Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lotti Tajouri, Associate Professor, Genomics and Molecular Biology; Biomedical Sciences, Bond University
MBLifestyle/Shutterstock
The COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally changed many of our behaviours and attitudes towards infection control.
Hand hygiene was one of the earliest and most adopted measures to counteract the spread of disease, but there have been more technology-based approaches, too.
One example is the booming industry of devices that use ultraviolet radiation (UV) to kill germs. While UV can successfully sanitise the air, or objects such as your smartphone, it can also come with cancer risk if the radiation is not behind a proper barrier.
Here’s what you need to know about UV sanitation devices.
How does UV sanitation work?
Ultraviolet light is light with wavelengths just short enough that most humans can’t see it under normal conditions. The most ubiquitous source of UV is the Sun, which radiates everything from vacuum UV to far UVC, UVC, UVB and UVA rays (see below).
The last two can pass the ozone layer in our atmosphere, while the first three are blocked – good news for life on Earth, since UVC in particular can be harmful to living things.
Ultraviolet light is invisible to the eye, and spans from 10 to 400 nanometres in wavelength. petrroudny43/Shutterstock
At a wavelength of 250–260 nanometres, energy generated by UVC rays can penetrate through microbes to break their DNA and RNA, disrupting their cell functions and killing them.
This is useful for germicidal (germ-killing) UVC radiation technology, although its efficacy depends on radiation intensity, the distance from light source to target, the type of surface being sanitised, and the wavelength at which the UVC is operating.
The blue light you often see on such devices is either decorative, or the visible light emitted by the chemicals used to produce UVC – remember, the UV light itself is invisible.
According to research, sanitation devices that emit high doses of germicidal UVC are an efficient means of killing fungi, viruses, bacteria and protozoa – single-celled organisms. They have been successfully used in treating water, air, sewage, for food safety, medical settings, public transport and more.
The key is to have the UVC source fully enclosed and automatically stop if the device is open, so there’s no risk of exposing people to the radiation, which can cause severe burns and even increase the risk of cancer.
UV sanitation gadgets that operate without enclosure present serious health risks. Unfortunately, current lack of regulation means such devices are readily available for consumers to buy – and potentially be harmed by.
An electric toothbrush head steriliser that’s fully enclosed should be perfectly safe to use. grandbrothers/Shutterstock
A serious lack of regulation
Numerous companies have researched and developed safe, efficient and fully enclosed UVC devices.
However, the market is unregulated, with serious concerns about the quality and safety of some dubious devices available for consumers. In 2020, the lighting industry body Global Lighting Association raised its concerns:
“[I]n the midst of a global COVID-19 epidemic, GLA is concerned at the proliferation of UVC disinfecting devices – particularly being sold on the internet – with dubious safety features and inadequate safety instructions”.
UVC products without enclosure, such as the “disinfection wands” you might see on the internet, can be very unsafe. They can affect exposed skin, eyes and mucous membranes.
Due to health risks, any non-enclosed UVC device should only be remote-controlled or automatic. It should also be equipped with safeguards, such as a sensor that turns it off if it detects anyone in the room.
To ensure the safety and efficacy of UVC devices available on the consumer market, we need watchdog bodies to urgently introduce rigorous global regulations.
Very few human studies have been performed, and some have been funded by companies prototyping far UVC devices, which can introduce a bias. Literature search reviews report different analytic parameters, which makes comparisons difficult to interpret.
Some trials have started, but there are few to date, and with small sample sizes.
We will need trials with rigorous ethical approvals to investigate the full far UVC impact on humans. There is a lack of understanding how far UVC might affect people with thinner outer skin layers, affected by cuts, light sensitivity, or various medical conditions.
What to look out for if you still want a UV sanitation device
When it comes to buying a UVC gadget, buyer beware. Never buy anything that claims you can disinfect hands, the body, or a whole room while people are around. Skin cancers like basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma are attributed to UV exposure.
Check the documentation. Is there evidence the device is effective against microorganisms? What’s the length of exposure, and how far from the source is the target being sanitised?
You also need to be aware that the cost of efficient and safe new technology and efficient UVC-producing LEDs is very high. Therefore, you may need to question the effectiveness of a relatively “cheap” device.
In the absence of a global regulatory body within the UVC market, the rule of thumb is to purchase only a fully sealed, enclosed UVC device operating with strict safety and efficiency to harm microbes, not you.
Lotti Tajouri is affiliated with Dubai Police Scientist Council.
Simon McKirdy has provided scientific advice to Glissner.
Matthew Olsen and Rashed Alghafri 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.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joseph A Carpini, Lecturer, Organizational Behaviour and Human Resource Management, The University of Western Australia
Pharmacists are regularly sought after for advice, including about mental health. In fact, pharmacists may be among the first health professional contacted about a health concern. They are also in regular contact with patients experiencing mental health issues or crises.
The COVID pandemic has seen anxiety and depression increase by 25% globally, signalling a broader mental health decline.
Poor mental health affects around 20% of the Australian population each year, and 44% of Australians over their lifetime. In a recent survey of 11,000 people, 24% of them said their mental health had declined over the previous six months.
Most concerning is that about 60% of people experiencing a mental health issue won’t seek help. This means people are more likely to remain undiagnosed and disconnected from support.
Pharmacists’ many hats
While dispensing and consulting are critical activities for pharmacists, they also help patients with questions and advice about their health, including their mental health.
A lack of confidence in raising and addressing mental health-related issues means patients are likely to remain undiagnosed, untreated, and unsupported.
Many of us are familiar with first aid as immediate help offered to an injured or sick person. But what if the issue is not physical, but mental? Many people don’t know what immediate help they can offer.
As with physical injury or illness, timely and high-quality immediate help is critical.
There are a variety of not-for-profit and commercial mental health first aid training programs. A recent literature review of programs for mental health professionals suggests they can minimise stigma and increase knowledge. They can also bolster confidence and intentions to help.
Across the programs, there are four common elements to providing high-quality mental health first aid.
1. Recognise someone may be experiencing a mental health issue or crisis
Recognising a mental health issue or crisis involves taking notice of verbal, physical, emotional and behavioural indicators. Given pharmacists interact with patients about every three weeks, they may be in a good position to notice changes.
They may express sadness, anger, frustration, hopelessness, shame or guilt. Patients might say: “There’s no hope” or “I can’t go on like this”.
Physical indicators include fatigue, sleeping difficulties, restlessness, muscle tension, upset stomach, sweating, difficulty breathing, changes in appetite or weight.
Emotional indicators reflect how a person is feeling and include significant mood changes, teariness, agitation, anger, desperation or anxiety.
Symptom guides for anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, and suicidal ideation are available.
2. Approach and assesses the person
Opening the dialogue can be as simple as, “How are you? I have noticed [symptoms] and am concerned.”
Your role is not to clinically diagnose a patient; however, it is valuable to assess the patient’s risk and level of urgency. Risk and urgency will help inform whether the person is in immediate danger or can use other non-urgent support services.
The TED acronym can guide first discussions in the following way:
Tell me …
Explain how that has been impacting you …
Describe what is happening …
3. Listen in an active way and communicate without judgement
Active listening involves confirming you are hearing and understanding the other person. Ways of doing this include: nodding, appropriate eye contact, and summarising what has been shared.
Communicating without judgement involves demonstrating genuine concern for the other person and talking about their experience.
Open-ended questions usually use “how” and “what” queries. You could say something like: “I’ve noticed some changes recently, what’s happening for you?” or “I see you are filling a prescription for sleep tablets. How are you sleeping?”
4. Refer the person to supports
People who are struggling with their mental health can benefit from sharing details with professionals, like general practitioners, or family and friends – but they might need encouragement to seek this support out.
The support system recommended should match the level of urgency. Urgent services include Lifeline for free 24-hour phone, chat, and text message support. The Suicide Call Back Service is also a free 24/7 counselling service.
Research suggests almost 70% of patients believe all pharmacists should have mental health first aid training. Patients report feeling significantly more comfortable speaking about mental illness with a pharmacist with this training.
And emerging evidence shows mental health first aid training can increase the quality of help provided by pharmacists.
In our study, we found Australian pharmacists with mental health first aid training were more likely to intervene than untrained pharmacists.
While the overall quality of the first aid provided by both mental health first aid trained and untrained pharmacists was high, some key differences existed. Trained pharmacists assessed patients and encouraged other supports (such as from friends and family) more. They also felt more confident discussing suicide risk.
If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.
Joseph Carpini collaborates with Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) Australia on research projects. Specifically, MHFA Australia has assisted in the dissemination of surveys and recruitment of participants for other research studies that do not overlap with findings related to pharmacists. MHFA Australia was not involved in the research examining pharmacists in any way. Joseph does not receive compensation, directly or indirectly, from MHFA Australia. He has completed Mental Health First Aid training.
Deena Ashoorian collaborates with Mental Health First Aid Australia on research projects. In addition to being a pharmacist, Deena is an accredited Master Instructor of the Mental Health First Aid program.
Rhonda Clifford collaborates with students and colleagues to deliver MHFA research projects and other projects related to Mental Health.
Saturday night’s heart-stopping 34-31 Women’s Rugby World Cup victory by the New Zealand Black Ferns over England was more than a great game, it was a milestone in women’s sport in general.
Played in front of 42,500 spectators at Auckland’s Eden Park, traditional home of men’s rugby and renowned “fortress” of the All Blacks, the match showcased the unique atmosphere created by the women’s game.
And coming so soon after the team’s troubled 2021 northern hemisphere tour – when relationships between Black Ferns players, coaches and management publicly broke down – the World Cup triumph was also the culmination of a highly successful rebuilding program, based on a strong team culture grounded in te ao Māori.
So while the win offers an important opportunity to reflect on how far the women’s game has come, the challenge now is to apply those lessons and ensure the game and women’s sport overall continue to grow.
A man’s world no longer
Speaking after the final, Black Ferns coach Wayne Smith described the win as “the most phenomenal moment of my career”. Coming from a veteran of the men’s game, with a successful All Blacks and Super Rugby career behind him, it’s quite a claim.
But we have to ask why it has taken so long for the women’s game to see the kind of support it now receives. Part of the answer lies in rugby’s deeply entrenched history of being seen and valued as a male experience. It may be New Zealand’s national game, but that hasn’t meant rugby was seen as being for everyone.
In many ways, women’s rugby has been resisted, ignored and marginalised because it challenged dominant ideas about masculinity. While the women’s team has brought home more World Cup titles than the All Blacks have, they have been systemically underfunded and undervalued for decades.
It’s not just old-fashioned racism and sexism. Men have built rugby into their core identity. What does it mean if women are occupying that space?
In contrast to the fully professional English and French teams, the Black Ferns have only recently been offered some of the benefits of a professional performance program (which still pales in comparison to what the All Blacks receive).
Grassroots advocacy and cultural leadership
While women’s rugby may only recently have captured the attention of mainstream New Zealand, the women’s game (including the seven-a-side version) has long had a strong community of passionate advocates fighting for space, funding, visibility and infrastructural support.
Over many decades, these women – many of them Māori – have volunteered to sustain and develop the game, innovating with women-led approaches grounded in culture and community. As well as local and regional groups, Women in Rugby Aotearoa (WIRA) has fought to build and nurture the culture.
The women’s game also has a surprisingly long history in New Zealand, stretching back a century before the Black Ferns first won an international tournament. Farah Rangikoepa Palmer, a former Black Fern and now academic and deputy chair of the New Zealand Rugby Board, has written extensively about the important intersections of Māori culture, gender and ethnicity in the evolution of women’s rugby in Aotearoa.
Those intersections were more visible than ever at this year’s World Cup, with twirling poi, haka and waiata all contributing to an undeniable festival atmosphere at games. The cultural and gender diversity of the Black Ferns, and the displays of female strength, power, joy, charisma and leadership, seemed to connect with an increasingly multicultural New Zealand.
The Black Ferns were even credited with uniting the country after some difficult and divisive years. The team certainly offered a powerful vision of a more culturally inclusive society with mana wahine at the heart.
Show them the money
After years of women’s sports teams having to do a lot with a little, we are witnessing a significant turning of the tide. Audiences in New Zealand and around the world are coming to recognise the phenomenal capacity of women’s sport to entertain and inspire.
As the crowds turn up, television and sponsors are also increasingly waking up to the potential of women’s sport to reach new audiences – and to reinvigorate existing ones.
At the same time, the long association between rugby and masculinity in Aotearoa may finally be changing. More women and girls play the sport than ever before, and their contribution can only continue to grow.
But sports organisations now need to respond to this quickly changing landscape. The cultural and gender diversity on the field needs to be reflected in boards and leadership structures, with more equitable and longer-term investment plans. While this work is under way at New Zealand Rugby, organisational change is hard and takes sustained effort.
Players and supporters are now calling for Rugby New Zealand to properly invest in the women’s game. As Black Fern Sarah Hirini said after the Eden Park final:
I want someone to stand up and say they are going to back us, they are going to support us and they want to put big money into it. We’ve shown that we are a showcase, that we are exciting to watch […] The moment needs to carry on now, that’s just the start.
The old notion that people wouldn’t watch women’s sport is clearly a fallacy. But the new momentum has to be maintained. With funding, media coverage and investment, the future of women’s sport can be very bright indeed.
Holly Thorpe 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.
Have you had a recent encounter with an animal you’d much rather avoid? As La Niña continues to give us rainy days, brush turkeys, bats, and cockroaches are emerging from their hide-outs.
We often think of them as pests, but these animals are just trying their best to cope in the heavy rain. They’re also crucial members of our urban ecosystems, and help keep the environment healthy.
Here’s what makes them so fascinating and important to your neighbourhood.
Bats: heavy rain hinders echolocation
Australia is home to multiple threatened species of fruit bats and microbats, such as grey-headed flying foxes, large bent-wing bats, and spectacled flying foxes.
They’re typically considered nuisances for their noise, mess and potential spread of diseases. But bats are often forgotten for their ability to control insect pests, disperse seeds, and pollinate plants.
Bats face some serious threats in La Niña conditions. They can respond to periods of heavy rain by using a special physiological adaptation called torpor. In torpor, bats will sleep more and lower their body temperature so they can use less energy.
Microbat sp. giving a smile (this bat was handled by a gloved, trained professional. Never pick up a bat yourself) Image Credit Dieter Hochuli
In 2019, Smithsonian researchers played recordings of downpours near bat roosts, and found the bats delayed emerging from their roosts. Delayed emergence can lead to disorientated bats with a reduced capacity to find food.
In Australia, rain may affect microbats more than fruit bats because of where they live. Many species of microbats, such as the large bent-winged bat, live in culverts and under bridges, where higher water levels can rush through during heavy rain periods.
Fruit bats, such as flying foxes, don’t use echolocation, but rain can wet their fur and lower their body temperature. So they’ll often stay put in their roosts to keep warm during heavy rain.
It also costs a lot more energy for a bat to fly in the rain, making it harder to maintain a steady intake of food. If there is consecutive days of rain, bats may fall from their home due to starvation.
If you find a fallen bat, do not touch it. Instead, contact WIRES. Or, wait to see if they leave once the rain clears up.
Brush turkeys: reshape their mounds
Brush turkeys are a type of ground nesting bird found along Australia’s east coast, from Cape York in Queensland down to Wollongong in NSW. They’re particularly vulnerable to the effects of heavy rain, which can damage or wash out their nests.
But brush-turkeys can benefit the environment. As they scratch for food and build mounds, the birds help break down leaf litter and aerate the soil. This helps water and nutrients move throughout your soil, which ultimately helps your garden.
Brush-turkey on a mound. Image Credit Matthew Hall
Winter rainfall is the trigger for males to start building their mounds, as the increased soil moisture provides the heat that incubates their eggs. However, research shows males avoid constructing their nests during long periods of heavy rain.
Flood waters can sweep away existing mounds and, after multiple weeks of rain, mounds can become waterlogged. Floods can drown eggs or reduce mound temperatures below the levels necessary for incubation, preventing the chicks from developing properly.
A brush-turkey chick. Image Credit John Martin
Brush-turkeys are known to protect their mounds from heavy rain. Much anecdotal evidence suggests brush-turkeys can predict the weather in advance, and reshape their mound accordingly.
During light rain, male brush-turkeys open up their mound, letting much-needed moisture soak in to speed up decomposition of the leaf litter. But as strong rainfall approaches, they instead pile extra material on top of their mound, providing an extra layer of protection and creating a more conical shape so water can run off the sides.
Next time, consider tuning into your local brush turkeys for a weather forecast. If you see them doing a bit of extra raking in your garden on dismal grey days, it might be a scramble to protect their nests from approaching heavy rain.
When you spot one, use the opportunity to snap a photo and upload it to the Big City Birds app. This app tracks where birds such as brush-turkeys occur, and how they’re adapting to city life.
As we settle into another wet spring, our homes are becoming perfect breeding grounds for cockroaches. The humidity of a moist house combined with warmer weather, allows for cockroaches to grow quicker and thrive.
Only a small handful of cockroach species will survive in the average house, and they are all introduced species. After rain, it’s vital to make your house a little less cockroach friendly. Reduce humidity by keeping the house well ventilated, and make sure to remove any food scraps.
On the other hand, the waterlogged soil in your local green spaces are likely home to some of Australia’s 450 native species of cockroaches, so you might see some around your backyard after rain. Cockroaches play important roles in the ecosystem, breaking down nutrients in the soil.
Native Australian Ellipsidion sp. cockroach. Image Credit Elise Oakman
Burrowing cockroaches can be spotted because they don’t have wings. Many of our other native cockroaches are obvious due to their beautiful colours and patterns.
One amazing example is the Lord Howe Island wood-feeding cockroach. Thought to be extinct for some 80 years due to rats, they have only recently been rediscovered. This species is important, because it recycles nutrients and is food for other animals.
While native cockroaches may enter your home in an attempt to find warm dry ground, they won’t thrive indoors. If you find a native cockroach inside your house, instead of reaching for the bug spray, it’s best to catch them and put them back outside.
So during wet weather, take the time to remember that these animals are trying their best. All have amazing ways of adapting to heavy rain, and we should cut them some slack – the environment, including our backyards, need them.
Elise Oakman receives funding from the Ecological Society of Australia, the Department of Planning and Environment, and the Australian Wildlife Society.
Caitlyn Forster receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She is affiliated with the Australasian Society for the Study of Animal Behaviour and Invertebrates Australia.
Matthew Hall has previously received research funding from The Australian Citizen Science Association and Birding NSW.
Mei-Ting Kao 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 Ilaria Vanni, Associate Professor, International Studies and Global Societies, University of Technology Sydney
Sheas Creek runs into Alexandra Canal.Photo: Ilaria Vanni, Author provided
Did you know the Sydney suburb Rosebery was home to the now-endangered green and golden bell frogs? That enormous cauliflowers were nourished by fresh water springs? And that dugong bones were found during excavation for the Alexandra Canal?
Research has revealed these and other water stories in a project that maps and brings to life the histories and practices of water in Green Square. For Traditional Owners, the Country now known as Green Square is nadunga gurad, sand dune Country, known for millennia for its nattai bamalmarray, freshwater wetlands and ephemeral ponds.
Sawtooth factories on the Alexandra Canal. Illustration: Ella Cutler, Author provided
Green Square is Australia’s largest urban renewal project, spanning the inner eastern Sydney suburbs of Beaconsfield, Rosebery, Zetland, Alexandria and Waterloo. During the La Niña event in 2021-22, the wetlands and ephemeral ponds became visible to Green Square residents and visitors over the first year of the research project. Yet the histories of water that shaped and continue to shape Green Square remained largely invisible.
Researchers from the University of Technology Sydney brought some of these stories to the surface in a storymap. We used a software package (ESRI’s ArcGIS) to integrate maps, archival text, expert voices, photos, videos and illustrations for the Water Stories project. Telling these water stories allows us to explore the ever-changing relations between Country, development and urban imagination.
The Australian white ibis is a common wetland bird in Green Square. Illustration: Ella Cutler
Where do these stories come from?
We went to a range of archives. Some were official, such as the State Library of NSW, the National Library Trove, the City of Sydney Archives and strategy documents, the Dharawal Dictionary, state government policy documents and federal and state parliamentary Hansards. And some were grassroots records, such as the online archive of FrogCall, the newsletter of the Frog and Tadpole Society. We also spoke to experts such as zoologists, engineers and landscape architects.
However, the largest archive we explored is Green Square itself. To understand Green Square as a living archive we identified “portals” in the landscape: visible objects that provide entry points into water stories. A pub, a plaque, a frog pond, a maintenance hole, a hoarding, a canal, a creek, a blue tongue lizard and a native flower are translated into the storymap as geolocated icons on a base map. Clicking on each of these icons transports you to a new story.
The Water Stories map has nine ‘portals’. Illustration: Ella Cutler
We pieced together fragments found in the archives into narratives that recover both well-known and little-known histories. These stories reveal the multiple and changing relations with water in this area.
What, for example, is the story of the pub? Perhaps you have been to the Cauliflower Hotel, one of the oldest pubs in Sydney. It was founded by George Rolfe, a well-known market gardener. Rolfe had prospered from growing a bumper crop of cauliflowers watered from springs during a drought.
For millennia this area was a refuge on the route between Sydney’s two harbours, Gamay (Botany Bay) and War’ran (Sydney Cove). The presence of water led settler-colonial land owners to choose this place. Thus began the colonial history of Green Square as a site of agriculture, manufacturing, industry and now residential development.
