically altered the landscape in other ways. People still report seeing thylacines, but sightings are subject to psychological biases. In other words, we need a verifiable record of an actual live thylacine to confirm its existence.
Still, despite the compounding odds against its rediscovery, the thylacine offers hope.
To restore ecosystems, we need to understand what’s lost
To conserve species and restore ecosystems effectively we have to understand historical context.
The thylacine was an apex predator, at the top of the food chain, albeit one that hunted smaller prey relative to its size. This meant it competed for prey with smaller carnivores. Thylacines may have shaped the behaviour and reduced the abundance of devils and quolls and their prey, wallabies and pademelons. This competition thus affected how the devil and quolls evolved in terms of prey size and the size of their canine teeth.
The Tasmanian devil evolved alongside the thylacine and for a while looked like following it into extinction. Author provided
Losing one species can have cascading effects on the loss of others. The significance of the co-extinction of the single known host-specific parasite of the thylacine is unknown. However, the important role of parasites in ecosystems is generally under-appreciated.
In some places, this knowledge is associated with rock art depictions, which may be regarded as being made by ancestral beings. Oral or written stories are important in maintaining a connection to the animal and for reimagining the future. They nourish the hope of seeing the animal again and imagining a connection to its legacy.
In Tasmania, there are constant reminders of the thylacine, which features on logos and the Tasmanian coat of arms.
The thylacine might be gone but, in our enthusiasm for seeking knowledge of its ecology, there is still hope it will turn up once again.
The thylacine played an important role in Tasmanian ecosystems and on the Australian mainland. Understanding this role and the factors leading to its extinction provides important context for saving other species and for restoring ecosystems.
Menna Elizabeth Jones wrote the introduction to the book discussed in the article, Thylacine: The History, Ecology and Loss of the Tasmanian Tiger.
Australian schools have been under huge pressures in recent years. On top of concerns about academic progress and staff shortages, schools have faced significant, ongoing disruptions due to COVID and major flooding disasters.
In response, there has been considerable attention rightly given to students, families and classroom teachers. But what about the people tasked with leading their schools through these unprecedented times? We have been surveying Australian principals and other school leaders – such as deputy principals and assistant principals – for more than a decade.
Previous reports from this project have highlighted ongoing challenges for school leaders, even during the first difficult year of COVID. But while there are some consistent themes, this year’s report shows there has been a significant, worrying shift.
The situation is more serious and pressing than previously reported: many Australian principals are on the verge of a crisis.
Our survey has collected data every year since 2011 and is now the most significant and longest-running survey of its type in the world.
Each year we have been able to survey around 2,000 school leaders about what is happening in their jobs. This includes tracking their health and wellbeing.
To date, the project has collected data from over 7,100 individual school leaders across government, independent and Catholic schools, all around the country. Given there are around 10,000 schools across Australia, this is a major source of evidence.
Three major findings stand out from the 2022 report.
1. Sources of stress are changing and growing
Each year, participants rate 19 sources of stress on a scale of one (not stressful) to ten (extremely stressful). We then rank all 19 based on the average score for each stressor.
Unsurprisingly, sheer workload and lack of time to focus on teaching and learning have been the two top stressors every year.
This year, however, the impact of teacher shortages has risen from a ranking of 12 in 2021 to three in 2022. On top of this, and for the first time, supporting the mental health of students and teachers combined to make the top five.
The average scores also continue to increase to the highest levels we have seen. For example, in 2021, student mental health scored an average of 7.0. In 2022 its average was 7.3. Teacher mental heath rose from an average of 6.7 to 7.2.
For the first time in the history of the survey, there are seven sources of stress with an average score higher than 7.0. On top of work levels, lack of time, teacher shortages and student and teacher mental health, this includes “student-related issues” and “expectations of employers”.
Seeing so many significant stressors clustered together is new. And their cumulative impact is highly concerning.
2. Parents are harassing and abusing principals
In trying to manage these complexities, school leaders are facing increasing levels of abuse and threatening behaviour.
Sadly, school leaders in our survey have historically suffered much higher levels of threatening and violent abuse than the general population. Prior to COVID-19, in 2019, nearly 50% of school leaders reported being threatened with violence. While this dropped to 43% during the first phases of COVID-19 (2020-2021), it now exceeds 50%.
Concerningly, school leaders reported parents as a major source of bullying and threatening behaviour.
In the 2022 survey, one third of participants report being subjected to bullying. When asked to say “from whom”, the highest result was “from parents” (19%). Conflicts and quarrels are reported by 60% of participants, mostly with parents (36%).
Gossip and slander was reported by 50% of participants, again, with most of these from parents (31%).
Part of our survey includes a “red flag” process. Because participants are telling us about their wellbeing, we will email them directly and confidentially if their responses suggest they should seek further professional help to protect their mental health.
These emails are intended to warn school leaders they are experiencing high stress levels and direct them to sources of support.
In 2022, an alarming 48% of school leaders received red-flag warnings. This is an enormous increase of 18% points in 2021 and the highest level since the start of the survey in 2011. Across 2017–2021, red-flag warnings averaged 29%, highlighting the significance of the 2022 result.
Our survey revealed almost half of those surveyed were experiencing high stress levels. Shutterstock
What can we do about it?
Principals and school leaders have spent the past three years steering their communities through a global pandemic and in some cases, devastating flooding and bushfires.
We know the teaching workforce is under stress and many teachers are leaving or intending to leave. We also know families and communities have been stressed and stretched by the pandemic and what this has meant for their work and home lives.
But we cannot forget school principals in our responses. Our research shows they are enduring more and different stressors on top of already huge workloads. But they are not getting the support they need, rather, in too many cases, they are enduring abuse and bullying from parents.
Our red flag process shows this is taking a highly concerning toll on the health and wellbeing of school leaders, just when we need them most.
This year’s survey results show, more than ever, school leaders need urgent and significant support.
Federal and state governments have recently responded to teacher shortages with a National Teacher Workforce Action Plan. It’s an important start, but our report shows the problem will compound if comparable strategies are not also developed for school leaders.
We now call on governments to specifically address the health and wellbeing of Australian school principals. We cannot acheive anything meaningful in education if our school leaders are not better supported to do their work, which is so critical to keeping teachers, students and school communities happy, safe and engaged.
Herb Marsh has received funding from ARC for this research in the past and currently receives funding from several Australian non-profit educational organisations and principal associations to continue the research on Principal Health and Wellbeing.
Theresa Dicke has received funding from ARC for this research in the past and currently receives funding from several Australian non-profit educational organisations and principal associations to continue the research on Principal Health and Wellbeing.
Paul Kidson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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