This narrative is dominant in contemporary descriptions of Green Square, but it is not the only direction these stories flow.
The green and golden bell frog. Photo: JJ Harrison/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA
The endangered green and golden bell frog, we discovered, prefers to make its habitat in disturbed landscapes, such as the water pooling from sand mining, rather than in custom-made nature reserves. This may dampen enthusiasm for the small frog pond established at Kimberley Grove Reserve. But it is important to understand the complexity of how such histories intersect if we are to make better decisions about cities in the face of climate change.
Some of the other stories surfaced by the project include:
Gunyama, the name of the new aquatic centre means “stinky wind”, which could describe the smell of both ancient mangrove swamps and the noxious trades of the 1800s
a huge stormwater processing plant lies underneath Green Square. Built as part of the development, it delivers up to 320 million litres of recycled stormwater each year to new buildings and open spaces.
Dugong remains were found during excavation at Sheas Creek in 1896. Photo: Australian Museum (AMS351/V9817)
On the storymap, watery words from the Dharawal Dictionary guide your interactive experience, because the premise for telling these water stories is that we understand the city as Country. Country is often misunderstood as being synonymous with land, but it comprises every aspect of the “natural” environment and ecology, including water and relationships between water and land.
We understand water is always present, even if not visible. And that care for cities means care for Country, which also means care for water.
As we collect and rearrange stories, we also create new ones. We are interested in hearing how as a resident, worker or visitor to Green Square you perceive the presence and histories of water in the neighbourhood.
By sharing your own water story you can contribute to the living archive on the Water Stories website. Simply click on the eel at the end of each story and add some text to share your story about how you experience water at Green Square.
Ilaria Vanni receives funding from The City of Sydney. She is a member of the Climate, Society and Environment Research Centre (C_SERC) and of the Creative Practice Research Group at the University of Technology Sydney.
Alexandra Crosby receives funding from The City of Sydney. She is member of The Frog and Tadpole Study Group of New South Wales (FATS)
Shannon Foster 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 Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne
Joel Carrett/AAP
The Victorian state election will be held in 12 days, on November 26. A Freshwater poll for The Financial Review, conducted November 3-6 from a sample of 1,012 by online methods, gave Labor a 56-44 lead, from primary votes of 37% Labor, 34% Coalition, 14% Greens and 15% for all Others.
This is the first Freshwater poll of Victoria; a Freshwater poll of New South Wales in October gave Labor a 54-46 lead. Cost of living was regarded as one of the top three issues in Victoria by 74%, well ahead of 48% for health and social care.
Voters were asked whether they had a favourable or unfavourable view of various figures. Victorian Labor was at +10 net favourable, the Liberals at -6, Labor Premier Daniel Andrews at -9 and Liberal leader Matthew Guy at -16. Andrews led as preferred premier over Guy by 40-28.
A Victorian Morgan
SMS poll, conducted November 9-10 from a sample of 1,030, gave Labor a 57-43, a 3.5-point gain for the Coalition since the last SMS poll in August. Primary votes were 40% Labor (down 0.5), 29% Coalition (up 1.5), 11.5% Greens (down 2.5), 4.5% teal independents (down 0.5) and 14.5% for all Others (up two).
The Victorian Morgan poll conducted over the month of October by phone and online methods was also released, and this gave Labor a 60.5-39.5 lead, a 0.5-point gain for Labor since September. So any swing against Labor appears to have started in early November.
Applying the SMS poll’s primary votes to the 2018 election preference flows would give Labor a bigger lead, with analyst Kevin Bonham estimating 59.5-40.5 to Labor. This poll implies Other preferences are skewing against Labor.
Andrews had a 58.5-41.5 approval rating in this SMS poll, down from 62.5-37.5 in August. But he still had a 65.5-34.5 lead over Guy as better premier, down marginally from 66-34 in August.
A Newspoll last week gave Labor a 54-46 lead. These two polls have Labor further ahead, but there was a swing to the Coalition in Morgan. Labor remains likely to win the election in 12 days.
Record 740 candidates to contest lower house and 454 for upper house
Candidate nominations for the state election closed on Friday, and early voting begins today. ABC election analyst Antony Green said there will be 740 total candidates for the 88 lower house seats, an average of 8.4 candidates per seat.
This is the highest average candidates per seat recorded for any Australian state or federal election, beating the average 8.0 per seat at the May federal election. The previous Victorian record was 543 lower house candidates in 2014, an average of 6.2 per seat.
As well as Labor, Coalition and Greens candidates, all seats will be contested by Animal Justice and Family First. The Freedom Party will contest 58 of the 88 seats, Labour DLP 32 and Victorian Socialists 22. There will also be 120 independent candidates.
The Victorian upper house has eight regions that each elect five members for a total of 40. There will be a record of 454 candidates at this election, up from 380 in 2018, and a record 178 groups standing candidates, up from 146 in 2018. The number of groups means all upper house ballot papers will need to be “double decked”, with two rows of party names followed by a line, then candidate lists.
The proliferation of upper house groups is explained by Victoria’s retention of the anti-democratic group voting ticket (GVT) system, under which parties with a very small vote share can win seats if they have the right preference deals. Many parties want a chance to win the upper house lottery.
In the two polls cited above, Labor’s primary vote was down three to six points on the 2018 election result. If this swing were also applied to the upper house, Labor would likely lose more seats under GVT than they would had GVT been replaced by the system used in the federal Senate.
US Democrats hold Senate at midterm elections
In my article on the November 8 United States midterm elections on Wednesday night, Democrats had 48 Senate seats called for them, Republicans 48 and four contests had not been called then.
Democrats overturned a Republican lead on late mail counting in Nevada, and now lead by 48.8-48.1, while they lead in Arizona by 51.8-46.1; both states have been called for Democrats. Republicans won Wisconsin by 50.4-49.4, and Georgia will go to a December 6 runoff after no candidate won at least 50%.
Democrats will now hold 50 Senate seats, including two independents who caucus with them, to 49 Republicans. Democrats will control the Senate regardless of the Georgia runoff result because they will have Vice President Kamala Harris’ casting vote. Pennsylvania, a Democratic gain, is the only state where party control has flipped, pending Georgia.
CNN’s projections currently give Republicans 211 House of Representatives seats to 204 Democrats, with 218 needed for a majority. Republicans currently lead in 221 seats with Democrats ahead in 214, according to a spreadsheet by Daniel Nichanian.
To win the House, Democrats need to overturn four Republican leads. Despite the tenuous seat lead, Republicans are currently leading the overall House popular vote by 4.9% according to the Cook Political Report.
California is the most populous state with 52 House seats, and has ten of the 20 uncalled races. It will take until December for California to finalise its vote count.
See also my US midterms late counting thread for The Poll Bludger, and my live blog of the results as they came out from Wednesday AEDT.
Adrian Beaumont 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.
Former New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern.
Political Roundup: Jacinda Ardern’s Asia trip rekindles New Zealand’s independent foreign policy
Analysis by Geoffrey Miller.
New Zealand’s independent foreign policy is back. That’s a key underlying message from Jacinda Ardern’s trip this week to Southeast Asia.
The New Zealand Prime Minister attended the East Asia Summit in Cambodia over the weekend. She will head to Thailand for the APEC leaders’ meeting later in the week.
In between, Ardern is also making a surprise four-day bilateral visit to Vietnam.
As has become customary for much of Ardern’s foreign travel, the Vietnam portion of this week’s trip is being branded as a ‘trade mission’, a strategy deployed in part to deflect potential domestic criticism of the PM for spending too much time on the diplomatic circuit abroad.
Ardern all but admitted in interviews prior to embarking on her Asia trip that her no-show at the COP27 summit in Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh was driven by an unwillingness to spend too much time outside New Zealand.
While it is certainly true that there is a strong trade foundation to New Zealand’s ties with Vietnam – the country is New Zealand’s 14th biggest export market – there is probably a little more to it than that.
So far in 2022, most of Jacinda Ardern’s international travel has been focused on countries in the Western-led camp that has been vocal in condemning Russia for its war on Ukraine.
In April, Ardern’s first travel outside New Zealand since early 2020 was pointedly to Singapore and Japan – two of the few Asian countries that had sanctioned Russia.
Trips to the United Kingdom, United States (to meet Joe Biden at the White House), Spain (as an invited guest at the NATO summit), Belgium (to sign a free trade deal with the EU) and Australia then followed.
But by mid-year, there seemed to be a realisation inside Ardern’s Labour Government that New Zealand had tacked too far towards the West in the first six months of 2022.
New Zealand’s increasingly pro-Western foreign policy had begun to irk China. The warning signs from Beijing led Ardern to recalibrate in speeches in July and August, in which she emphasised New Zealand’s traditional independent foreign policy and sought to put a little more daylight between Wellington and Washington.
However, these recalibration speeches were themselves delivered to Western audiences in London, Sydney and Auckland.
Until now, the shift had not really been reflected in the Prime Minister’s travel schedule, which in recent months focused on the Pacific and also included a trip to London (for the Queen’s funeral) and New York (for the UN General Assembly).
The return of in-person gatherings for both the East Asia Summit (EAS) and APEC formats is particularly welcome news for New Zealand, which as a small country receives fewer such multilateral opportunities.
Moreover, amidst heightened geopolitical polarisation, the broadly inclusive nature of both the EAS and APEC – which brings together Russia, China, the United States and many smaller members from around the Pacific Rim – is now almost priceless.
And when viewed through a trade lens alone, APEC will give New Zealand’s Prime Minister a particularly invaluable opportunity to develop connections with leaders who otherwise might not receive the attention from Wellington that they deserve.
This is particularly true for Latin America, which is represented at APEC by Chile, Mexico and Peru.
Of the three, Mexico currently holds the greatest significance for New Zealand: trade in both directions is surging. The country now sits comfortably inside New Zealand’s top 30 export markets, in 26th place.
Ardern has yet to visit Latin America since becoming PM in 2017, although she did hold a sideline meeting with Chilean President Gabriel Boric at the UN General Assembly in September. In June, Ardern also dispatched her education minister, Chris Hipkins, to Chile and Brazil to promote New Zealand’s international education sector which had suffered greatly from border restrictions during the pandemic.
Jacinda Ardern’s international popularity – which has only increased during the Covid-19 era – means that she can easily secure sideline meetings with leaders at bigger gatherings.
Furthermore, the summits in Cambodia and Thailand – and especially the side trip to Vietnam – provide the Prime Minister with her best opportunity yet to learn about the foreign policy stances being taken by non-Western countries.
Vietnam is a case in point.
Hanoi has long maintained friendly ties with Moscow, a friendship built on Russia’s support and solidarity for the like-minded, communist Vietnam during the Cold War.
In 2022, this strong relationship has seen Hanoi refrain from criticising Moscow’s war on Ukraine (at least in public) – and led Vietnam to abstain on key votes in March and October which condemned Russia in the UN General Assembly.
Moreover, Vietnam’s Nguyen Phu Trong – the country’s communist leader – recently chose to visit China for his first foreign trip since 2019.
Trong’s visit to Beijing was the first by a foreign leader since Xi Jinping received a third term at October’s Communist Party Congress. The symbolism and warmth of the trip showed that Vietnam will not be easily swayed by US pressure to throw its lot in with the West, despite the existence of genuine tensions between Hanoi and Beijing over the South China Sea.
As if to avoid any doubt, Trong called Vietnam’s relationship with China his ‘top priority’ while in Beijing and firmly ruled out joining military alliances – a pledge which would have been music to Xi’s ears.
The bonhomie in Beijing represented a setback of sorts for Washington, which had offered a carrot to Hanoi by including it in the US’s new Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) initiative earlier in the year. The IPEF is vague and uninspiring overall, but a focus on ‘supply chain resilience’ is an indication that its main purpose is to be a vehicle that challenges China’s economic dominance.
Still, the IPEF involvement – and Vietnam’s coolness towards Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and new Global Security Initiative (GSI) – shows that Hanoi is likely to continue to forge a foreign policy that walks a tightrope between both Washington and Beijing.
In Vietnam, this strategy is sometimes referred to ‘bamboo diplomacy’ – tough when required, but flexible when needed.
While in Vietnam this week, Jacinda Ardern may want to give some thought to Vietnam’s approach.
After all, there are some remarkable similarities between Vietnam’s bamboo diplomacy and New Zealand’s own ‘independent foreign policy’ positioning that seeks to keep both China – its biggest trading partner by far – and traditional Western partners on side.
New Zealand’s greatest foreign policy challenge is threading this geopolitical needle.
The good news is that other countries in the Indo-Pacific – and further afield – are facing this challenge too.
Jacinda Ardern can learn from them.
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.
Further reading on international relations and the PM at the East Asia Summit
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ashish Nanda, CyberCRC Research Fellow, Centre for Cyber Security Research and Innovation (CSRI), Deakin University
Each year, as the festive season arrives, we must also keep an eye out for potential scammers trying to ruin the fun. This is because scammers become more active during the holidays, targeting us while we have our guard down.
So far in 2022, Australians have lost around half a billion dollars to scams, which is already significantly more than had been lost by this time last year. The majority of these losses – around $300 million – have involved investment or cryptocurrency scams.
I was shocked and could not accept that this happened to me although I was very careful […] I was numb for a couple of minutes as it was a large amount of money. – (26-year-old female office manager from South Australia)
These scams have become highly sophisticated and criminals have become less discriminating about whom they target. This is reflected in recent victim demographics, showing a wide variety of backgrounds, a more even distribution across several age groups, and an almost even split on gender.
Age groups of scam victims. scamwatch.gov.au Gender distribution for reported scams. scamwatch.gov.au
So, how can you spot these scams and where can you get help if you have fallen victim?
If it sounds too good to be true, it might just be a scam
I was dumbfounded, to say that ground shattered under my feet would be an understatement, it will take me a very long time to recover from it, financially and mentally. – (36-year-old female, legal practitioner from Victoria)
Most crypto scams involve getting the victim to buy and send cryptocurrency to the perpetrator’s account for what appears to be a legitimate investment opportunity.
Cryptocurrency is the currency of choice for this type of crime, because it’s unregulated, untraceable and transactions cannot be reversed.
Victims of such scams are targeted using a number of different methods, which include:
Investment scams: scammers pretend to be investment managers claiming high returns on crypto investments. They get the victim to transfer over funds and escape with them.
“Pump and dump”: scammers usually hype up a new cryptocurrency or an NFT project and artificially increase its value. Once enough victims invest, the scammers sell their stake, leaving the victims with worthless cryptocurrency or NFT.
Romance scams: involves scammers using dating platforms, social media or direct messaging to engage with you, gain your trust and pitch an amazing investment opportunity promising high returns, or ask for cryptocurrency to cover medical or travel expenses.
Phishing scams: an old but still effective scam involving malicious emails or messages with links to fake websites promising huge returns on investment or just outright stealing credentials to access users’ digital currency wallets.
Ponzi schemes: a type of investment scam where the scammers use cryptocurrency gathered from multiple victims to repay high interest to some of them; when victims invest more funds, the scammers escape with all the investments.
Mining scams: scammers try and convince victims to buy cryptocurrency to use in mining more of it, while in reality there is no mining happening – the scammers just make transfers that look like returns on the investment. Over time, the victim invests more, and the scammers keep taking it all.
Although methods evolve and change, the telltale signs of a potential scam remain relatively similar:
very high returns with promises of little or no risk
proprietary or secretive strategies to gain an advantage
lack of liquidity, requiring a minimum accumulation amount before funds are released.
I felt helpless, I didn’t know what to do, who to reach out to, I was too embarrassed and just kept blaming myself. – (72-year-old male, accountant from Victoria)
If you think you have fallen victim to one of these scams, here is what you need to do next:
The work has been supported by the Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre Limited whose activities are partially funded by the Australian government’s Cooperative Research Centres Programme.
The work has been supported by the Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre Limited whose activities are partially funded by the Australian government’s Cooperative Research Centres Programme.
Jeb Webb 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.
Dan, they call him. The headlines in Victoria’s tabloid Herald Sun have ceased referring to the state’s premier by his second name: Dan is sufficient. It’s symbolic of how much Daniel Andrews bestrides the state political scene.
Nobody requires a reminder of who he is and few don’t have a strong opinion about him. He is a local colossus, a leader who dominates the state unlike any other since the time of Jeffrey Kennett in the 1990s – another premier who came to be known by his first name only: Jeff.
Like Kennett did, Andrews also enjoys high recognition beyond Victoria’s borders. In part this prominence is due to the fact that, first elected in 2014, he is the senior head of government in the land (Queensland’s Annastacia Palaszczuk is the next closest). But it is also because during Victoria’s second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, Andrews’ marathon 120 consecutive days of media briefings gripped audiences across Australia.
‘If you do everything, you will win’
We now have a biography of Andrews (suggestively subtitled “Australia’s most powerful premier”) by Age journalist Sumeyya Ilanbey, which fleshes out his backstory. He is the eldest child of Catholic working-class parents, who owned a milk bar in Glenroy in Melbourne’s northern suburbs. When Andrews was at primary school, disaster struck the business, which became a lesson for the young boy in the insecurity of working-class life.
The family relocated to the regional north-eastern Victorian town of Wangaratta. There his father became a delivery driver for a smallgoods firm and his mother worked as a bank teller. According to Ilanbey, Andrews’ father instilled in him his “work ethic, and his single-minded determination”, while his mother implanted in him “a social conscience – and a love of politics”.
Like many successful leaders, Andrews showed a precocious interest in politics. A teacher at his Catholic secondary college predicted a future for him in Canberra. While studying at Monash University in the early 1990s, Andrews became involved in the ALP against the backdrop of Kennett’s neoliberal crusade in Victoria.
After graduating, he began work in the electorate office of federal Labor MP Alan Griffin, and from that base emerged as factional secretary of the Socialist Left. At least two characteristics defined the young apparatchik: a meticulous attention to detail and an utter determination to win.
Despite his relative youth, Andrews launched a successful bid to become assistant secretary of the Victorian ALP. In that position he went on to play an important role in managing grassroots campaigns that felled Kennett and delivered government to Steve Bracks in late 1999. On his office wall hung a quote from the archetype of hardball politics, former US President Lyndon Johnson: “If you do everything, you will win”.
Andrews’ meteoric rise continued. At 30, he entered the Legislative Assembly and Bracks immediately appointed him as a parliamentary secretary. He impressed as “a policy wonk who pored over detailed briefing notes”.
When Bracks won a third term in 2006, Andrews was elevated to cabinet. And when John Brumby replaced Bracks in mid-2007, Andrews was assigned the key portfolio of health.
When Steve Bracks won a third term in 2006, Andrews (far right) was promoted to cabinet. The following year, he became health minister. Julian Smith/AAP
Three years later, after the Brumby government was unexpectedly defeated, Andrews became opposition leader unopposed. Victoria had not experienced a single-term government since the Labor Party split of the 1950s, so his prospects appeared inauspicious.
But plagued by internal divisions, the Coalition government presided over policy stasis and became mired in prolonged industrial disputes with nurses, teachers and paramedics. Running a canny grassroots campaign focused on the bread and butter issues of employment, health, education and transport, Labor narrowly won back power in November 2014. Still an unknown commodity to many Victorians, Andrews was premier at 42.
From the moment he entered office, Andrews was in a hurry to bend Victoria to his will. The inertia of the Coalition’s four years in power, which had exacerbated the strains on the state’s infrastructure and services, and squandered the goodwill of a rapidly expanding population, was a call to arms for action.
But Andrews’ assertiveness was also a function of his strongman leadership type. Fortified by unshakeable inner conviction, he evinced supreme confidence about the direction in which he wanted to take the state. He is a premier who not only innately understands how power works but relishes its exercise, attributes that are surprisingly rare among politicians.
A reformist government
There have been two major strands to the reform agenda his government has pursued during its eight years in office. The first is a gargantuan program of public infrastructure construction, especially in transport, given the public relations moniker “Victoria’s Big Build”.
The signature infrastructure activity of Andrews’ first term of government was the removal of railway level crossings, a politically savvy undertaking that delivered early tangible benefits to commuters. Alongside that was a suite of massive transport projects. These include the Melbourne metro rail project, an airport rail link, a suburban rail loop and an array of road extensions and upgrades headed by the West Gate Tunnel and North East Link projects.
It is not only the scale of the infrastructure building that is striking, but the way in which the government is financing it. In its second term the Andrews administration has accumulated a mountain of public debt as well as racking up a substantial budget deficit. On the surface an interring of the nostrums of neoliberalism and an unashamed assertion of big government, that picture is qualified by how much of the investment is being funnelled to a small number of multinational construction corporations and Labor’s ardour for public private partnerships.
One of Andrews’ signature policies has been an ambitious, expensive infrastructure project. Joel Carrett/AAP
The second key element of Andrews’ reform program has been an adventurous social policy agenda. Capitalising on the fact that the leeway for social activism is greater in Victoria, his government has transformed the state into something of a laboratory for progressive experimentation in Australia.
Its social reform credentials have been burnished through a raft of measures. Examples include establishing the state’s first drug injecting room, strongly supporting the Safe Schools program, appointing a Royal Commission into Family Violence, legislating protection zones around abortion clinics, decriminalising sex work, and banning LGBTIQ+ conversion practices.
In at least two social policy areas, Victoria has been a trailblazer under Andrews. After John Howard’s Coalition government overturned the Northern Territory’s short-lived euthanasia laws in 1997, the issue languished throughout Australia. In 2017, however, the Andrews government became a pioneer of voluntary assisted dying laws among the states. It is a measure now emulated in every state.
Victoria has also been in the vanguard of the nation by embarking on a process for concluding a treaty with the state’s Indigenous communities. The process was launched against the background of the federal Coalition government’s spurning of proposals contained in the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart by Indigenous Australians for a treaty and truth-telling commission.
Since 2019, an elected First Peoples’ Assembly has been in place in Victoria. It has had responsibility for creating the framework for treaty negotiations.
In 2021, a “truth telling” commission (the Yoorrook Justice Commission) was set up as part of the treaty process. This body is inquiring into injustices committed against First Nations peoples dating back to the earliest days of colonisation. It may also investigate the potential for reparations being paid to Indigenous Victorians to make amends for historical wrongs.
Most recently, in another national first, legislation was passed to establish an Indigenous Treaty Authority. To be composed entirely of First Nations representatives, the authority is to act as an independent umpire facilitating treaty negotiations and resolving disputes between traditional owner groups and the state government. The body is autonomous from government – it is not required to report to a minister and its funding is insulated from the usual political cycles. Its creation paves the way for formal treaty negotiations to begin in 2023.
The Andrews government has been socially progressive on many issues, including on a treaty with First Nations people. James Ross/AAP
No shortage of scandals
The combination of progressive boldness, political effectiveness and the premier’s forceful leadership style has made Andrews an arch enemy of conservatives. The chasing after him by News Corp’s Herald Sun and commentators on Sky News borders on the obsessional. The impotence of their attacks on him to date has only fuelled their rage.
The loathing is mutual. To opponents, Andrews plays the political hard man. Typical of the strong leader, he gives little truck to alternative viewpoints and does not disguise his contempt for his accusers. One of his methods is to freeze out critics; for example, boycotting Melbourne’s top-rating morning talkback radio program and thumbing his nose at the Herald Sun.
This tactic sits within a larger innovative communications strategy of bypassing the mainstream media in favour of unfiltered engagement with the public through social media. Andrews is a prolific user of Twitter and especially Facebook, more active in the space than any other head of government in Australia. His one million followers on Facebook dwarfs that of his leadership counterparts, the prime minister included. Andrews is a formidable communicator, a master of conversing with the electorate through uncluttered and persuasive messaging.
Brazenly crashing through controversies is a disquieting trademark of Andrews’ leadership. His government has been embroiled in no shortage of scandals during its eight years in power.
In its first term it was dogged by the so-called “red shirts” affair, which involved the misuse of public funds by the Labor Party during the 2014 election campaign. When the episode first came to light, Andrews’ first line of defence was to dismiss the allegations and then “dig in his heels”.
The premier’s habit of doubling down when his government is under pressure is accompanied Illanbey complains by a pattern of calculated evasiveness towards scrutiny. In Labor’s second term, the media exposed more skulduggery in the ALP. A resulting joint inquiry by the Independent Broad-Based Anti-Corruption Commission (IBAC) and Ombudsman reported a sordid tale of industrial-scale branch stacking and further misuse of public resources.
This time there was no place to hide. In an uncharacteristic moment, the premier apologised for his party’s behaviour.
These events have tainted Andrews’ record as Labor leader. Though he moved speedily against ministers implicated in the second of these episodes and seized on the moment to successfully press Labor’s national executive to appoint administrators to run the Victorian branch as an instrument to overhaul its practices, the impression was that he had been too long complacent about the party’s excesses.
Centralisation of authority has been a troublesome recurring theme of government practices at both federal and state level over recent decades. Under Andrews that phenomenon is pronounced. Power is heavily concentrated in his hands, those of a small cabal of ministers and in his private office. The latter is some four times greater in size than it was before he became premier, its activities undermining accountability.
Illanbey paints a damning picture of governance in Victoria on Andrews’ watch:
The bureaucrats have been politicised and have become an extension of the premier’s political staffers; the 21 ministers who are collectively responsible for making decisions are sidelined in favour of the Gang of Five; the staffers in the premier’s private office and a select few departmental secretaries have greater power and access to Andrews than most ministers and backbenchers. Freedom-of-information requests are routinely blocked; hundreds of departmental documents are routinely dumped on one day in the Victorian parliament, making it all but impossible for the public, journalists and non-government MPs to trawl through them effectively. Extensive cabinet meeting minutes are not taken, in order to limit the political damage in the event of a decision being leaked. Political staffers and the Department of Premier and Cabinet routinely draft policy that is within the remit of other ministers, and they micro-manage the work of specialised departments such as health, transport and education. Often, the first that backbenchers and even junior ministers hear of a policy is when it’s announced at a press conference.
Alongside the tight control exercised by the premier, is a ruthlessness towards those in his own ranks who cross him or who he regards as becoming a liability to his leadership. Ministers have been unceremoniously cut adrift while others who fall out of favour are notoriously put in the “freezer” by Andrews. Those who have suffered his wrath say his loyalty is to him alone.
The polarising premier and the pandemic
The greatest crisis of Andrews’ tenure has, of course, been the COVID-19 pandemic, which has dominated Labor’s second term in office. Victoria not only experienced the worst death toll of any Australian state, but Melbourne earned the unenviable record of being one of the world’s most locked-down cities.
His handling of the pandemic had a polarising effect. The government’s bungled hotel quarantine system, a product of a disastrous breakdown in bureaucratic and political lines of authority, unleashed the second wave of the pandemic.
Andrews reacted in the only way he knows how: by further asserting his control. Against the background of his extraordinary endurance feat of four months of daily media briefings, a fierce online battle raged. On the one hand, was an “I Stand by Dan” solidarity campaign with overtones of the leader as saviour. On the other hand, a melange of self-styled libertarian activists and conservative media rallied around the trope “Dictator Dan”.
They not only held him personally culpable for the second wave, but condemned his response as overbearing and dangerously untrammelled. By the latter months of 2021, as the state endured a sixth lockdown, normally temperate Victoria had developed a febrile anti-lockdown movement dotted by conspiracy theorists.
Their hatred of Andrews was extreme. Yet, amid the polarisation, the majority of the public stood firmly by the premier, endorsing his management of the pandemic. They seemed to admire his resoluteness and accepted that the lockdowns, however oppressive, were a necessary evil to protect the community.
The COVID pandemic, and the Andrews government’s strong response to it, provoked widespread anti-vaccine protests in Victoria. James Ross/AAP
A third term?
Andrews stands on the verge this month of winning a third term in office. The result is unlikely to replicate the “Danslide” of 2018, with Labor’s primary vote set to be significantly down. In a repeat of what occurred at May’s federal election, support for minor parties and independents will spike announcing this as the new norm of Australian politics.
Nevertheless, the opinion polls show Labor is still strongly placed to retain a majority. The government’s enduring electoral appeal is arguably remarkable. After all, this is an eight-year-old administration prematurely aged by spending much of this term in crisis mode managing the pandemic.
The government continues to be shadowed by unwelcome revelations. The latest is about an investigation by IBAC into multi-million-dollar grants to an ALP aligned health union prior to the 2018 election, with media reports that bureaucratic advice was ignored and that the premier and his private office trampled due process. And under Labor’s stewardship the health system is ailing and there is a burgeoning list of infrastructure project delays and budget overruns.
What then explains the government’s resilience? To seething right-wing warriors, the answer lies in Victorians succumbing to a form of Stockholm syndrome, or even more sinister plot lines in which Andrews is feverishly imagined as a kind of local version of Kim Jong-un, a supreme leader grown democratically untouchable. The truth is far less fanciful.
First, the ongoing strength of support for Labor is consistent with the patterns of the state’s electoral politics stretching back to the early 1980s. Over the past four decades, the ALP has dominated elections in Victoria at both state and federal level. It has ruled over Spring Street for three-quarters of that era.
Labor has, in short, become the natural party of government of the state. Faced with the reality of the left-of-centre political ascendancy in Victoria, conservatives no less than John Howard have taken to ruefully describing the state as the “Massachusetts of Australia”.
As I have argued previously, Labor is now the closest thing there is to a custodian of the progressive liberal reformist tradition in Victorian politics, an impulse that originated in colonial times and whose bearers included such luminaries as Alfred Deakin. In that way, Labor better fits the philosophical grain of Victoria than does its chief political opponent.
Second, and by extension, the Andrews government has benefitted from the haplessness of the Liberal Party opposition. Epitomised by the tin-ear law-and-order campaign they ran at the 2018 election that helped deliver Labor its landslide victory, the Liberals have been too often out of tune with the sensibility of Victorians. Short of talent, infiltrated by conservative religious elements and prone to infighting, the party has struggled to establish itself as a credible alternative government. Its lack of appeal to younger voters is nothing short of a crisis.
Admittedly, the Liberal Party has done a better job in this campaign by hewing towards the centre and focusing on mainstream concerns, but most polling suggests its primary vote is anchored at a level at which it is not a serious competitor for office.
The Victorian Liberal opposition, led by Matthew Guy, has struggled to present as a desirable alternative government. Con Chronis/AAP
Third, while the electorate might not agree with all aspects of Labor’s activism, it has won continuing credit for being a government that does things. And it counts that physical reminders of that busyness are ubiquitous throughout the state.
Fourth is approval of Andrews himself. Misgivings about the premier have undoubtedly increased as his style of governing has grown more conspicuously heavy-handed. The dictator epithet, however hyperbolic, has obtained currency in the community; it is a refrain that frequently surfaces in polling survey responses.
Even so, those same opinion polls shows support for Andrews’ leadership has stayed robust. He is perceived as energetic, decisive, smart and capable.
The public also seems to appreciate his ambition for the state to be a national leader. An illustration of that continuing ambition is Labor’s announcement in this election campaign of increased carbon emission reduction and renewable energy targets that puts Victoria out in front of other jurisdictions.
Andrews has vowed that if he wins the November 26 election, he will stay on for another full term. This would mean he would not only be premier for 12 years but leader of the Labor Party for 16 years. This stretches credulity, and neither the public nor his colleagues would wish for that longevity.
Victoria would indeed benefit before long from a disturbance of the power relations centred on Andrews. The strong likelihood is that he will relinquish the premiership no later than the middle of the next term. He will hand over to his chosen successor, Jacinta Allan, in a final act of control.
In this scenario, Andrews will depart office as the longest-serving Labor premier in the history of Victoria, eclipsing the record of John Cain junior. Like Cain did, he will leave a mighty imprint on the state, having radically remade its physical infrastructure and modernised its social fabric. He has emphatically demonstrated the enduring capacity of a state government in Australia to powerfully shape the lives of its citizens.
The legacy of Andrews’ governance method, on the other hand, will be more troubling. Perhaps above all else he will be remembered for being a political force of nature.
Paul Strangio 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 Fiona Macdonald, Policy Director, Centre for Future Work at the Australia Institute and Adjunct Principal Research Fellow, RMIT University, RMIT University
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“The fact is that the government that I lead was elected with a mandate to increase people’s wages,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told the House of Representatives last week, as parliament debated the government’s bill to increase access to multi-employer collective bargaining.
The bill passed the lower house last Thursday, after the government made changes that Employment Relations Minister Tony Burke said would ensure the “primacy” of enterprise bargaining. Further concessions may be needed to pass the Senate.
Employer groups argue the multi-employer bargaining provisions could return Australia to a 1970s-style system with high levels of industrial conflict. They claim it will lead unions to use sector-wide industrial action to achieve their goals.
Importantly, the Council of Small Business Organisations of Australia, which supports multi-employer bargaining in principle, has ended up opposing Labor’s provisions, saying theymake the system more complex.
Nonetheless, Albanese has a point about Labor having a mandate.
He never made an explicit promise to expand multi-employer bargaining. He didn’t campaign on it. But he did promise to lift stagnating wages – particularly for those in low-paid, feminised sectors – and his government cannot deliver on that without fixing a broken industrial relations system.
Provisions already exist
Multi-employer agreements are, in fact, meant to occur now, under the Fair Work Act passed by the Rudd Labor government in 2009.
The act empowers the industrial relations umpire (known as Fair Work Australia until 2013, now the Fair Work Commission) to authorise multi-employer bargaining in sectors where employees are low-paid and “have not had access to collective bargaining or who face substantial difficulty bargaining at the enterprise level”.
The Rudd government included these provisions – known as the Low-Paid Bargaining Stream – because of the evidence that wages and conditions in areas such as child care, aged care, community services, security and cleaning had stagnated under single-enterprise bargaining.
Workers in these areas were disadvantaged by a range of factors. There were high rates of casual and part-time employment. Many employers were small or medium-sized, with limited resources and skills for bargaining.
In child care and aged care, wages were effectively set by a third party – the federal government, the main funder of services. Care workers were also more reticent to strike as part of the bargaining process, because of the effect on clients.
But they just don’t work
In 12 years of the Fair Work Act, however, its multi-employer provisions have not led to a single bargain.
This is because the legislation requires the Fair Work commissioners to take into account complex considerations to determine if multi-employer bargaining is in the public interest.
A 2011 application by the Australian Nursing Federation to bargain with general practice clinics and medical centres was rejected on the grounds nurses were not low-paid.
A 2014 application by the United Voice union to bargain with five security service employers in Canberra was rejected because three employers already had enterprise agreements.
Just one attempt has passed the first stage of obtaining authorisation. In 2010, United Voice and the Queensland branch of the Australian Workers’ Union sought authorisation to bargain on behalf of 60,000 workers with residential aged-care providers funded by the federal government. This was about 300 employers.
Fair Work Australia agreed, but also excluded workplaces that had previously made an enterprise agreement. This knocked out about half the employers, undermining the collective strength needed to get the federal government to agree to fund any wage increases.
Whatever the merits of arguments over details in the government’s proposed bill, there should be no argument that the system needs reform.
Enterprise bargaining hasn’t delivered. Collective bargaining has become the exception rather than the norm. Over the past decade the share of the workforce covered by an enterprise agreement has halved, to 12% of all employees.
Greater access to multi-employer bargaining is needed for fair wages and conditions for many employees, especially those in low-paid feminised sectors where staff shortages and high turnover are widely recognised to be threatening care quality and jeopardising the sustainability of the industries.
Fiona Macdonald has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council, the Victorian Government and various employer and trade union organisations.
The venue is brimming with cheers of excitement from the chicken owners. Despite bets being placed before the game started, the value of a bet can build up as the stronger chicken continues to win.
The atmosphere gets intense.
The brown dirt floor is speckled with red; the smell of this blood mixes with the smoke of cigarettes and floats up to coat the twilight sky.
Blood splashed on the ground by the knife of the winning chicken signifies not only masculinity and competition, but also the efforts dedicated to raising household chickens and the ability to earn an income off bets.
The rule of brutality is the loser cock will also contribute: not through a betting income, but through feeding the family.
In Timor-Leste, cockfighting is a strictly gendered event limited to men. Women are forbidden to attend, embargoed by the culture, but foreign observers – including myself – seem exempt from the rule.
Men’s work
Men gather every afternoon at 6pm in large fields to gamble on cockfighting (futu manu). In one evening, a man can spend from US$10-$200 per game in a country where the median monthly income per household is US$235.
Cockfighting is a cultural practice that has been prevalent in Southeast Asia, South America and the South Pacific for a long time. It is believed to have originated in South Asia before it was introduced into Greece in the time of Themistocles, 524–459 BCE.
Each night there is a series of fights between an agreed number of chickens over several rounds of battles. Each winner chicken will continuously fight to the next round until the ultimate winner is announced.
This traditional cultural activity has been commercialised as a petty cash source and a channel for getting windfalls for Timorese men since the Portuguese colonial era. It is possible to win a few hundred dollars in one day if the fighter chicken is well-trained and strong enough to win several times.
Attending the fights is strictly for men. Annie Yuan Cih Wu, Author provided
Loser cocks are frequently disabled, and a small corner is dedicated for them after each round. Owners take them home to serve for dinner. Timorese households rarely consume protein every meal. Especially in rural households, meat is eaten only a few days a week and these chickens form an important part of the diet.
Cockfighting has multiple advantages for a household: nutritional value, potential extra income, the leisure of excitement and a space for men to engage with peers and demonstrate masculinity and power during the game.
Chicken selling and dealing is reserved for women to earn petty cash and accumulate private savings.
Forbidding women to participate in cockfighting restricts access to fun and highlights the privilege of its masculine nature. But men are not allowed to sell chickens that belong to their wives, mothers, sisters or daughters: that is the women’s traditional “piggy bank”.
One chicken may sell for US$15-40, and one woman can raise up to seven chickens a year, depending on the available space.
Chickens can sell for US$15-40. Annie Yuan Cih Wu, Author provided
Permitting only women to be in charge of chicken sales is a security deposit and balancing structure. The family economics cannot be squandered by men’s addiction to cockfighting: the rights of sale are determined by the women.
Men are allowed to keep, train and raise chickens in their own way. They can often be seen exchanging information about their chickens before and after fights. But women are the treasurers in dealing with household chickens.
Community work
For the community, the petty cash spent on cockfighting allows the continuity of a Timorese tradition and supports the local economy. Social and communal relations are sustained and the informal economy is supported: cash stays local and is spent locally.
Cockfighting trading and training require multiple business skills that benefit the livelihoods of participants’ families: developing the system to collect betting cash and issue winners’ takings, running events, facilitating the game and selling cigarettes and drinks.
Yet it exists in a vague and informal economic sphere in Timor-Leste: somewhere between a leisure activity to unwind and a commercial trade to make money.
Cockfighting is part leisure, part commercial betting. Annie Yuan Cih Wu, Author provided
Winning incomes feed local households, guarantees cash flow and secures protein intake. It can improve food security and nutrition, and can relate incomes to small business. It is also a form of preserving cultural heritage.
After the last round of cockfighting ends, some men gently hold their winning chickens as if they were babies, carry them in light blue nylon string bags to catch a minivan, or pat them softly while walking them home.
In that moment, I see these cocks are more than a tool of income generation.
They are pets, warriors and royal portrait animals for Timorese households.
Annie Wu 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 Rebecca Strating, Director, La Trobe Asia and Associate Professor, La Trobe University, La Trobe University
Kith Serey/EPA/AAP
On Friday, leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)’s member states provided a statement announcing “in-principle” support for Timor-Leste to be admitted as its 11th member. So does this mean Timor-Leste’s long wait to become a member of ASEAN is finally over? The short answer is not quite.
It is a positive development that all 10 ASEAN states – Cambodia (current ASEAN chair), Indonesia, Singapore, Brunei, Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar, Philippines, Laos and Vietnam – appear to have agreed to the move. However, the statement was unclear about when and how Timor-Leste would achieve full membership.
Timor-Leste will not immediately join the association. It will be granted observer status and allowed to participate in ASEAN meetings. The only other state with observer status is Papua New Guinea (PNG).
Since becoming independent in 2002, Timor-Leste has existed outside the region’s defining institution, despite being widely considered a Southeast Asian state. It was also seen to belong in ASEAN when it was incorporated in Indonesia.
Timor-Leste’s hard road to membership
Timor-Leste first applied for membership in 2011 when Indonesia was ASEAN chair. Successive Timorese governments have wanted the country to join ASEAN in order to advance national, security and economic interests, and alleviate some of the vulnerabilities that come with being a small state in an increasingly contested region.
The 2011 Timor-Leste Strategic Development Plan envisaged the nation becoming a full ASEAN member by 2015.
Part of the challenge for Dili was convincing Southeast Asian leaders of the value it would bring to the association. Technically, the ASEAN Charter stipulates four criteria for membership:
geographical location
recognition by other states
agreement to be bound by the ASEAN charter
ability and willingness to carry out obligations of membership.
It is the last criterion that has been the most troublesome.
As a consensus-based organisation, all 10 existing ASEAN states must agree to admit Timor-Leste. This is not an easy task, given these states have different national interests, political regimes, and levels of economic and social development. This has contributed to perceptions that ASEAN is slow-moving and divided on critical issues, such as the South China Sea and the Myanmar crisis.
There was speculation that Timor-Leste’s growing ties with China could mean it would become a “trojan horse” for Beijing within ASEAN. This overstated China’s influence in the country and understated Dili’s desire for foreign policy independence.
There were also concerns about further expansion of ASEAN given some of the dilemmas presented by Myanmar’s membership, and concerns around domestic instability and conflict.
Singapore in particular was sceptical about Timor-Leste’s economic and political prospects. It was also concerned Timor-Leste’s membership would undermine its plan for greater economic integration across the bloc.
Given this history, some interesting questions emerge from this announcement. Has Singapore’s leadership altered its view on Timor-Leste’s membership? If so, why?
ASEAN will develop a roadmap for Timor-Leste to become a full member, including greater ‘capacity-building’. Shutterstock
Does ASEAN think Timor-Leste is “ready” for membership?
Over the past decade, Timor-Leste has undergone a series of reviews regarding its fitness to be an ASEAN member. ASEAN has three community pillars: political-security, economic, and socio-cultural. In 2016, the community pillars engaged in independent studies that found Timor-Leste needed capacity-building to meet membership requirements. Since then, the pillars have completed fact-finding missions to assess Timor-Leste’s reforms and human resource capacities.
Several of ASEAN’s joint communiques also framed Timor-Leste’s future membership eligibility in terms of “capacity-building”, including in 2021.
Yet, ASEAN’s precise membership standards for Timor-Leste remain unclear.
In the statement, ASEAN’s leaders agreed they would formalise an “objective fact based criteria-based roadmap” for Timor-Leste’s full membership, including “milestones” that Timor-Leste would have to meet. The aim is for the roadmap to be adopted at ASEAN’s 42nd summit in 2023, when Indonesia will be chair.
The final point of agreement is perhaps the most revealing. The leaders have committed to helping Timor-Leste build its capacity to meet the milestones that will be set out in the roadmap. It seems there may be at least some ASEAN leaders who consider Timor-Leste not yet ready for membership and needing further assistance to meet the entry standards.
The continuing emphasis on capacity building and the absence of a clear timeline could mean the announcement is another stalling tactic.
More optimistically, though, ASEAN might be viewed as an institution where incremental progress should be taken as a positive step. Getting the 10 states to agree in principle is itself a considerable achievement given some of the concerns about Timor-Leste’s capacity.
This decision may also demonstrate that ASEAN is not as divided and dysfunctional as its critics make out. It is recognition that ASEAN leaders are prepared to work with Timor-Leste to ensure it achieves its long-held membership ambitions.
Rebecca Strating currently receives funding from Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, US Department of State, Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, and Australia-Japan Foundation.
Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw on Friday confirmed police believe the criminal group behind the recent Medibank cyber attack is from Russia. Kershaw said their intelligence points to a
group of loosely affiliated cyber criminals who are likely responsible for past significant breaches in countries across the world.
Kershaw stopped short of naming any individuals or groups.
But experts suspect the attackers belong to, or have close links to, the Russian-based ransomware crime group, REvil.
The attack so far involves a multimillion-dollar ransom demand made to the medical insurer for data on individual clients stolen in the earlier stages of the attack. The attackers originally threatened to release sensitive personal medical records, and then on Wednesday released hundreds of records onto the dark web.
Such attacks cause enormous personal stress for those whose data is exposed, as well as considerable reputational damage to the entities holding the data.
At the time the Medibank attack was publicly announced, Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil described the illegal action as a “dog act”.
Since then, our cyber security agencies, including the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Cyber Security Centre, have been scrambling to respond.
Gaining a better understanding of the groups behind these activities is therefore vital, but challenging.
So what do we know about REvil?
Hackers for hire
The group’s name is said to be a contraction of the words “ransom” and “evil”. It’s based in Russia, although its network of “affiliates” extends into Eastern Europe.
The view that the attack is the work of REvil is based partly on links observed between existing REvil sites on the dark web and the extortion site now hosting some of the stolen Medibank data. Further information will undoubtedly come to light in the coming weeks to confirm or alter this assessment.
But the nature of this attack is consistent with the approach and motivations shown previously by REvil.
The group emerged in early 2019, having evolved from an earlier “ransomware as a service” (RaaS) group known as GandCrab.
According to one scholar, Jon DiMaggio, under the RaaS model REvil relied on
hackers for hire, known as affiliates, to conduct the breach, steal victim data, delete backups and infect victim systems with ransomware for a share of the profits.
As we have also seen in the Medibank case, another tactic of this group is to engage in double extortion, whereby failure to pay the ransom leads to the stolen data being leaked or sold in underground forums on the dark web.
REvil was particularly active in 2021. This included the highly damaging ransomware attack in the United States on Kaseya, a managed services provider. REvil posted a ransom of US$70 million for a universal decryption key to restore victims’ data.
Australia was also touched by REvil in 2021. The group attacked JBS Foods, a major producer with operations in Australia as well as Brazil. The impact on Australian meatworks operated by JBS seems not to have affected supplies of meat, thus drawing less public attention than we have seen in the Medibank case.
Unstable and slippery
Shortly after the Kaseya attack, in late 2021, REvil appeared to shut up shop, following leakages of information from their hacked data site and increased pressure from law enforcement.
However ransomware groups such as REvil are notoriously unstable and slippery. Various factors contribute to this instability, including law enforcement pressure and greed. There’s little honour among this species of cyber “thieves” when personal survival and enrichment are at stake. The RaaS model also relies upon loose networks of associates that inevitably change over time.
Further evidence REvil was in retreat came in January 2022, just a month before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Russian law enforcement authorities announced they had arrested some 14 alleged members of REvil.
For a brief time, Western observers hoped the Russian action might be effective in constraining future ransomware attacks by the group.
But since the invasion in February this year, any pretence of cross-border cooperation in tackling these Russian groups has evaporated. Moreover, those arrested are believed now to likely be free and back in business.
Russian ransomware groups have close informal links to Russian security agencies such as FSB, the Russian internal security agency. These links provide the group (and other Russian cybercrime groups) a degree of licence to carry on their activities on the strict understanding their targets must lie outside Russia.
In some cases, although not so clearly in the case of REvil, these groups have expressed geopolitical motivations, directing cyber attacks against Ukrainian targets and those of countries seen to be supporting Ukraine. The Conti ransomware group is an example here of a group that publicly declared its support for Russiaover Ukraine.
In the Medibank example, the group behind it appears simply driven by financial gain. Medical facilities such as hospitals have proven popular targets for ransomware groups because of their sensitive information holdings and hence vulnerability to pressure to pay.
It seems REvil, or at least a close genetic descendant, is back in business. What we’re currently seeing is consistent with prior experience with this group: appearing, disappearing and reappearing, sometimes in a slightly altered shape.
Dealing with it is difficult, a bit like a game of whack a mole – the offenders all too easily disappear and then pop up somewhere else.
The root causes of ransomware today can be political as well as economic, making effective inter-country cooperation against Russian-affiliated groups almost impossible.
This article draws upon work undertaken with my colleague David Wall (University of Leeds) examining the weaponisation of ransomware in relation to the Russia/Ukraine conflict. This work is currently in draft report form with the sponsoring organisation, the Global Initiative against Transnational Crime, Vienna and Geneva.
Andrew Goldsmith receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Hawkins, Senior Lecturer, Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society, University of Canberra
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Not long ago, FTX was one of the world’s largest trading platforms for cryptocurrencies. Founded in 2019, the Bahamas-based crypto exchange had a meteoric rise to prominence, and was valued at more than US$30 billion earlier this year.
A few days later, rival firm Binance (the biggest crypto exchange) announced it would sell its holdings of FTT tokens, a crypto that reportedly comprises much of Alameda’s assets.
Panicked customers rushed to withdraw funds from FTX, and the company is now on the brink of collapse, with a banner message on its website announcing it is “currently unable to process withdrawals”.
This is not the first such rapid disintegration we have seen in the loosely regulated world of cryptocurrency, and it’s unlikely to be the last.
Many firms have already written off the value of their stakes in FTX. So it will not be easy for Bankman-Fried to find investors willing to put in new funding.
Binance thought about taking over the troubled company outright. It decided against, citing concerns about allegations of misconduct and an investigation by the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
The price of FTT has now plunged. A week ago it was trading at US$24. Now it is at less than US$4.
Cautionary lessons
Trading in “assets” with no underlying fundamental value on loosely regulated exchanges is always going to be a very risky endeavour. For many, it is likely to end in tears.
Other kinds of asset are different. Company shares have a fundamental value based on the dividend (or at least an expected future dividend) paid from the company’s profits. Real estate has a fundamental value that reflects the rent the investor earns (or the owner-occupier saves). The value of a bond depends on the amount of interest it pays. Even gold at least has some practical uses, for jewellery, dental fillings or electronics.
But crypto so-called currencies such as Bitcoin, Ether and Dogecoin (and thousands more “alt-coins” and “meme-coins”) have no such fundamental value. They are a game of pass-the-parcel, in which speculators try to sell them to someone else before the price collapses.
Unregulated financial institutions are prone to the equivalent of a Depression-style “bank run”. Once doubts emerge about their soundness, each person has an incentive to be early in the queue to withdraw their money before the money runs out.
In a recent interview, Bankman-Fried gave a description of his business model that seems to rely heavily on funds injected by new investors, rather than on future returns based on the intrinsic value of the assets themselves.
Impact on crypto
These events have further eroded confidence in the crypto ecosystem. Prior to this latest fiasco, the “value” of cryptocurrencies had already dropped from a peak of more than US$3 trillion to US$1 trillion. It has now fallen even lower.
Just as a few stars such as Amazon emerged from the wreckage of the dot-com bubble, so it is possible that only a handful of applications of the blockchain technology that underpins crypto have enduring utility.
And the idea of an electronic form of currency is being realised in the form of central bank digital currencies. But as Hyun Song Shin, the chief economist of the Bank of International Settlements, put it, “everything that can be done with crypto can be done better with central bank money”.
John Hawkins was formerly a senior economist at the Bank for international Settlements.
Medibank has promised to support affected customers. However, such breaches may trigger some customers to think about switching companies. People might also want to switch companies for other reasons, including wanting to get a better deal.
Ahead of this latest cybersecurity breach, the most common reason for wanting to switch private health insurers was to find cheaper cover.
This was most likely driven by annual premium increases, which until recently, have been running above inflation.
Other reasons for switching include dissatisfaction with claim amounts, looking for additional policy benefits or trying to avoid exclusions (services not covered). Existing cover may also no longer suit someone’s health needs and lifestyle.
The Commonwealth Ombudsman offers a guide with common types of situations encountered when switching health insurers, and what to expect.
Switching can lead to better matches between what a consumer needs from their health insurance and policy inclusions. People may also get better value for money.
There’s the added bonus of promoting competition between companies, prompting insurers to design better-value insurance products.
How do I compare?
Switching health insurers may feel daunting. However, several websites such as iSelect, comparethemarket and finder provide product and cost comparisons.
These sites compare less than one-third of all insurers, restricting your chance for getting a better deal.
A less-known option is using the government website privatehealth.gov.au. This contains details on every policy available in Australia.
If you’re a nurse or belong to certain other professions, you may be eligible to join certain insurers. Shutterstock
You and your family may be eligible to join a restricted insurer based on your industry or profession. These may offer lower premiums and policies with greater benefits, as profits are returned to members. Terms and conditions, including waiting periods, may be more flexible with restricted funds.
Government reforms have introduced four product tiers (gold, silver, bronze or basic). These are based on standard clinical categories specifying what is and is not covered. All insurers are now required to classify their products into these tiers, which makes comparing across insurers easier.
When you switch insurers, your old health fund issues a clearance certificate to your new fund, with the amounts you’ve already claimed in the year carrying across to your new policy.
If switching to a similar level of cover, any waiting periods you’ve already served also carry over, provided payments with your old insurer are up to date.
However, you may have to serve waiting periods for any new benefits and inclusions applying under your new policy, a point to clarify with your new insurer.
There are no exit fees for switching and some funds offer discounts to new members, subject to a 12% per annum cap.
Changing insurers should not affect your Lifetime Health Cover status – the government incentive to encourage people to buy and keep hospital cover to avoid an age-based loading on their premiums after the age of 30. This is provided you continuously maintain a hospital policy.
Insurers cannot refuse your cover or charge you more based on pre-existing health conditions. They charge customers the same price for the same policy, regardless of whether they are switchers. Although, people aged 18-29 could receive a discount of up to 10% of their premiums.
Excesses and exclusions
Insurers are allowed to increase voluntary excess levels (the sum you pay out of your own pocket before health insurance coverage kicks in) in return for cheaper premiums.
People can also choose to exclude certain medical conditions from their health cover to save money.
However, you should assess whether these options suit you before switching to such policies.
Despite the potential benefits of switching insurers, only around 1.5% of all insured people switch insurers each quarter.
An earlier Australian Competition and Consumer Commission report found that while 48% of consumers surveyed thought about changing insurers, only 14% actually switched.
This likely reflects the complexity of health insurance policies, and the perceived difficulty of making a switch, leading to a tendency for people to “set and forget”.
Scheduled annual price increases each April may make some people reassess their insurance needs.
The government could create more “triggers” for switching, encouraging consumers to re-assess their situation. Private health insurance advertising often increases around this time.
The government could also provide information to help people compare how much they are paying relative to their peers. If people discover they’re paying more than others with similar cover, that might be a good incentive to switch. People may also think about switching if they discover their chosen level of cover doesn’t align with their peers.
However, some consumers may never be “nudged” enough to switch. A large proportion of people who purchase hospital cover buy private health insurance to avoid paying the Medicare levy surcharge. These types of consumers may be less likely to evaluate their health cover as their health-care needs change.
Henry Cutler receives funding from the Australian Healthcare and Hospitals Association.
Anam Bilgrami ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.
The United Nations this week slammed corporate “greenwashing” and said organisations cannot claim to be net-zero while supporting fossil fuel projects.
The report, released at the global COP27 climate conference in Egypt, called for new rules to ensure emissions pledges were credible and transparent.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres appointed the expert group in March. Releasing its report this week, Guterres had strong words for companies that use “bogus” net-zero pledges to cover up massive fossil fuel expansion:
It is rank deception. This toxic cover-up could push our world over the climate cliff. The sham must end.
Guterres said loopholes in rules around corporate emissions reporting are “wide enough to drive a diesel truck through” and require major tightening. Let’s look at what that means for Australian corporations.
Rules around corporate emissions reporting contain too many loopholes, the UN says. Dan Peled/AAP
A global problem
Public concern about climate change is vast and growing. This presents a legitimate economic opportunity for businesses and investors that offer climate-friendly products and services.
But being climate-friendly is not always easy. It may involve significant upfront investment. And measuring, verifying and reporting emissions reduction can be complex.
Concerningly, there’s often a big gap between promises and action. For example, one-third of firms on the Forbes Global 2000 list of publicly traded companies have net zero emissions targets. However, two-thirds of them have not outlined how they will achieve the goal, analysis shows.
Australian oil and gas giant Santos is facing legal action in the Federal Court over its net-zero claims.
In some cases, companies make demonstrably false claims about the steps they’re taking on climate change. In fact, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) says a global investigation has found as many as 40% of environmental claims made by companies may be fraudulent.
ASIC has identified greenwashing as a key concern for consumer and market confidence.
The commission is investigating several listed entities, super funds and managed funds over their green credentials claims. Last month, it announced it had fined Tlou Energy more than $53,000 for making alleged false or misleading sustainability-related statements to the ASX.
Our submission to the UN expert group focused on claims made by fossil fuel companies in Australia and overseas. We explained how natural gas is being promoted as a green investment and a source of emissions reduction in ways that mislead environmental regulators and investors.
Greenwashing doesn’t just have disastrous consequences for the climate. It also harms public trust in all net-zero promises which delays support for real efforts.
As Guterres said this week, we must have “zero-tolerance for net-zero greenwashing”. He touted the expert UN report as “a how-to guide” to ensure clarity and accountability for corporate climate pledges.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres has called for ‘zero-tolerance for net-zero greenwashing’. Robert Bumsted/AP
What Australian entities should consider
The report made a number of recommendations relevant to Australian businesses and financial institutions, as well as state, territory, and local governments.
When such organisations are drawing up a net-zero pledge, it must:
make a fair effort, commensurate with the companies’ contribution to the problem
be in line with official scenarios limiting warming to 1.5℃ and should include interim targets every five years starting in 2025
make real emissions cuts rather than relying on carbon offsets, which are often lacking in regulation and rigour
cover all greenhouse gas emissions, including those occurring along a company’s supply chain and through the use of its products
include specific targets to end the use of, and support for, fossil fuels
Include public progress reports with verified, standardised information.
The report’s recommendations are not legally binding. While it shifts expectations of what constitutes misleading and deceptive conduct under Australian law, the late climate law expert Sarah Flynne has observed the difficulty, to date, in prosecuting greenwashing cases.
Flynne argued successful court action may require a shift away from traditional legal arguments towards more innovative approaches, such as pursuing companies under corporate law. This is the approach being taken in the legal case against Santos mentioned above, which alleges the company breached the Corporations Act and Australian consumer law.
Net-zero ratites should cover emissions from the use of a company’s products. Rob Griffith/AP
The UN recommendations mean some companies will now be even more heavily scrutinised by investors and the public, such as those relying on carbon offsets to meet their climate pledges.
Companies that commit to net-zero pledges while continuing to build or invest in new fossil fuel projects will also be in the spotlight.
And as the federal government takes steps to meet its own climate commitments, pressure on businesses and governments is also likely to increase.
We are at a crucial moment in history. Humanity must act now if it hopes to secure stabilise Earth’s climate and leave an inhabitable planet for future generations – and corporations must be forced to walk the talk.
This article was written in memory of our former colleague, the late Sarah Flynne. Sarah’s incredible work and vision was evident across her time at the Environmental Defenders Office, Rio Tinto and Curtin University. Her work touched environmental law, renewable energy, economics, finance and property, including housing affordability issues in Western Australia. Sarah was passionate about the need for strong climate change law, both domestically and internationally, and was a formidable force for – not just of – nature.
Keegan Robertson receives funding from the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Hugh Finn is a former chairperson for the management committee for the Environmental Defender’s Office Western Australia (EDOWA), which has now merged into the Environmental Defenders Office (EDO). The EDO is providing legal representation to a party mentioned in the article.
Ifan Odwyn Jones 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.
It’s been five years since an independent inquiry into mental health and addiction called on the government to repeal and replace the Mental Health Act (MHA).
The He Ara Oranga inquiry described New Zealand’s mental health law as out of pace with societal shifts and recommended it be replaced to reflect human rights and minimise compulsory or coercive treatment.
But the reform process has been so slow, so a colleague and myself decided to take a court case against the Attorney General and the Ministry of Health. We want to clarify the MHA’s legal provisions that force someone deemed to have a mental disorder to have compulsory treatment.
In a New Zealand first, the courts have issued a protective costs order, ensuring the defentants (the Attorney-General and Ministry of Health) cannot apply to have their costs awarded if we lose.
The act can currently be used to detain people under a compulsory treatment order, in a hospital or at home. This means they have to comply with treatment even if they have the capacity to refuse and don’t want to. Colleagues and I have referred to this as a kafkaseque situation.
The enforcement of unwanted medical treatment onto patients who may be fully competent to refuse it also violates New Zealand’s international human rights obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD)
and is arguably unethical.
Compulsory treatment doesn’t make things better
Mental health legislation in New Zealand was developed to support the delivery of the best mental healthcare to people in psychological distress. This is also described as “psychosocial distress”, recognising it is partly individual but also caused by the structure of the society in which people live.
Such distress is common: one in five New Zealanders will experience it in any given year. Sometimes it follows major life changes such as relationship break-ups or bereavement, at other times it happens for no clear reason. We are all potentially within the remit of the MHA.
Legislation has a profound impact on what we do and how we act, and this is also true for the MHA. It shapes much of the practice of psychiatry in New Zealand and internationally.
When the act came into force in 1992, the common view was that it would help keep people well and out of hospital and stop the revolving door of readmission.
But three randomised controlled trials now conclusively show detaining people using a compulsory community treatment order does not prevent readmission.
When we looked at real-world New Zealand data, we found being detained under compulsory treatments orders only reduced readmission for people with psychotic disorders. The opposite happened for people with a range of other diagnoses, including dementia, bipolar or major depressive disorder and personality disorders.
Support is more effective in preventing worst-case outcomes
Does the MHA prevent really bad outcomes such as suicide? We don’t think so. The suicide rate in New Zealand has been stable for more than a decade and has recently fallen.
Between 1978 and 1998, over the period when the MHA came into force and became embedded in practice, the suicide rate actually went up.
We have recently reviewed the international literature on suicide and self-harm for the Lancet and are clear that a good assessment and support plan is more effective than trying to predict if a person will follow through on suicidal thoughts.
All these issues have been brought to light in the He Ara Oranga inquiry. We encourage people to participate in the ongoing reform process to ensure any new legislation reflects the evidence, supports people’s human rights and helps shape a better mental health landscape for all New Zealanders. Our approach along a legal avenue is only one of many ways to remain engaged.
Giles Newton-Howes is affiliated with The World of Difference, a service use led group in the department of Psychological Medicine at the University of Otago, Wellington. I am also a consultant psychiatrist and can act as a responsible clinician under the MHA.
Has your child’s screentime increased since COVID? If you were to estimate by how much would you say 20%, 30% or even a 50% increase?
A newly released review comparing children’s screentime before and during COVID, shows children’s screentime spiked by a whopping 52% between 2020 and 2022. Increases were highest for children aged 12 to 18 years, and for handheld devices and personal computers.
Even though life is (almost) back to normal, many parents have noticed their child’s technology use is still much higher than pre-COVID levels. Their instinct may be to come down hard with rules and restrictions.
But another approach might be to create a healthier balance as a family.
Easy habits to make
The full effect of the pandemic on our technology use is not yet clear, but there are factors to consider when understanding the current state of play of increased time on devices.
A key factor driving ongoing increased screentime is that extensive screen use sustained over time turns into a habit.
In other words, once a person gets used to using technology for greater lengths of time, it becomes their “baseline”. Much like the way a child may get used to staying up late every night in the summer school holidays and then find it difficult to adjust back to school term bedtime again. The longer we do it, the more adjustment needed.
During our two COVID-induced years of restrictions, regulations and stay-at-home orders, many other activities were also removed from children’s routines. Not only did screentime increase, but it also became the only resource child had for school, play, communication, and everything in between. Screentime was not an add-on to their day, it became the core of their day.
Another factor driving children’s increased screentime more of our life has gone online since COVID. Online learning has become an ongoing element of education. Online work and entertainment have all become more digital.
As a result children continue to use technology for longer periods of time and more intensely, and it’s likely this trajectory will continue to increase.
Increased screen time likely did not negatively interfere with wellbeing during lockdown periods as it was the only way to remain socially connected. However many worry, about the impact of ongoing high levels of screentime on children.
Evidence of its impact is still sketchy. One of the main reasons is that it is now very difficult to separate our online and offline worlds.
But there are important points to consider regarding how problematic screentime impacts mental and cognitive health, which sit at the core of learning and development for children, and for us as adults.
We know there is a link between screen use and stress and anxiety. This doesn’t not necessarily mean phone use causes stress and anxiety. It may be that when we are stressed and anxious, we reach for our phone to relieve it. But when that happens problems are not resolved and stress maintains. This can become a habit for children.
Overuse of a screen can lead to mental and physical fatigue impacting a child’s mood and ability to focus and learn.
Sleep is important for learning because it is during sleep we consolidate the ideas we engaged with that day. Little sleep means our brain doesn’t have a chance to do this, which negatively impacts learning. Some small, limited lab-based experimental studies suggest screen use may negatively impact adults’ body clock and sleep.
However, disrupted sleep is more often associated with the content a child engages with on a screen before bedtime. Hyped, highly emotive content – whether it’s on their phone, tablet or TV – is more likely to keep a child up at night. Reading a sweet story book on their screen, before bed has a different impact.
Taking measures to cut a child’s screentime may seem like the most obvious parenting strategy. However, it is not necessarily the best as it often cannot be sustained. There are other measures that are more effective.
Like children, adults also experienced excessive screentime during COVID. Given parents’ level of screen use is strongly associated with children’s screen use, getting our own screentime back under control is an important role model that children need to see. Here are three tips:
1. Approach it together
One study from Denmark focused on all family members taking measures together to change their screen habits and the results were highly effective. Families reported positive effects on mental wellbeing and mood of all family members.
2. Prepare for challenges
Important to the success of families in the study was that they were encouraged to talk about their expected challenges of reducing screen use and list potential solutions. This “in it together” approach enhances family bonding, motivation for change and new home screen environments.
3. Guide all elements of healthy screen use
Ensure parental guidance focuses on all three aspects of healthy device use: screen time, screen quality and screen buddies. This means keeping a eye on time spent on a device but also ensuring a child uses technology in a wide variety of positive ways, in varying social situations – sometimes independently but often with others.
Technology use has changed markedly since COVID. Managing screentime remains integral for children’s health and wellbeing. But how we understand screentime, its place in our lives and how we help children manage it must move with the times.
Joanne Orlando 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 Pep Canadell, Chief Research Scientist, Climate Science Centre, CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere; Executive Director, Global Carbon Project, CSIRO
Global carbon dioxide emissions from all human activities remain at record highs in 2022, and fossil fuel emissions have risen above pre-pandemic levels, according to a new analysis by an international body of scientists.
The analysis, by the Global Carbon Project, calculates Earth’s “carbon budget”, which is how much CO₂ humans have released, and how much has been removed from the atmosphere by the oceans and land ecosystems. From there, we calculate how much carbon can still be emitted into the atmosphere before Earth exceeds the crucial 1.5℃ global warming threshold.
This year, the world is projected to emit 40.6 billion tonnes of CO₂ from all human activities, leaving 380 billion tonnes of CO₂ as the remaining carbon budget. This amount of emissions is disastrous for the climate – at current levels, there is a 50% chance the planet will reach the 1.5℃ global average temperature rise in just nine years.
We’ve seen significant progress towards decarbonisation and emission reduction from some sectors and countries, particularly in renewable electricity generation. Yet, as world leaders gather for the COP27 climate change summit in Egypt this week, the overall global effort remains vastly insufficient.
Humanity must urgently cut global emissions if we are to retain any hope of averting the most catastrophic impacts of climate change.
Carbon budgets to 1.5°C, 1.7°C and 2°C global mean temperature, with emissions remaining of 380 billion tonnes CO₂, 730 billion tonnes CO₂, and 1,230 billion tonnes CO₂, respectively. These will be consumed in 9, 18 and 30 years if current emissions persist, starting in 2023. Global Carbon Project 2022
Coal and oil emissions up, gas down, deforestation slowing
Based on preliminary data, we project that CO₂ emissions from coal, natural gas, oil, and cement use (fossil emissions) will increase by 1% in 2022 from 2021 levels, reaching 36.6 billion tonnes. This means 2022 fossil emissions will be at an all-time high, and slightly above the pre-pandemic levels of 36.3 billion tonnes in 2019.
Let’s put the 2022 growth of 1% (or around 300 million metric tonnes) into perspective:
The growth in fossil emissions this year is largely due to higher oil and coal use – particularly oil, as the aviation industry is strongly bouncing back from the pandemic.
Coal emissions have also increased this year in response to higher natural gas prices and shortages in natural gas supply. Unexpectedly, there is the possibility that coal emissions this year will be higher than the historical peak in 2014.
Another major source of global CO₂ emissions is land-use change – the net balance between deforestation and reforestation. We project 3.9 billion tonnes of CO₂ will be released overall this year (though we should note that data uncertainties are higher for land-use change emissions than for fossil CO₂ emissions).
While land-use change emissions remain high, we’ve seen a slight decline over the past two decades largely due to increased reforestation. Rates of deforestation worldwide, however, are still high.
Together, fossil fuel and land-use change are responsible for 40.6 billion tonnes of CO₂.
Global fossil and land-use change CO₂ emissions (Gigatons of CO₂ = billion tons of CO₂). Global Carbon Project 2022
Nations responding to multiple turmoils
The US and India are responsible for the largest increases in CO₂ fossil emissions this year.
US emissions are projected to increase by 1.5%. While natural gas and oil emissions are higher, emissions from coal continue on a long downward trend. India’s fossil CO₂ emissions are projected to increase by 6%, largely due to an increase in coal use.
Meanwhile, CO₂ emissions from fossil fuel sources in China and the European Union are projected to decline this year by 0.9% and 0.8%, respectively.
China’s decline is mainly due to the nation’s continuing pandemic lockdowns, which have subdued economic activity. This includes a marked slowdown in the construction sector and its associated lower cement production.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is projected to lead to a 10% decline in the European Union’s CO₂ emissions from natural gas in 2022, as a result of supply shortages. The gas shortage has been partially replaced with greater coal consumption, leading to an increase of 6.7% in coal emissions in Europe.
The rest of the world accounts for 42% of global fossil CO₂ emissions, and this is expected to grow by 1.7% this year.
Indonesia, Brazil and the Democratic Republic of the Congo contribute 58% of global CO₂ emissions from net land-use change.
Global fossil CO₂ emissions from the top emitters and the rest of the world, with preliminary estimates for 2022 (GtCO₂ = billion tons of CO₂). Source: Friedlinsgtein et al. 2022; Global Carbon Project 2022.
Natural carbon sinks get bigger, but feel the heat
Ocean and land act as CO₂ sinks. The ocean absorbs CO₂ as it dissolves in seawater. On land, plants absorb CO₂ and and build it into their trunks, branches, leaves and soils.
This makes ocean and land sinks a crucial part of regulating the global climate. Our data shows that on average, land and ocean sinks remove about half of all CO₂ emissions from human activities, acting like a 50% discount on climate change.
Despite this help from nature, the concentration of atmospheric CO₂ continues to climb. In 2022 it’ll reach a projected average of 417.2 parts per million. This is 51% above pre-industrial levels and higher than any time in the past 800,000 years.
Carbon sinks are getting larger because there is more CO₂ in the atmosphere for them to absorb. And yet, the impacts of climate change (such as overall warming, increased climate extremes, and changes in ocean circulation) have made land and ocean sinks, respectively, 17% and 4% smaller than they could have grown during 2012-2021.
Carbon sinks, such as rainforests, absorb half the CO₂ emissions released by human activities. Ivars Utinans/Unsplash, CC BY
There’s been significant progress this year in deployment of renewable energy, policy development, and commitments from governments and corporations to new, more ambitious climate mitigation targets.
We must urgently reach net-zero CO₂ emissions to keep global warming well below 2℃ this century. But humanity’s massive emissions in 2022 underscores the monumental and urgent task ahead.
Pep Canadell receives funding from the Australian National Environmental Science Program (NESP) Climate Systems Hub.
Corinne Le Quéré receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 821003 (4C), from the UN Natural Environment Research Council under grant NE/V011103/1 (Frontiers), and from the UK Royal Society under grant RPR1191063 (Research Professorship. Corinne Le Quéré Chairs the French High council on climate and is a member of the UK Climate Change Committee. Her position here is her own and does not necessarily reflect that of these groups.
Glen Peters receives funding from European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement Nos. 821003 (4C), 820846 (PARIS REINFORCE), and 958927 (CoCO2).
Judith Hauck receives funding from the Initiative and Networking Fund of the Helmholtz Association (Helmholtz Young Investigator Group Marine Carbon and Ecosystem Feedbacks in the Earth System, MarESys, grant number VH-NG-1301)
Philippe Ciais’ institute receives funding for research from French National Research Agency, European Commission and private organizations. All the results of the research are published in peer reviewed literature.
Philippe Ciais is a part time professor at the public research organization of The Cyprus Institute
Pierre Friedlingstein receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement 821003 (4C)
Robbie Andrew receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement Nos. 821003 (4C), 820846 (PARIS REINFORCE), and 958927 (CoCO2) and from the Norwegian Environment Agency.
Rob Jackson receives funding from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the California Energy Commission.
Julia Pongratz 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 government announcement that the Commerce Commission will soon have the power to regulate wholesale petrol and diesel prices might be good news for cash-strapped motorists, but it’s arguably a retrograde step in the fight against climate change.
While there is some scepticism about whether the commission will ever act to enforce fuel price caps, any move to make carbon-emitting vehicles more affordable must come at the expense of efforts to encourage people out of cars and into more sustainable modes of transport.
Making matters more complicated, the policy announcement happened against the backdrop of the critical COP27 climate meeting in Egypt, and the draft UN report warning of soon-unreachable global warming targets. The move suggests conflicting government priorities at best.
Aside from being counter to other plans to mitigate climate change, there is plenty of evidence that price caps can often cause outcomes opposite to those intended. Sometimes, leaving it to the market can be the better option.
Fuel should be less affordable
Since last year, there has been a major focus globally on the transition to electric vehicles. While this is not without its own issues, New Zealand has fully embraced the approach, setting a goal of zero net emissions for 2050.
This would require 100% of imported cars to be electric by 2030 – an ambitious leap from the estimated 4.8% of total vehicle imports they comprised in 2021. Suppressing fuel prices simply doesn’t fit the narrative of massive electric vehicle adoption (including subsidies of up to NZ$8,625 per vehicle intended to boost sales).
Relatively low petrol and diesel prices and the still high cost of new electric vehicles (and the home electricity to charge them) remain significant disincentives for decarbonising individual transportation.
But there are alternatives to price caps that won’t interfere with our climate goals. One alternative is a windfall tax on the petroleum industry. Such a scheme would entail an additional levy on oil company profits, perhaps around 25%, as has been introduced in the UK.
For example, BP recently announced a profit of $230 million in New Zealand. A windfall tax on this one firm would net the government an extra $57.5 million in revenue.
That could then be used to boost schemes and other transport modes that help people avoid having to go to the pump in the first place. The money could also be used to finance the “loss and damage” pledges made at COP27 to aid developing countries already suffering from climate change.
The problem with price caps
There are other, wider questions about the efficacy of price caps and their potential to achieve the opposite of what is intended.
Capping prices is meant to make goods more affordable for the consumer, which increases demand. But it also makes selling the goods less attractive to the producer, potentially reducing supply. Over time, this can affect supply chains and make removing caps difficult in the future.
Price caps are novel in New Zealand but have been used elsewhere to regulate various markets. Several countries have had price controls in the past, or are considering enacting them now, to control prices for food, petroleum, housing and other consumables in the face of rapid inflation.
Famously, New York City has long applied rent controls to make living in the expensive city more affordable. However, research over decades from New York and other US cities where rent-control policies have been used highlights the risk of setting non-market prices.
The evidence shows some short-term gains in affordable housing. But over the long run in rent-controlled areas, housing affordability decreased and gentrification increased – both unintended outcomes of a price cap.
But even if regulating the price of fuel could save consumers money, in reality this affects only a small portion of household expenses. At around $50 a week, the average household fuel bill is less than 4% of total weekly spending. That will likely drop further if fuel prices stabilise while inflation continues to pressure mortgage rates and food costs.
Finally, we should ask why the Commerce Commission’s new powers to set “fair prices” in the face of perceived anti-competitive behaviour don’t apply elsewhere. Fuel is just one of many potentially anti-competitive sectors in New Zealand, with the grocery industry perhaps the most visible.
While the commission has taken steps to encourage competition in the sector, price controls are not part of the plan. Yet food accounts for about 17% of household spending each week, much more than fuel.
At the same time, banks and utility providers have recently reported massive profits. Together they account for about 25% of average weekly household spending.
Given these and other factors, there should at least be some robust debate about whether the new Commerce Commission powers are necessary. That will involve asking whether making fossil fuels more affordable runs counter to our climate change goals, and whether we are trading planetary health for short-term economic relief.
Timothy Welch 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.
New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.
New Zealand Politics Daily is a collation of the most prominent issues being discussed in New Zealand. It is edited by Dr Bryce Edwards of The Democracy Project.
There’s an awkward, irksome problem with our understanding of nature’s laws which physicists have been trying to explain for decades. It’s about electromagnetism, the law of how atoms and light interact, which explains everything from why you don’t fall through the floor to why the sky is blue.
Our theory of electromagnetism is arguably the best physical theory humans have ever made – but it has no answer for why electromagnetism is as strong as it is. Only experiments can tell you electromagnetism’s strength, which is measured by a number called α (aka alpha, or the fine-structure constant).
The American physicist Richard Feynman, who helped come up with the theory, called this “one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics” and urged physicists to “put this number up on their wall and worry about it”.
In research just published in Science, we decided to test whether α is the same in different places within our galaxy by studying stars that are almost identical twins of our Sun. If α is different in different places, it might help us find the ultimate theory, not just of electromagnetism, but of all nature’s laws together – the “theory of everything”.
We want to break our favourite theory
Physicists really want one thing: a situation where our current understanding of physics breaks down. New physics. A signal that cannot be explained by current theories. A sign-post for the theory of everything.
The trouble is, it’s hard to know where to look. Our current theories can’t guide us.
Of course, we look in laboratories on Earth, where it’s easiest to search thoroughly and most precisely. But that’s a bit like the drunk only searching for his lost keys under a lamp-post when, actually, he might have lost them on the other side of the road, somewhere in a dark corner.
The Sun’s rainbow: sunlight is here spread into separate rows, each covering just a small range of colours, to reveal the many dark absorption lines from atoms in the Sun’s atmosphere. N.A. Sharp / KPNO / NOIRLab / NSO / NSF / AURA, CC BY
Stars are terrible, but sometimes terribly similar
We decided to look beyond Earth, beyond our Solar System, to see if stars which are nearly identical twins of our Sun produce the same rainbow of colours. Atoms in the atmospheres of stars absorb some of the light struggling outwards from the nuclear furnaces in their cores.
Only certain colours are absorbed, leaving dark lines in the rainbow. Those absorbed colours are determined by α – so measuring the dark lines very carefully also lets us measure α.
Hotter and cooler gas bubbling through the turbulent atmospheres of stars make it hard to compare absorption lines in stars with those seen in laboratory experiments. NSO / AURA / NSF, CC BY
The problem is, the atmospheres of stars are moving – boiling, spinning, looping, burping – and this shifts the lines. The shifts spoil any comparison with the same lines in laboratories on Earth, and hence any chance of measuring α. Stars, it seems, are terrible places to test electromagnetism.
But we wondered: if you find stars that are very similar – twins of each other – maybe their dark, absorbed colours are similar as well. So instead of comparing stars to laboratories on Earth, we compared twins of our Sun to each other.
A new test with solar twins
Our team of student, postdoctoral and senior researchers, at Swinburne University of Technology and the University of New South Wales, measured the spacing between pairs of absorption lines in our Sun and 16 “solar twins” – stars almost indistinguishable from our Sun.
The rainbows from these stars were observed on the 3.6-metre European Southern Observatory (ESO) telescope in Chile. While not the largest telescope in the world, the light it collects is fed into probably the best-controlled, best-understood spectrograph: HARPS. This separates the light into its colours, revealing the detailed pattern of dark lines.
HARPS spends much of its time observing Sun-like stars to search for planets. Handily, this provided a treasure trove of exactly the data we needed.
The ESO 3.6-metre telescope in Chile spends much of its time observing Sun-like stars to search for planets using its extremely precise spectrograph, HARPS. Iztok Bončina / ESO, CC BY
From these exquisite spectra, we have shown that α was the same in the 17 solar twins to an astonishing precision: just 50 parts per billion. That’s like comparing your height to the circumference of Earth. It’s the most precise astronomical test of α ever performed.
Unfortunately, our new measurements didn’t break our favourite theory. But the stars we’ve studied are all relatively nearby, only up to 160 light years away.
What’s next?
We’ve recently identified new solar twins much further away, about half way to the centre of our Milky Way galaxy.
In this region, there should be a much higher concentration of dark matter – an elusive substance astronomers believe lurks throughout the galaxy and beyond. Like α, we know precious little about dark matter, and some theoretical physicists suggest the inner parts of our galaxy might be just the dark corner we should search for connections between these two “damn mysteries of physics”.
If we can observe these much more distant suns with the largest optical telescopes, maybe we’ll find the keys to the universe.
Throughout the pandemic, Australia has recorded 10.4 million cases of COVID-19, with the majority occurring this year.
This is without doubt an underestimate, as not everyone tests for COVID-19 or reports their positive results.
The latest survey of donor blood looked at the proportion of people who had antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. It found at least two thirds of Australians have been infected.
That leaves about a third of the population who are yet to have COVID.
I’m one such “NOVID” – despite multiple confirmed COVID-19 exposures during the pandemic, I’m yet to have symptoms and test positive.
So what do we know about NOVIDs?
First, we might not actually be NOVIDs
Some people claiming they’ve never had COVID-19 might be surprised to learn they have virus-targeting antibodies in their blood that could only have been generated by infection.
The reliance on home rapid antigen tests (RATs), which are less sensitive than PCR testing, will contribute to many people failing to definitively determine whether they have COVID-19.
Under ideal testing conditions, the best tests detect SARS-CoV-2 infection more than 95% of the time. However in the real world, the detection rate is lower.
If you have mild symptoms that don’t last long, you’re less likely to test repeatedly and may miss your window to get a positive result. So some COVID-19 cases will escape detection by RATs.
At this point, it’s important to distinguish between being infected with SARS-CoV-2 and experiencing the illness (COVID-19) caused by this infection. You can be infected without experiencing COVID-19 symptoms – this is called asymptomatic infection.
It’s unclear what proportion of Omicron subvariant cases are asymptomatic. Early in the pandemic, one in six people infected were asymptomatic and it could now be as high as 50% or more with Omicron.
So, many NOVIDs will have been infected with SARS-CoV-2, generated antibodies to the virus, but did not experience or notice any COVID-19 symptoms at the time, did not test and have remained unaware of their infection status (and whether they were unknowingly transmitting the virus).
Everyone’s immune system is different. How your immune system responds to a particular infection is affected by many factors including your genes, gender, age, diet, sleep patterns, stress levels, history of other infections and illnesses, medications, vaccination status, and level of virus exposure.
So are some people less likely to get COVID-19 because of the strength of their immune system?
The status of our immune system at any given moment will impact our susceptibility to disease. So it’s unsurprising the people most susceptible to severe COVID-19 are those with less effective immunity because they have chronic diseases, are immune-suppressed or elderly.
The other key variable is the virus. SARS-CoV-2 continues to evolve with new Omicron subvariants continuing to emerge. This will affect how the virus interacts with us and the relative impact of different factors affecting our immune protection and susceptibility.
SARS-CoV-2 has proven itself to be particularly adept at evolving to generate viral variants that can evade our established immune protection. In addition, our immune protection is not stable and will begin to wane after a couple of months if not boosted by vaccination or infection.
Are my genes protecting me?
Let’s consider something that is relatively stable: your genes.
Scientists looking for associations between specific genes and disease can undertake genome-wide association studies. The effect of individual genetic variations on disease risk is usually very small, so identifying them requires large numbers of people and factoring in other variables that make us all different.
Scientists are investigating whether genes affect our susceptibility for diseases. Meizhi Lang/Unsplash
In once such study, researchers compared genomes of nearly 50,000 people with COVID-19 with the genomes of 2 million people without known infection.
They identified regions in the genome (loci) associated with contracting COVID-19 and other genetic regions associated with disease severity. So this is evidence that, like many other diseases, certain genes do modify the risk of COVID-19.
While association is not causation, these types of genomic studies point us in a direction to better understand the biology of COVID-19 to address questions such as who might be at risk of severe disease or long COVID and assist development of new therapies to prevent these outcomes.
Another study identified a small number of critically ill COVID-19 patients with rare gene variants. These could be directly linked to defective antiviral immunity.
So for a very small number of people, it appears their genes make them more susceptible to COVID. But for the vast majority of people, the picture is far more complicated.
Could I have immunity from previous infection with a similar virus?
SARS-CoV-2 is not the only respiratory coronavirus that regularly infects humans. Four others – 229E, HKU-1, OC43 and NL63 – share some similarity with SARS-CoV-2.
Most adults would have been infected by these viruses multiple times throughout their life. This raises the possibility that immunity generated by lifetime and/or recent exposure to these other coronaviruses might generate immunity that provides some protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection and symptomatic COVID-19.
More research is needed to better understand this, but the existing evidence is compelling and it’s certainly plausible.
The bottom line is there are many reasons why people who socialise and inevitably interact with people with COVID-19 believe they’ve never had COVID themselves. For most NOVIDs, it has been a combination of vaccination, leveraging a healthy immune system, sensible decisions and luck that have kept them COVID-free thus far.
Of course, luck eventually runs out, so enjoy your NOVID status while you can.
Nathan Bartlett 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 Nicholas Wood, Associate Professor, Discipline of Childhood and Adolescent Health, University of Sydney
COVID cases in Australia appear to be on the increase, most likely due to community transmission of the Omicron variant XBB. Meanwhile, a second Omicron variant – BQ.1 – is now being recorded in Australia.
Australia’s Chief Health officer Paul Kelly says, “All indications are that this is the start of a new COVID-19 wave in Australia.”
XBB appears to be able to spread faster than the Omicron variant BA.5, but there’s no definitive evidence so far it causes more severe disease. BQ.1 contains mutations that help the virus evade existing immunity. This means infection with other subvariants – including BA.5, which contributed to Australia’s COVID wave mid-year – may not protect you against BQ.1.
The best protection against severe COVID, whichever subvariant is circulating, is to make sure you have had your recommended booster vaccines. So who is eligible?
Current coverage
Over 95% of Australians over 16 have had two doses. But despite a third dose being recommended for everyone over 16 years, just over 70% have had a third dose (as of November 3).
ATAGI also recommends a second booster (fourth dose) be given to those who are over 50 years, those over 16 who are residents of aged care or disability care facilities, and those over 16 who are severely immunocompromised or have a medical condition that increases the risk of severe COVID.
People aged 30 to 49 years can have a second booster if they choose.
A COVID booster dose is also recommended for people aged 5-15 who:
are severely immunocompromised
have a disability with significant or complex health needs
have complex or multiple health conditions that increase the risk of severe COVID-19.
Despite the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) recommendation, only two-thirds of those over 65 and only one-third of over-30s have had a fourth dose.
So we have room to improve our booster dose coverage.
The bivalent mRNA vaccines (one made by Moderna and the other made by Pfizer) are adapted vaccines that trigger an immune response against two different COVID variants: the original virus and the BA.1 Omicron variant. The Moderna bivalent vaccine is available now and the Pfizer is coming soon.
For people aged 18 years and older, the Moderna original, Moderna bivalent, Pfizer original, or Pfizer bivalent COVID vaccines are the preferred vaccines for a booster dose.
AstraZeneca or Novavax COVID vaccines can be used as a booster dose in people aged 18 years and older who have a contraindication, or had anaphylaxis, or myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle) after a previous dose of an mRNA vaccine (Pfizer or Moderna) or prefer not to have an mRNA vaccine.
The recommended interval between completing the primary COVID vaccine course (the second dose for most people) and the first booster dose is three months. The recommended interval between the first booster dose and a second booster dose (for those recommended to receive them) is three months.
Are bivalent boosters really better?
A recent clinical trial involving more than 800 participants showed antibody responses to Omicron were higher after the bivalent (original and BA1) Moderna vaccine given as a fourth dose compared to the original strain Moderna vaccine.
A trial of the Pfizer bivalent (original and BA1) strain vaccine also demonstrated higher antibody responses to Omicron BA1 compared to the original strain vaccine.
The safety of both bivalent mRNA booster vaccines is similar to those reported after an original booster. The most commonly reported local adverse reactions following a second booster dose of the Moderna bivalent vaccine were injection site pain (77%), fatigue (55%), headache (44%) and muscle aches and pains (40%).
Antibody levels after both Moderna booster vaccines (original and bivalent) are higher in people who had previous infection compared to those with no previous infection.
It is important to study antibody responses after a booster vaccine in those who have previously had COVID disease. This is because recent serology studies (which look for antibodies in blood samples) indicate two-thirds of us have already had COVID infection.
It is recommended booster doses be administered at least three months after natural infection, as immunity from infection decreases over time and people can get reinfected.
A booster dose in those who have had three previous vaccine doses and natural infection does result in a rise in antibody levels. However, it’s not yet known how effective the fourth bivalent vaccine dose is at preventing infections in those who’ve previously been infected.
The United States has also recommended bivalent booster vaccines, but they have recommended “updated” vaccines which contain the original strain of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID) and the BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2.
The US authorised the update vaccines on the basis of data from animal trials and did not require human trial data. Human trials are underway and results are expected soon. Following this, the companies are likely to make applications, with human trial results, to the TGA for approval.
The reality is COVID is not over. We are likely already entering another wave of infection, however the severity of the new variants in Australia is not yet definitively known.
A simple thing people can do to help protect themselves is to get all the vaccine doses they are eligible for. You can find the latest booster recommendations here.
So, what resources do children and young people themselves want, to support them in facing climate change? And what strengths do they have when it comes to learning about, coping with and acting on this vast and complex problem?
To find out, we ran a series of workshops with 31 young people aged 12 to 25 in Victoria. The aim was to design a website for other children and young people who are concerned about climate change.
Young people have taken to the streets, calling for more political action on climate change. Dan Peled/AAP
The young co-designers told us about the unique strengths or “superpowers” children and young people have, and how they can draw on these in the face of climate change.
They shared stories and tips from their own experiences, as well as from the experiences of their friends, siblings, or young people they had read or heard about.
What do you young people want?
The co-designers said young people want opportunities to share these experiences and learn from each other, and for adults to genuinely engage with them. As one participant told us:
Make it in a way that’s not tokenistic.
They also said website needed to focus on “something I can do”. As another participant said:
I found initially when learning about climate change, and everything was very overwhelming, because it was all very big scale global issues. And then I got stuck on what am I supposed to do about all this really bad stuff happening?
The young co-designers recognise young people have diverse circumstances, skills, interests and experiences of climate change. They wanted to create a website that was inclusive and flexible, so each young person could choose what they wanted to focus on.
For example, one young person described the different ways young people can contribute to climate justice:
Some people interpret [climate justice] as like, literally striking every day, or like talking to their politicians […] And then there’s also [those who] stop eating meat. I think thinking about how everyone interprets it differently, it’s also really important.
The young co-designers also said young people wanted resources that are visually engaging and interactive:
We want to make it interesting and exciting for everybody.
Finally, young people said the website itself shouldn’t harm the environment – it should be powered by renewable energy, with no hard copies of the information.
Based on these principles and stories, we created a draft website and then adapted it in response to their feedback. We also worked with artist Thu Huong Nguyen to create visual interpretations of the ideas from the workshops.
The result is the Your Climate Superpowers website, which is aimed at children, young people, and the adults in their lives looking for ways to deal with climate distress.
It features seven types of “climate superpower”:
1. Social: this is about building connections or trust with other people – it could be as simple as talking with family and friends when you feel worried about climate change.
2. Human: these are your own skills, knowledge, experiences and talents and can include creative and technological skills and volunteering.
3. Cultural: this is about understanding and knowing the world, and how you act within it. This could involve cultural practices and values that help take care of the environment.
The seven climate superpowers: (clockwise from top left) human, social, natural, political, built, cultural, financial. Artwork by Thu Huong Nguyen/Your Climate Superpowers
4. Political: this is about influencing governments but also people and communities. It could involve going to rallies, signing petitions or voting a certain way.
5. Financial: this doesn’t necessarily mean you have a lot of money – it could be shopping sustainably, volunteering, or influencing how others spend their money.
6. Built: this involves transforming the built environment and things we use so they are more sustainable – it could involve things like riding a bike, or influencing your family to buy solar panels.
7. Natural: are activities that help you connect to nature to do something about climate change. It could include gardening, going for a bushwalk, composting and caring for Country.
Secret missions
Children and young people can take a quiz to find out what their strongest climate superpowers are. Then they can explore “secret missions” they can take on using these superpowers.
There are 120 missions, all based on the stories and ideas shared by the young co-designers. There are missions for learning about climate change, taking everyday action, transforming society and self-care.
These range from documentaries to watch, to tips on dealing with eco-anxiety, sustainable shopping guides, how to make sure recycled toilet paper is used at school, and tips for engaging with your local council or local MP.
Climate change is a complicated problem. To tackle it, we need all sorts of people working on all sorts of missions, big and small.
That includes young people, who have superpowers they want to use to take care of themselves, each other and the planet.
This project was funded by a Climate Research Accelerator Grant from Melbourne Climate Futures at the University of Melbourne.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Eduardo de la Fuente, Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Justice and Society, UniSA, University of South Australia
Shutterstock
The idea behind “quiet hour” shopping is to set aside a time each week for a retail experience that minimises noise and other sources of sensory overload. It is aimed at people who are neurodivergent – an umbrella term for people with autism, ADHD and other sensory-processing conditions.
What began as a boutique or specialist retail strategy has become more mainstream. Major supermarketchains and shopping centres in Australia and overseas have introduced it in recent years.
In newly published research we explored quiet hour as an aspect of the impacts of sound on how people experience city life. As expected, we found it did benefit people who are neurodivergent. But other people also welcomed the relief from sensory overload once they’d overcome the feeling of having wandered into an eerily quiet “post-apocalyptic scene”.
Our work has made us question the acceptance of urban noise and light as being part and parcel of a vibrant city.
Quiet hour is intended to make retail spaces more inclusive or sensory-friendly. Its features include retailers or mall managers agreeing to:
switch automatic doors to open
pause collection of trolleys
turn off the PA and music
fix flickering lights and turn off as much lighting as practicable
remove scented reeds and pause automatic scent dispensers
switch off hand dryers
turn down the volume on checkout scanners.
One of the tools we used for mapping quiet hour was a thematic analysis of reports about it in Australian print media from 2017 to 2019. We found the following themes:
an emphasis on the kinds of discomforts associated with retail environments
the importance of providing a “low-sensory environment” as a form of inclusion
while lighting was often mentioned, the main recurring theme was the reduction of sound.
Why does reducing sound matter?
Sound and sensory hypersensitivity are important themes in neurodivergent people’s accounts of how they struggle with everyday experiences others take for granted.
Leading autism researcher and advocate Sandra Thom-Jones writes that neurodivergents’ sensitivity to sound is complex. It’s affected by “what the sound actually is, how loud it is, whether I am expecting it, and whether I can control it”.
People might assume everyone has the ability to frame which sounds are important and which are “irrelevant to what we are listening to or doing”. However, the ability to single out sound sources and block out background noise is a major point of differentiation between neurotypicals and neurodivergents.
Thom-Jones, who received her autism diagnosis at age 52, reports that when she is “in an environment with multiple sounds” she tends to “hear all of them”.
Thus, when she is catching up with a friend in a café, she may be “listening intently” to what her friend is saying but she will also be “hearing the piped music, the people talking at the next table, cars driving past, the coffee machine”.
Not everyone loves that bustling streetside cafe – piped music, people talking, passing cars and the coffee machine all at once is too much for some. Lisa Fotios/Pexels
Others welcome quiet hour too
Given how neurodivergents process sound, quiet hour is likely to increase their sense of comfort in retail spaces.
However, quiet hour also suspends or – to use a term coined by Erving Goffman – “rekeys” the sensory frames of all shoppers. A quiet hour could benefit lots of people who may not have a specific condition but simply prefer a quieter retail environment.
We found this is an under-researched area, but did find anecdotal accounts to suggest this. Take the case of New Zealand actress and author Michelle Langstone.
She reports visiting stores across Auckland and Rotorua that offer quiet-hour shopping. She stumbled upon it by “sheer luck”. At first, she admits, it felt “a bit like a post-apocalyptic scene”.
Once she adjusted to the unfamiliar sensory environment, she felt herself succumbing to changed supermarket routines:
“I cruised every single [aisle], taking in the quiet for nearly 45 minutes, at the end of which I felt a kind of meditative peace come over me.”
Langstone also reports avoiding impulse buying. That first time she left with “only [the] bread and eggs” she had gone to the shop for. She was able to focus on shopping rather than “multi-tasking”, and quiet hour left her with a “feeling of goodwill towards all shoppers”.
In other words, even if the strategy is about levelling the sensory playing field for neurodivergents, it seems to change the shopping experience for other people too.
In contrast to the usual stress of supermarket shopping, quiet hour left one shopper with a ‘feeling of goodwill towards all shoppers’. Shutterstock
Why the bias towards the noisy city?
As researchers interested in sound and space, quiet hour made us reflect on how we think about these issues and our attitudes to noise. It made us question, for example, why one of the most cited texts in our field is entitled Noise: The Political Economy of Music?
Studies of silence or quietude are rare in urban or spatial studies. One has to turn to fields such as the study of meditation practices or the silence associated with nature or sacred spaces to find positive accounts of reduced noise.
What quiet hour teaches us is that an inclusive or welcoming city is a city that “resonates” with different kinds of minds, bodies and styles of sensory processing.
Quiet hour might therefore be both an inclusion strategy and an experiment that forces us to think more deeply about our cities and how they sound.
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.
Taylor Swift’s latest album Midnights launched with the single Anti-Hero. Anti-heroes in fiction are dark, complex characters who may question their moral compass but are ultimately trying to be led by their good intentions. Perhaps most humans feel like we are all anti-heroes lacking the right amount of courage, idealism, and morality – wanting to be heroic but struggling through familiar dark places.
In Anti-Hero, Taylor shares emotional rawness and sings “It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me … everybody agrees.”
“I don’t think I’ve delved this far into my insecurities in this detail before,” Swift said about the song in a video on Instagram. “I struggle a lot with the idea that my life has become unmanageably sized and, not to sound too dark, I struggle with the idea of not feeling like a person.”
Taylor’s album reveals her struggle with her own insecurities and maybe common universal human emotions that everyone struggles to face. In Labyrinth, for example, she sings about heartbreak, and more specifically, the fear of falling in love again:
It only feels this raw right now
Lost in the labyrinth of my mind
Break up, break free, break through, break down
Much of the new album, and Swift’s discography in general, often revisits past heartbreaks, disappointments, and insecurities. Swift has talked about how Midnights is an album devoted to the kinds of soul-searching thoughts we have in the middle of the night.
“This is a collection of music written in the middle of the night, a journey through terrors and sweet dreams,” Swift wrote. “The floors we pace and the demons we face. For all of us who have tossed and turned and decided to keep the lanterns lit and go searching — hoping that just maybe, when the clock strikes twelve… we’ll meet ourselves.”
Music and pain
Music has the potential to change our experience of intrusive thoughts and how we deal with pain. At an extreme level, when we revisit past traumatic experiences, we are often in danger of triggering a feared response, that manifests as either fight/flight/freeeze or fawn, that can often re-traumatise individuals.
When we identify with a song that expresses similar struggles to what we are experiencing we feel understood and not judged. Clinical psychologist Dr Janina Fisher has proposed that distancing ourselves from pain helps humans survive, yet an ongoing “self-alientation” of parts of ourselves that carries fear or shame lead to a disowning of self – the bad parts that Taylor relates to as being the things she hates about herself which causes a further suppression of feelings that can create further psychological distress.
Expression is central to releasing emotion and connecting to music may be the key that allows the disowned parts of self to be re-integrated by expressing them in a new way. Music provides a creative outlet to re-script a new story of survival of the fear of the past with a renewed ability to see to the good things again in life.
Musicians often imbue grief and trauma in their lyrics and melodies as autobiographical reflections into their art as a way of working through complex emotions and feelings – and by doing so, enlighten the listener to work through their own pain.
Music and connection
Music seems to be a way for music lovers to connect with artists stories of tragedy, which allows their own traumatic or painful memories to become more comfortably integrated and accepted.
Durham University studied 2,436 people within the United Kingdom and Finland to explore the reasons why we listen to sad music. Research suggested that music is a way that people regulate their mood, pleasure and pain. Professor Tuomas Eerola, Professor of Music Cognition in the Department of Music said “previous research in music psychology and film studies has emphasised the puzzling pleasure that people experience when engaging with tragic art.”
The depth of loathing that Taylor taps into in Anti-Hero also affirms our own experience.
It’s self confirming. Engaging with trauma in art allows us to rewrite the outcome from being victims of our circumstances to victors. We are either consumers or creators.
A musician’s writing about trauma is a way of increasing mental health – of searching for understanding of themselves through self-reflection, it changes old thinking patterns and provides a new perspective and ways of thinking about themselves and others that can often heal emotional wounds.
Like telling your story through a trauma narrative, music can help reduce its emotional impact. Music is a universal language that gives you the chance to be a protagonist in your life story, to see yourself as living through it heroically.
Psychologists understand that the quickest way to understanding someone is through their wounds, and musicians too understand this power of music to comfort, console, encourage and exhort themselves and other broken hearts.
If trauma causes distress to the brain and body and music enhances psychological wellbeing, improves mood, emotions, reduces pain, anxiety, depression, and chronic stress, music has the potential to alleviate chronic disease and pain.
Music is a vehicle that gathers strength from distress, and helps you grow brave by reflections and maybe the anti-hero’s and insecurities recreated through music may be the treasures found in darkness that we may not have seen in the light.
Cher McGillivray 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.
Peter Reith would have appreciated the irony. In the week that the former industrial relations minister died, federal politics was yet again consumed with a highly charged debate over workplace changes.
Industrial relations is one of the perennial fault lines in Australian politics. As some battles get settled, fresh ones arise, often involving similar issues, in the enduring argument about growing and sharing the economic pie.
When he held the portfolio in the Howard government, Reith was both negotiator and warrior. In 1996 he and Cheryl Kernot, then leader of the Australian Democrats, who were the crossbench power wielders of the day, stepped their way to a compromise on a package of reforms.
Later, Reith was a tough player in the bitter employer-government assault on union power on the waterfront.
Reith had long gone from parliament by the time John Howard’s radical WorkChoices law became central in bringing down the Coalition government.
In the next turn of the industrial relations wheel, WorkChoices was scuttled by the Rudd government, with Julia Gillard the minister.
The Albanese government’s “Secure Jobs, Better Pay” omnibus bill, which passed the House of Representatives on Thursday, is broad in scope and the stakes are high for the key players in this latest IR test of strength.
The major contested change is the extent to which the legislation widens employees’ right to bargain with multiple employers.
Labor is delivering to the union movement with this bill, which also includes the scrapping of the Australian Building and Construction Commission, a body hated by the unions (and already defanged by regulation since the election).
The government used its jobs summit to prepare the way for a move on multi-employer bargaining. This was something of a ruse – there was never going to be a business-union consensus on this (although a section of small business took the bait at the summit). But the tactic left business wrong-footed.
Labor is desperate to pass the bill through parliament before Christmas. It argues the legislation’s crucial objective is getting wages moving so it’s needed ASAP. More pertinently, Labor is under intense pressure from the unions. It also wants to deny business time to run a campaign.
The government needs one upper house vote over and above those of the Greens to secure the bill in the remaining sitting fortnight of the year.
Enter David Pocock, regarded as the most likely crossbench vote for the legislation (although, in theory, any Senate crossbencher could move into the frame).
Pocock is a progressive in his views and his support base, but he won his ACT senate seat from the Liberals, so at a constituency level he is under conflicting pressures.
He has urged that the bill be split, enabling more consideration of its contested parts. For obvious reasons, the government doesn’t want it broken up.
Crossbenchers in the lower house could not affect the outcome there but weighed into the debate. Their contributions were a reminder that on certain issues some “teal” MPs are more right-leaning than left-leaning.
Sophie Scamps told parliament the “omnibus” bill bundled together many “excellent policies” with “the more controversial ones”. “This has created a Sophie’s choice when it comes to voting.”
Another NSW teal, Allegra Spender, urged provision for an independent review after a year. Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke preferred to leave that matter until the bill is in the Senate. Burke said he didn’t want to adopt such a review in the lower house and then “in Senate negotiations, we end up with a different independent review”.
The cynic might say the government is leaving room for Pocock to have wins of his own in the upper house negotiations.
Of the teals, Zoe Daniel and Monique Ryan voted in favour of the bill, while Spender, Scamps and Kate Chaney voted against.
The government’s determination to speed the bill’s passage has strengthened business’s hand. Burke has given a number of concessions for employers.
A significant one is that votes of workers (to seek a multi-employer agreement, to strike, or to accept an agreement) would be taken at the individual business level, rather than on an overall basis. This would prevent workers in larger enterprises being able to overwhelm those in small ones.
Another change carves out the building and construction industry from the multi-employer stream (although business says the definition of the industry is too narrow).
Despite the concessions, business groups remain angsty, saying they don’t go far enough. In a joint statement they maintained the planned expansion of multi-employer bargaining is too wide. (There is general support for it for low-paid industries such as aged care and child care.)
The peak business groups, which have united in pressing for changes, claim the legislation will undermine enterprise bargaining.
The battle over the bill has given a deeper insight into the Albanese government.
It has shown that while Labor presented as a small target at the election, it had a larger agenda in its back pocket.
Also, while Albanese wants a good relationship with business, this issue underscores the strength of Labor’s ties to the unions. On the other hand, to get something they want when they want it, the unions are having to live with the ground the government is giving to business. The unions claim these concessions will make the multi-employer bargaining harder (outside the low-paid stream); they also play down some changes to the bill that are being made for their benefit.
While there has been a lot of talk about how politics has altered under the new government, the toing and froing over the workplace legislation shows much remains the same, as stakeholders and those with Senate power seek to influence the outcome.
Pocock met Albanese on Wednesday. A feature of the early months of his prime ministership is that the PM prefers to stand above the fray, leaving the carriage of issues to his ministers. But he is putting his shoulder to this particular wheel.
Pocock is very aware of his own clout. When the two met over a cup of tea, the message from Pocock was clear: he wouldn’t be declaring a position on the bill until the Senate committee examining the legislation makes its report, due November 17.
Given the extent to which the government is willing to compromise, the odds would seem on the bill being passed before Christmas. Even though there is a strong case against haste, it would be a big deal for Pocock to hold up for an extended period what the government is casting as urgently-needed legislation.
But we are unlikely to see Burke and Pocock posing together on a parliamentary garden bench, as Reith and Kernot did.
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.
“I want to take accountability for these decisions and for how we got here,” tech billionaire Mark Zuckerberg told the 11,000 staff he sacked this week.
But does he really?
The retrenchment of about 13% of the workforce at Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, comes as Zuckerberg’s ambitions for a “metaverse” tank.
The company’s net income in the third quarter of 2022 (July to September) was US$4.4 billion – less than half the US$9.2 billion it made in the same period in 2021.
That’s due to a 5% decline in total revenue and a 20% increase in costs, as the Facebook creator invested in his idea of “an embodied internet – where, instead of just viewing content, you are in it” and readied for a post-COVID boom that never came.
Since he changed the company’s name to Meta a year ago, its stock price has fallen more than 70%, from US$345 to US$101.
Facebook became Meta in 2021, expressing founder Mark Zuckerberg’s enthusiasm for the ‘metaverse’. Godofredo A. Vásquez/AP
Selling is really all the majority of shareholders can do. They are powerless to exert any real influence on Zuckerberg, the company’s chairman and chief executive.
If this had happened to a typical listed company, the chief executive would be under serious pressure from shareholders. But Zuckerberg, who owns about 13.6% of Meta shares, is entrenched due to what is known as a dual-class share structure.
When the company listed on the NASDAQ tech stock index in 2012, most investors got to buy “class A” shares, with each share being worth one vote at company general meetings.
A few investors were issued class B shares, which are not publicly traded and are worth ten votes each.
As of January 2022 there were about 2.3 billion class A shares in Meta, and 412.86 million class B shares. But although class B shares represent just 15% of total stock, they represent 64% of the votes. And it means Zuckerberg alone controls more than 57% of votes – meaning the only way he can be removed as chief executive is if he votes himself out.
A trend in tech stocks
Meta is not the only US company with dual-class shares. Last year almost half of tech companies, and almost a quarter of all companies, that made their initial public offerings (stock exchange listing) issued dual-class shares.
This is despite considerable evidence of the problems dual-class shares bring – as demonstrated by Meta’s trajectory.
Protection from the usual accountability to shareholders leads to self-interested, complacent and lazy management. Companies with dual-class structures invest less efficiently and make worse takeover decisions, but pay their executives more.
Investors cannot vote Zuckerberg out. Their only real option is to sell their shares. Yet despite shares falling 70% in value, Meta’s approach has yet to change.
It’s a cautionary tale that should signal to investors the risks of investing in such companies – and highlight to policymakers and regulators the danger of allowing dual-class structures.
Mark Humphery-Jenner 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.
Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans at the National Gallery of Australia are just the latest artistic target of climate protesters, who have been throwing soup, mashed potatoes and cake at art worth millions of dollars.
The actions have received a muted response from some museum directors, but the protesters know exactly what they are doing.
As the activists who threw soup on Van Gogh’s Sunflowers said:
We know that civil resistance works. History has shown us that.
Indeed, there is a long history of museums and art being used for political protest.
For women’s suffrage and women artists
In 1914, suffragette Mary Richardson slashed the canvas of Velázquez’s Rokeby Venus at London’s National Gallery.
Richardson wanted to attract publicity to Emmeline Pankhurst’s imprisonment for her suffragette actions. Richardson selected this painting in part because of its value, and because of “the way men visitors gaped at it all day long”.
Damage to the Rokeby Venus by Mary Richardson’s attack. The canvas was later restored. Wikimedia Commons
Her tactics are credited as motivating Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil.
Since 1985, the Guerrilla Girls have been exposing sexual and racial discrimination in the art world.
Their actions have usually occurred at the outskirts of museums: in museum foyers, on nearby billboards and on New York City buses. Perhaps their most famous work asked: “do women have to be naked to get into the Met Museum?”
Against corporate sponsorship and artwashing
Decolonize this Place brings together campaigns against racial and economic inequality.
They organised a campaign beginning in 2018 targeting the then vice-chair of New York’s Whitney Museum, Warren B. Kander, whose company sold tear gas that had reportedly been used against asylum seekers along the US-Mexico border.
The campaign’s first event was held in the museum’s foyer. Protesters burned sage to mimic tear gas, which wafted through the lobby until the fire department arrived.
The protesters argued Kander’s business interests meant he was not fit to lead a globally significant cultural heritage institution that sought relevance for a wide and diverse public constituency. Kander resigned from the museum’s board in 2019.
Since 2018, artist Nan Goldin and her “Opioid Activist Group” have been staging “die-ins” at the museum to protest against the galleries named for sponsorship from the Sackler family.
The Sackler family business is Purdue Pharma, infamous for OxyContin, a major drug in the US opioid crisis.
The highest-profile actions against the British Museum have targeted its rejection of calls to return objects including the Parthenon Marbles of Greece, the Benin Bronzes from modern-day Nigeria, and the Gweagal shield from Australia.
In 2018, a group of activists performed a “Stolen Goods Tour” of the museum. Participants from across the world gave a different story to what visitors read in the museum’s object labels and catalogues, as the activist tour guides explained their continuing connections with objects in the collection.
The tour did not convince the museum to return cultural items, but drew extensive global attention to ongoing campaigns seeking restitution and repatriation.
Protests using art and museums aren’t just the domain of the left.
In 1969, an arsonist destroyed a display at the National Museum of American History that commemorated Martin Luther King Jr, who had been recently assassinated. The perpetrator was never identified.
In 2017, nooses were left at various museums of the Smithsonian, including The National Museum of African American History and Culture. No groups ever came forward to claim responsibility or express a motive, but the noose is a potent and divisive symbol of segregation and racially motivated violence.
In December 2021, doors to the Museum of Australian Democracy in Canberra were set alight twice by protesters with a number of grievances, including opposition to COVID-19 vaccines.
The museum’s director said the “assault on the building” would force the museum to rethink its commitment to being “as open as possible, representing all that is good about Australian democracy”, and at the same time keeping it protected.
‘Direct action works’
The past two decades have seen a surge of art-focused demonstrations.
In 2019, Decolonize this Place and Goldin’s anti-Sackler coalition met with members of 30 other groups in front of Andy Warhol’s “The Last Supper” (1986) at the Whitney.
They were there to celebrate the Tate Museum in London and the Guggenheim Museum in New York, who had announced they would stop taking funding from the Sackler family. One participant cried “direct action works!”
Even when protests at museums and art achieve less concrete outcomes than this, they remain central tools for building public awareness around political and social issues.
It is unlikely actions against museums and art will subside anytime soon.
Life, as the saying goes, is coming at Vladimir Putin fast. Having gleefully announced the annexation of four regions of Ukraine barely more than a month ago – even as his army retreated within them – the Kremlin now says it’s withdrawing from the only regional capital city it had captured since invading in February 2022.
The grim announcement that Russia was abandoning Kherson was made by Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, accompanied by Sergei Surovikin, Russia’s latest commander of the war in Ukraine.
President Putin was absent from the proceedings, as is his habit when there’s bad news to report. Even so, putting his top military leaders in front of the cameras was a significant move. It thrust them into the spotlight, making it clear who would be held responsible for further failures. But it was also potentially a rare moment of relative honesty with the Russian populace, marking the first time in the war that an official announcement about a military defeat had been televised.
It’s true that Ukrainian authorities remain sceptical about the withdrawal announcement, sensing a trap. They have claimed Russian units are integrating into the civilian population and will try to take Ukrainian forces by surprise, turning Kherson into an urban warfare bloodbath on a scale similar to the destruction of Mariupol witnessed earlier in the war.
That certainly remains a possibility, so any analysis of implications should be based on the caveat that this could well be a Russian ruse.
That said, a retreat from Kherson (which Russian forces captured in March 2022), has been on the cards for some time. Moscow has been quietly emptying the city of its best forces over the past few weeks, replacing elite airborne troops with newly mobilised conscripts.
As Surovikin himself admitted, the city was becoming impossible to hold in the face of relentless Ukrainian artillery and missile strikes. Withdrawing to the West Bank of the Dnipro River as winter approached was essentially the only viable option, making the waterway itself a natural line of defence that Ukrainian forces would have to cross to recapture any more territory.
3 reasons Kherson loss will likely prove decisive
But there are three reasons why Russia’s loss of Kherson – if Moscow’s claims are accurate – will likely prove decisive for the future of the war, and potentially Putin’s own fortunes.
1. The Kremlin’s war aims now look impossible
Kherson is strategically significant. A major port, it’s a waypoint from Russian-held parts of the Donbas regions of Luhansk and Donetsk, through the Crimean peninsula, and Ukrainian-held coastal Black Sea towns like Odesa.
After failing to capture Kyiv and bring about forced regime change, Moscow’s objectives shifted to linking up the Donbas with a so-called “Crimean corridor”, effectively shutting Ukraine out of the Black Sea, and turning it into a landlocked rump state.
But the loss of Kherson means Russian forces no longer have a foothold west of the Dnipro River to conduct offensive operations. They are also well held in the north of Ukraine around Kharkiv, and continue to fall back to hastily-constructed defensive lines near Mariupol and Khakovka.
As natural defensive barriers, rivers work both ways: abandoning territory across the Dnipro slows down the Ukrainian advance. But equally it makes it impossible for Russian forces to make any headway along the Black Sea coast, unless the tide of the war turns drastically in Russia’s favour – which is a very unlikely prospect.
If Kyiv’s forces recapture Kherson city, the roads to Crimea will become vulnerable to Ukrainian long-range artillery and drone strikes. Previously seen as a safe haven – not just for Russian military personnel but also tourists – the ability of Ukrainian forces to attack Crimea proper will be even more significant than the powerful but highly symbolic strike on the Kerch Bridge in October, or Crimea’s Saky airbase in August.
Controlling Kherson also frees up Ukrainian forces to redeploy around Zaporizhzhia towards Melitopol, which would threaten Crimea from the east.
Even more importantly, Ukrainian control of the Dnipro around Kherson reverses one of Putin’s few victories in Ukraine: ensuring fresh water for the residents of Crimea. Ukraine had retaliated against Russia’s seizure of the region in 2014 by building a dam to barricade the North Crimean Canal, which supplied Crimea with around 85% of its water.
Russian forces destroyed the dam two days after its invasion on February 24. But Ukraine now has the option to threaten the water supply to Crimea once more, and in the longer term, to control it. That’s both significant now, and a powerful card at the negotiating table in any future attempt to settle the conflict.
3. Defeat in Kherson is personally humiliating for Putin
The loss of Kherson would be yet another a sign of deepening weakness around Vladimir Putin, underscored by an unbroken string of military defeats. For Russia, controlling the Kherson region is fundamental to protect Crimea, and to serve as a staging-post for Russian offensive operations, however much that prospect has dwindled.
Defeat there makes a mockery of claims of strength from Russian state media: there’s no hiding the fact that withdrawing to “better defensive positions” is nonetheless another retreat.
On the domestic front, seeking to limit the fallout by setting up the military for scapegoating as Putin’s defeats continue to mount up becomes not just increasingly indefensible, but also politically perilous. The inherent vulnerability of autocrats like Putin is they can only blame the most heavily-armed portion of society for so long. Without careful management, or at least some tale of success to counterbalance the failures, it’s dangerous to make enemies of those with the most effective means to challenge a leader.
Changing the narrative from failure to success is therefore what the Kremlin is likely to try next. So in the short-term, we are likely to see Putin seek to leaven the defeat in Kherson with his usual depressingly predictable response: violence.
This means more indiscriminate strikes against Ukrainian population centres, against power and water as well as other civilian infrastructure.
One of the great outrages of Russia’s conduct throughout this war is that the Kremlin views every setback as needing to be redeemed with the blood and suffering of Ukrainian non-combatants.
But like Putin’s petulant attacks on Kyiv after the partial destruction of the Kerch Bridge demonstrated, this is likely to only further strengthen the resolve of Ukraine’s people and leadership to end this war on their terms.
For those of us removed from the conflict in the West, we should feel duty-bound to help them bring that about.
Matthew Sussex has received funding from the Australian Research Council, the Lowy Institute, the Carnegie Foundation and various Australian government agencies.
This week, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence Richard Marles announced he had directed the Department of Defence to investigate reports “that ex-Australian Defence Force personnel may have been approached to provide military related training to China”.
This announcement comes just weeks after the British Ministry of Defence revealed around 30 of their former military pilots had been delivering flight training services to members of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) through a company based in South Africa.
detailed examination [of] the policies and procedures that apply to our former Defence personnel, and particularly those who come into possession of our nation’s secrets.
He explained there’s a “clear and unambiguous” obligation on current and former Commonwealth officials to “maintain [government] secrets beyond their employment with, or their engagement with, the Commonwealth”.
Australia’s highly trained defence personnel are a huge asset to us, as much as our cutting-edge physical assets and technologies. As far as possible, we should ensure these assets are protected. There should also be clear guidelines around how and when privileged information can be employed.
Impending investigation
According to Britain’s Minister for Armed Forces and Veterans James Heappey, their authorities had been aware of the situation for several years. None of the pilots had broken existing British law.
The BBC reported the British government issued this “threat alert” to deter other would-be trainers from taking up similar offers. There’s also an updated National Security Bill currently before the House of Commons, which seeks to “create additional tools” to address security challenges like this one.
By comparison, it’s unclear whether any ex-Australian Defence Force (ADF) personnel took up Chinese offers to train the PLA, or whether such an action would be considered a violation of the secrecy of information provisions of the Australian Criminal Code.
Marles explained the Counter Foreign Interference Taskforce is “currently investigating a number of cases” identified by the department’s initial inquiries.
This investigation will also seek to determine whether current policies and procedures are fit for purpose when it comes to former defence personnel and the protection of official secrets.
Taking such measures has bipartisan support. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has indicated “if there is a hole in the legislation now, the Coalition will support a change which will tighten it up”. He added that Australia “can’t allow our secrets and our methodologies to be handed over to another country, and particularly not China under President Xi”.
Dutton’s comments highlight an important distinction: while the training of PLA (or any foreign) pilots by ex-ADF personnel may not necessarily constitute a disclosure of official secrets, it still risks exposing the ways in which the ADF is trained to fight to a potential adversary – what are referred to as its tactics, techniques and procedures.
There are many exchange personnel from overseas embedded in the ADF (and vice versa). But given the sensitivities involved, these positions are typically restricted to close partners such as the United States, United Kingdom, New Zealand or Canada. One of the benefits of close cooperation between militaries is that they can then operate more effectively alongside each other in the event of a conflict.
But if ex-ADF personnel train the armed forces of potential adversaries, those opponents may be able to use this knowledge to better develop methods of their own to erode Australia’s military advantages.
Professor Alessio Patalano of King’s College London points out that
skilled personnel are valued capabilities and this know-how is a national security resource, and for the same reason a potential vulnerability.
He further explained the “reverse engineering of professional skills” has a long historical tradition. That is, personnel undergoing this training would improve their skills, but could also work backwards from the instruction they receive to draw further insights into how the other state might operate in the event of war.
For example, in the so-called “Sempill Mission” of British aviators to Japan in the 1920s, British personnel provided detailed instruction to their Japanese counterparts on how to conduct and train for aircraft carrier operations – at the time a brand new and rapidly emerging form of naval warfare. This training mission contributed significantly to the Imperial Japanese Navy’s prowess in aircraft carrier operations displayed in 1941.
While foreign governments and intelligence services are always looking for opportunities to obtain classified information about Australia and its partners, the converse is also true.
The Daily Express claimed British intelligence services used their knowledge of these recent activities as an opportunity for some pilots to obtain information on the current state of the PLA.
The pilots allegedly had first-hand experience flying China’s frontline combat aircraft, and relayed the information to British authorities on their return.
Protecting our assets
Nevertheless, despite the “clear and unambiguous” obligation for former Commonwealth officials “to maintain [Australia’s] secrets”, ex-ADF personnel have been engaged in training foreign militaries for many years. In an interview with the ABC, former Secretary of Defence Dennis Richardson noted his surprise “at some of the positions that some former ADF officers have occupied in other countries” and expressed his hope the government’s review “goes beyond China”.
The most prominent of these figures is Major General (Ret’d) Mike Hindmarsh, a former Commander of Australia’s Special Operations Command who was subsequently appointed as the Commander of the United Arab Emirates’ Presidential Guard.
Australia already has export control regulations, which limits the physical export and intangible transfer of controlled military and dual-use goods and technologies. Also, stringent limitations on international students undertaking postgraduate research in Australia on critical technologies were legislated in the last Parliament. However, these measures aren’t being currently being implemented until the government can more clearly define the relevant list of critical technologies.
David Andrews has not personally received funding from any relevant bodies. However, his work at the ANU National Security College includes projects funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Department of Home Affairs.
On October 13 one of Australia’s largest medical insurers, Medibank, announced it had suffered a cyberattack – one which has resulted in the breached personal details of 9.7 million customers in Australia. We now know the hackers, who are almost certainly Russian, demanded a ransom of US$9.7 million (about A$15 million) – or else they would leak the data on the dark web.
It’s believed the hackers are linked to the notorious REvil cyber gang which, according to Russian sources, was allegedly dismantled and arrested earlier this year.
The Medibank breach consists of an alleged 200GB of data that contain personally identifiable information such as names, dates of birth, addresses, phone numbers, Medicare numbers, credit card details, and ID documents. Importantly, it also contains sensitive personal information about medical diagnoses and procedures covered by Medibank and ahm health insurance.
The deadline to pay was around midnight on Tuesday. With no ransom received, the hackers kept their promise and the first batch of data was released in the early hours of Wednesday, November 9.
This breach comes with clear risks, and a lot of people will understandably be concerned. Here’s what to know if your data have been exposed, or is exposed in the coming days.
Here’s what the hacker group divulged in the first batch of leaked data:
screenshots of failed negotiations with Medibank
a list of Medibank employees, with their full names, work emails, details of the mobile phones and computers they use, as well as some home wifi names (which can be used to find a person’s home address)
the personally identifiable information (including what appear to be passport numbers) of more than 500,000 international students, either currently or formerly in Australia
the personally identifiable information (including what appear to be ID document numbers) of an additional 500,000 people
and the personal information (including addresses and phone numbers) of 200 people. Most concerningly, this includes details of medical diagnoses and procedures, and a “naughty list” of 100 people singled-out for having medical diagnoses of psychological disorders and drug addiction.
On the following day, November 10, the hackers released an additional 300 records of personally identifying information on account holders who had abortions charged against their accounts.
How might criminals use the stolen data?
Blackmail, fraud, identity theft and targeted scams are the three most obvious options for the hackers now in possession of Medibank customers’ data.
Personal information and information about medical treatments considered “controversial” – such as treatments related to sexual health, mental health, and addiction – could be used to blackmail victims, including high profile people and foreign nationals.
Foreign nationals may be particularly vulnerable if they have undergone procedures considered socially unacceptable – or even illegal – in their home country. This could even make it dangerous for them to return.
Personally identifying information, such as ID documents and contact details, may be used to impersonate victims and seize financial accounts, open lines of credit, or impersonate a victim to extort their friends and family for money.
Personal information can also be used to carry out targeted scams. For instance, cybercriminals may target data breach victims with highly personalised – and therefore highly believable – phishing attacks.
There are also data recovery scams, in which scammers contact victims and make the impossible claim to remove their data from the internet for a fee.
What to do if you’re targeted
We don’t yet know of every single individual who has been directly affected by this breach. Medibank will need to notify individual customers that have been affected, and has said it will continue to do so.
However, concerned customers can take some pro-active steps, such as securing critical accounts and being aware of potential scams – as we describe above, and also as we described in relation to the Optus breach previously.
While passports and drivers licenses can be replaced, there’s no protection against your medical history being released to the public. Hackers may try to exploit this information in extortion scams.
If you are targeted for an extortion scam as a result of the leak, you should notify law enforcement immediately, either through ReportCyber or your local police office. There won’t be any hiding of information that is already posted online, and these criminals can’t keep it a secret for you, no matter what they promise.
If you receive a text or email from scammers related to your medical history, do not reply as it will only encourage them to harass you further.
What do we expect to happen next?
So far, the hackers have released less than 1GB of the 200GB allegedly stolen, with already serious consequences for more than a million Australians. But this is just the tip of the iceberg.
The communications leaked by the hacking group suggest two things. First, they appear to still be trying to extort their US$9.7 million ransom from Medibank. This explains the trickling release of data, rather than all of it being leaked at once.
Second, they seem intent on releasing the data if Medibank does not pay. Their own stated reason for releasing the data is to market their “ransomware as a service” offerings to other cybercriminals. This is when an initial hacker first gains access to a company, and then hires a hacking group such as REvil to actually run the complicated ransomware scheme – a service made (in)famous by REvil.
Among the leaked data the hackers also posted screenshots of their ‘negotiations’ with Medibank. Screenshot, Author provided
It seems unlikely Medibank will (or should) pay the ransom, and likely the unnamed ransomware gang will release the entire dataset to the public.
Should that happen, we may be facing an unprecedented exposure of personally identifiable information with potentially 9.7 million identity documents and credit card details stolen.
This possibility dwarfs even the worst case scenarios of the recent Optus breach, and will require an unprecedented effort to update and secure the identity documents and credit card details of those affected.
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.
First Nations people, please be advised that the following article mentions family violence and assault.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women are 69 times more likely than non-First Nations women to go to hospital with a head injury because of an assault.
But not all First Nations women get the support they need.
Our new study shows how health and support services working in remote areas are not equipped with the tools to identify the potential of a head injury for women who experience violence.
Not only are service workers not asking women about a potential traumatic brain injury, there’s a lack of referral options, and often no diagnosis, limiting women’s access to services and supports for recovery.
Head injuries after an assault range from cuts and bruises to the type that can cause longer-term damage, known as traumatic brain injury.
Traumatic brain injury is defined as damage to, or alteration of, brain function due to a blow or force to the head. Non-fatal strangulation can also lead to brain injury as the brain is deprived of oxygen.
Such injury can have short-term (acute) effects or cumulative effects (over months or years). Changes vary from person to person but can include memory loss, difficulty with motivation, impaired awareness, sensory problems, mood changes and anxiety.
Some types of traumatic brain injury are also a risk factor for early onset dementia.
Our work tries to understand the needs and priorities of First Nations women who have experienced a traumatic brain injury due to family violence.
Timely and culturally safe care, and support, following such brain injury is vital. But not all First Nations women get access to it.
So, in early 2022, we spoke to 38 professionals from various sectors – including health, crisis accommodation and support, disability, family violence, and legal services – working across remote areas of the Northern Territory.
The data offers insights into the barriers that can prevent people asking First Nations women about possible brain injury, and women’s access to health care afterwards.
Participants told us that while the more severe cases were evacuated from a remote community to a hospital, less-severe cases were not always followed up.
One participant told us:
Women are often not evac-ed out following a head injury, if it’s assessed to not be an urgent thing, so might not necessarily be getting CT scans.
CT scans can help inform diagnosis, treatment and support.
Service providers were also often unaware of follow-up pathways to identify and connect women with the right supports, should they have ongoing symptoms.
A fly-in, fly out workforce
Participants told us that high workforce turnover and fly-in, fly-out health services in remote regions could also affect identification of traumatic brain injury.
They told us short-term staff can lack knowledge and familiarity of working in remote communities, and in building community relationships.
Not all women were referred to neuropsychologists (health professionals who might assess symptoms), which led to gaps in medical reports and formalised assessments. One participant told us:
I don’t know any who actually have a confirmed diagnosis.
This has implications for how women are managed and the supports they receive.
None of the staff we interviewed had completed training about traumatic brain injury. One told us:
We get ADD [attention-deficit disorder] workshops, we get domestic and family violence workshops, disability support workshops, but nothing around brain injury.
Other than some legal services, service providers did not ask specific questions of women who had experience violence and assaults about possible traumatic brain injury.
One participant said:
We’ll screen for domestic violence, but we don’t screen for specific injuries.
What can we do about it?
As our research shows, First Nations women with traumatic brain injury need better access to support and services, which is critical for their long-term recovery.
Here’s how we support frontline staff:
design and roll out education about traumatic brain injury to develop staff knowledge and confidence. This education needs to be tailored to the type of frontline staff (remote area nurses will clearly need different education to housing staff), be designed with First Nations input and be culturally appropriate
ask women about the possibility of traumatic brain injury as part of existing family violence and health assessments
ask culturally appropriate questions that are not meant to diagnose traumatic brain injury, but help to identify cognitive impairment and complex disability
explore different ways of delivering rehabilitation for mild traumatic brain injury, and whether telehealth might be appropriate under some circumstances.
Giving a voice to First Nations women living with traumatic brain injury is also crucial to providing the necessary supports during their rehabilitation and recovery.
If this article raises issues for you or someone you know, contact 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) or 13YARN (13 92 76). In an emergency, call 000.
Dr Gail Kingston (Townsville Hospital and Health Service) and Elaine Wills (Western Sydney University and Menzies School of Health Research) are co-authors of the journal paper on which this article is based. The authors would like to thank members of the project advisory group and all participants who shared their time and knowledge.
Michelle Fitts receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the National Health and Medical Research Council.
Jennifer Cullen receives funding from the Department of Social Services and the NDIS. She is the CEO of Synapse Australia.
Karen Soldatic receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the National Health and Medical Research Council.
The costs of climate-related disasters are growing and the poorest countries are bearing the brunt of impacts, from the unprecedented floods in Pakistan to the expanding famine in Somalia. Natural disasters in 2022 alone cost the global economy an estimated US$227 billion.
Such disasters are driving calls at the COP27 climate summit this week for rich countries to pay for the “loss and damage” poorer countries have suffered (and continue to) because of climate change.
Loss and damage finance would help developing countries recover from climate change fuelled disasters and economic losses, and could extend to non-economic losses such as cultural destruction, displacement and health impacts. But this type of funding has long been a sticking point at global climate change negotiations.
As Mian Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif, prime minister of flood-devastated Pakistan, pleaded this week:
How on earth can one expect from us that we will undertake this gigantic task on our own?
A few nations have made loss and damage pledges so far at COP27, but the money presently on the table is only a drop in the ocean compared to what’s actually required. By 2050 the economic cost of loss and damage in developing countries is estimated to be between US$1-1.8 trillion.
So why is loss and damage such a hot issue? And why is it only now that developed countries are beginning to talk about it?
Money on the table
Loss and damage is a new aspect of “climate finance” – money from developed countries to help developing countries cut their emissions and adapt to a changed climate. In 2009, developed countries promised to mobilise $100 billion per year of climate finance by 2020. This target remains unmet.
A report presented at COP27 challenges the adequacy of this amount, showing developing countries need a staggering $2 trillion each year from 2030 of climate finance.
Denmark took the lead on loss and damage finance in September, when it pledged 100 million Danish krones (US$13.5 million). A few other nations have since followed suit during the summit and at its “finance day” yesterday.
Germany has pledged €170 million (US$170.4 million) for its “Global Shield” project, which will provide climate risk insurance and prevention support to vulnerable countries. Ireland announced it would contribute €10 million (US$10 million) to this project in 2023.
Other pledges include NZ$20 million (US$11.8 million) from New Zealand and up to €50 million (US$50.1 million) from Austria, and an additional €2.5 million (US$2.5 million) from Belgium directed to Mozambique as part of a wider package.
Under heavy lobbying from Barbados, the United Kingdom government announced a loan scheme with so-called “Climate Resilient Debt Clauses”. This offers low-income countries and small island developing states the ability to defer debt repayments for two years years in the event of a severe climate shock or natural disaster.
Even China, which stresses it has no obligation to participate in contributing to a loss and damage fund, indicated it would be willing to support a loss and damage compensation mechanism for poorer countries, though this wouldn’t involve contributing cash.
A fraught issue
This year marks the first time loss and damage is formally on the UN climate conference negotiating agenda – though it took marathon negotiations into the small hours on the conference’s first day to get there.
While this is an important victory for developing countries and small island nations, the intense negotiations just for the right to talk about loss and damage show how fraught the issue is.
What’s more, the agreement to simply put loss and damage on the agenda comes with terms. One is to put a plan in place by 2024, which is considered “our bare minimum” by the Alliance for Small Island States. Activist Mohamed Adow from Power Shift Africa was scathing, saying it left talks “like a car that stalls on the starting grid” if no plan is agreed in Egypt.
Another condition is to exclude discussions on liability and compensation. This is a red line issue for many rich countries such as the United States, which fear that admitting liability for historical and ongoing climate disasters could open themselves up to compensation for open-ended claims.
But for nations most vulnerable to climate change, there are critical issues of climate justice at stake.
Climate justice means recognising that those who have contributed the least to climate change are bearing its greatest costs in extreme weather, disasters and sea level rise, and then taking measures to redress that inequity.
These countries include Pacific and Caribbean Island states, impoverished central African countries and low-lying poorer nations such as Bangladesh. Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley put it acidly in her COP27 address:
This world looks, still, too much like when it was part of an imperialistic empire.
Mottley also called for oil and gas companies to be required to contribute to a loss and damage fund, asking:
How do companies make $200 billion dollars in profits in the last three months and not expect to contribute at least 10 cents in every dollar of profit to a loss and damage fund?
What happens if finance fails?
Despite the strong rhetoric following the COP27’s finance day announcements, we’re unlikely to see agreement on a funding target for loss and damage at COP27. The pledges of developed countries have been welcomed, but developing countries are pushing for a long-term, global systemic response.
Where there may be more progress is on a funding delivery mechanism, and a clarification of where finance might come from – whether from governments, multilateral funding agencies, private finance sources or big polluters.
If developing countries don’t see progress on loss and damage funding at COP27, they may explore other options to hold nations and carbon major companies to account for the harms their emissions are inflicting, including through litigation before domestic and international courts.
Many nations already are exploring such options. Antigua, Barbuda and Tuvalu are together planning to bring an advisory opinion request on climate harms to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. Vanuatu is mobilising support for a similar request to the International Court of Justice.
More broadly, failing to meet the developing world’s calls for fairness through genuine negotiations on loss and damage risks unravelling the fragile hopes for climate solidarity that underpin international action.
Jacqueline Peel ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hugh Saddler, Honorary Associate Professor, Centre for Climate Economics and Policy, Australian National University
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Over many years, Australia has barely increased the efficiency of its energy use. Energy consumption per dollar of GDP decreased by an average of only 1% per year from 2002-03 to 2018-19. Over the same period, energy consumption per person actually increased by an average of 0.2% per year.
Of 20 comparable developed countries, Portugal is the only other one to have recorded such an increase over the 15 years to 2020. (The two most recent years are excluded because the impacts of COVID distort these data.)
All the other countries, including European Union members, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and Japan, cut their energy consumption, some by over 20%. The decrease for the United States was 12%.
The energy we use to support economic activity and supply essential services to consumers remains a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. That makes it timely that the Australian government today released a consultation paper on what it calls its National Energy Performance Strategy. The strategy is due to be delivered in mid-2023.
The term energy performance usually refers to the technical performance of equipment that uses energy, such as a motor vehicle or a refrigerator. In this context, improved performance means reduced energy consumption to achieve a given output, such as distance travelled or cold temperature maintained.
The paper explains that its use of the term energy performance is intended “to encapsulate the broad management of energy demand. It includes energy efficiency, load shifting, fuel switching and behaviour change.”
This is a clever change in language, for several reasons. The first is that it uses a term that the public probably understands better than “energy productivity”. That was the term both the Gillard and Abbott governments used in white papers published in 2012 and 2015, respectively.
The second reason is that it moves thinking away from a near-exclusive focus on price signals and market efficiency, and towards technologies and engineering. The former approach dominated the policy discussion in both the white papers.
The third reason is that including load shifting and fuel switching will make it easier for the strategy to become a major component of overall emissions reduction policy. For example, load switching means people with rooftop solar shift some of their electricity use from night to day, thereby cutting consumption of coal-fired electricity. Fuel switching can mean replacing a gas heating appliance with a far more efficient electric heat pump alternative.
Both approaches, if used appropriately, can reduce emissions and energy costs, without necessarily reducing the quantity of energy used.
All four of the activities included with energy performance – energy efficiency, load shifting, fuel switching and behaviour change – will be able to reduce the cost of buying the energy needed to deliver an enormous range of goods and services. Lower energy costs mean lower operating costs for businesses and not-for-profit organisations and lower living costs for Australians.
This should not be seen as in any way diminishing the importance of reducing energy use by increasing energy efficiency. As advocates for stronger energy-efficiency policies and programs have long pointed out, improving energy efficiency in housing increases comfort and health, as well as reducing costs. The consultation paper endorses this approach.
The paper also points out that, for these reasons, for some years now, the International Energy Agency has termed energy efficiency the “first fuel”.
The consultation paper is structured as sets of questions on particular topics. Significantly, the first topic is not about policies and programs directed at particular groups of energy users. Instead, it’s about what the paper terms governance.
Nationally, Australia has had policies and programs relating to energy efficiency for over 40 years. The Fraser government first introduced such measures, focused on oil consumption, in response to the so-called second oil crisis in 1979. Since then, federal and state governments from both sides of politics have introduced, pursued and abandoned a wide range of energy-efficiency policies and activities.
In recent years, many policies were abandoned or progressively defunded. There were few significant new initiatives, with some state-level exceptions. Energy policies have been almost entirely concerned with the “big league” issues of energy markets, energy supply and energy security.
It is therefore most significant that this paper prioritises, under the heading of governance, the “need to strengthen the role of demand-side considerations in energy system planning”. It also includes, under governance, consideration of formal efficiency targets. Such targets are an important part of the policies of most of the better-performing countries.
The paper then moves on to examine policy actions in each of the main energy-consuming sectors: residential, commercial and industrial.
The fifth and last topic is supply chains and workforce. These aspects have gained prominence in broader policy discourse over the past couple of years. Some observers see them as being among as the largest potential barriers to a successful transition of the energy system to a low-emissions future.
Comprehensive action is needed to make up for Australia’s woeful performance of recent decades. We will have to transform consumption and efficiency across the full range of activities that depend on energy.
Hugh Saddler does paid consultancy work relating to energy efficiency and fuel switching policy.
Reports of far-right extremists trying to recruit young people through video games have raised concerns for parents, guardians and youth alike.
In October, a statement from Australian Federal Police said officers had seen evidence of extremist groups trying to recruit young people through online games. In one instance, a teen had shared a video game recreation of the 2019 Christchurch attack.
Another recent example came from online gaming platform Roblox, in which some users had set up recreations of the Nazi Third Reich.
Extremist groups, including jihadists and neo-Nazis, have a history of using video games to spread messages of hate. And while this doesn’t mean all gamers will be exposed, or radicalised if they are, it’s still a concern for security agencies the world over. Parents, guardians and gamers should be aware of the risks.
Is far-right extremism in gaming a problem?
Violent video games are sometimes blamed for acts of terrorist violence, especially when perpetrators are identified as gamers. However, although some studies have found violent games can cause players to become desensitised to violent images, decades of research have not shown a link between violent games and violent behaviour in real life.
That said, far-right extremists have long used games and gaming platforms to try to spread hateful ideologies.
There are many different beliefs that might fall under the label “far right”, but generally these ideologies are united in being anti-democratic, racist and against multiculturalism and equality.
Since as early as 2002, American neo-Nazi organisations have been creating and selling their own “white power” games, and modifying existing popular games to suit their agenda. Extremists will also try to recruit through in-game chat functions and gaming-adjacent platforms (such as where games are streamed).
In 2002, American neo-Nazi leader Matt Hale said, in regards to recruiting people to his white supremacist “church”:
If we can influence video games and entertainment, it will make people understand we are their friends and neighbours.
In 2018, violent terrorist group Atomwaffen Division (also called the National Socialist Order) was found posting freely on the gaming platform Steam, before eventually being banned. A year later in 2019, the US Anti-Defamation League raised the alarm about extremist content still spreading on Steam.
Many gaming franchises, including the Call of Duty franchise, have online modes that let players connect and chat with others from all over the world. Sam Delon/Flickr, CC BY-SA
The tactics far-right extremists use to recruit
Former white supremacist Christian Picciolini has explained on Reddit how far-right extremist recruiters target “marginalised youth” using popular games such as Fortnite, Minecraft and Call of Duty.
They “drop benign hints and then ramp up” when players are “hooked” on their message, Picciolini said. Of his own experience of being recruited, he said:
They appealed to my desperate need for identity, community and purpose. I was bullied and they provided safety. I was lonely and they provided family. That’s how they draw people in, with a sense of belonging and ‘humanitarianism’.
Far-right extremists will often interpret games to suit their own positions. For instance, they’ll point to the inherent superiority of a fantasy game species, such as elves, to draw false and racist parallels with reality.
They’ll also use gaming to find and build connections with others who share their views. By playing together they can reinforce each other’s beliefs, bond over “dark humour” and use the game to act out violent fantasies.
And while moderating sites to remove extremist content is important, it’s complex to do in democracies for a range of technical, legal and ethical reasons. Moderation should not be relied on as the only method for addressing far-right extremism online.
Extremists can also find ways to avoid moderation, such as by using coded language. For instance, 88 and 1488 are both associated with neo-Nazism – but most people wouldn’t know it.
As counter-terrorism expert Greg Barton recently told Channel 7, far-right extremists aim to prey on young, vulnerable young people as part of a potential radicalisation process:
It’s the sort of predatory behaviour where they’re trying to win their confidence that’s the concern. The video, the games, that’s just the bait to get them hooked.
Parents, guardians and young gamers can take protective steps – the first of which is to understand that extremist ideologies online can have an impact in the real world. It’s also important to remember video games themselves are not a cause of extremism, and both security services and parents should avoid thinking as such.
Further, not all young people who come into contact with extremist material or far-right extremists online will become radicalised. In fact, some people become more prosocial when they encounter extremist propaganda. In other words, they think less aggressively and more empathetically towards others.
Millions of people play video games, but only a tiny proportion are radicalised towards violent ideologies or acts.
The best thing parents and community can do is be aware of the risks and be involved in the lives and interests of young people – especially when navigating the online world. This isn’t always easy, but the Australian eSafety Commissioner has some tips on how to do this.
The US-based Western States Centre, which works against bigotry, also has a toolkit for parents and caregivers on engaging with extremism and conspiracy theories. According to one of the authors, former educator and diversity consultant Christine Saxman, debating young people will likely not work:
You want to be on that critical thinking journey with them, not fighting them.
The Australian Federal Police also details warning signs that might indicate someone is being drawn into far-right extremist beliefs. These include becoming distant from friends and family, and using violent, angry or abusive language (especially towards minority groups or public figures).
For more information you can visit the Australian government’s Living Safe Together website.
Helen Young 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.
Karen Andrews is the former home affairs minister and now shadows that portfolio, which includes cyber-security.
With Australians shocked by hackers starting to post Medibank data on the dark web, in this podcast Andrews calls on the health insurer to provide more information.
“There are some very serious questions that need to be put to Medibank about what it actually did.”
“They have sustained incredible reputational damage. The only way that I can see forward for them to be able to improve their public standing is to be very clear and open about what happened, why it happened, and what they are doing to assist their customers.”
On this week’s revelations of extensive visa scams, Andrews says: “I’m not aware of those specific issues that are being played out in the media now having been raised specifically by the department [when she was minister]”.
“There will always be individuals out there who will seek to take advantage of Australia’s visa system […] It’s not acceptable and I’m not excusing it and the role of the Home Affairs Department is to do what it can to try and be ahead of the game […] I can say that I would give all the support that I possibly could to there being a proper review of what has happened and how it could possibly be fixed.”
Andrews takes an uncompromising line on the government’s repatriation of ISIS brides and their children. “I think it’s an appalling decision that’s been abysmally handled.”
“I am sympathetic to the children, particularly those that were taken there at a very young age and those that have been born there, because they’ve come into some pretty ordinary circumstances. But there is a level of parental responsibility in there, and they will have to live with the consequences of the actions that their parents took.”
Looking to the opposition’s task of trying to win back female voters, Andrews says, “Without a doubt women left the Liberal Party in droves at the last election.
“In hindsight and even at the time I think I was of the view that we weren’t listening enough to women and the issues that were important to them.
“I actually find it personally offensive that every time someone talks about what’s important to women, it invariably goes to childcare. And yes, that is important to some women at some points in their life, but that’s not the only issue.”
The idea of gender quotas has been a contentious topic for the Liberal Party. Andrews says, “quotas are a difficult issue for us […] I think we need to consider quotas. Absolutely. But maybe the quotas in the first instance need to be so that we have more women standing for pre-selections. So […] we have to have equal numbers of males and females in a pre-selection process.”
She says it is vital to recapture what have become “teal” seats.
“For the Coalition to win, we need to win the best part of 20 seats, which is a large number of seats. We cannot do it, I don’t believe, without winning back the majority of the teal seats that we lost at the last election […]
“Some of those [teals] are quite closely aligned with the values of the Liberal Party, which means that their constituencies are aligned with the principles of the Liberal Party.
Now that’s going to be a difficult thing to achieve in the short term, but we have to; we have to make sure that we are regaining those teal seats, that we are winning seats off Labor and that we are in a position that we can form government at the next election”.
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.
It’s pretty normal to walk through a university campus and see students sitting together, yet ignoring each other for their smartphones – but not in Spain. I’m currently visiting the University of Navarra, where each time I pass the open space outside the Institute for Culture and Society, I see the vast majority of students talking to each other without their phones in hand.
As Inés Olza, a linguist from the institute, explains:
In Spain people like to talk. For them, a conversation is a cooperative process; silence makes them uncomfortable.
This is great news for these students, because ignoring people in favour of a phone – an act known as “phubbing”, or phone snubbing – has dire consequences.
Earlier this month I published a book called The Psychology of Phubbing. In it, I build on my previous research into phubbing, and synthesise findings from 170 other studies – mostly on the effects of phubbing in important relationships such as with partners, supervisors, friends and family members.
Thr research reveals just how serious phubbing can be.
It’s nice to see students at the University of Navarra gathering and talking without their phones in the way.
Phubbing trends
People phub in all situations: while commuting, at cafes, while waiting for the bus, during work meetings, in restaurants, at the dinner table, and in bed. They mostly phub others to browse the web, check their bank app, use Google maps and, of course, to check social media.
People are also more likely to phub those closest to them. For instance, study participants phubbed their partners the most, followed by their closest friends, siblings, children and parents. Younger people phubbed more than older people, but there was no noticeable difference between how often males and females phubbed.
Here’s what the consequences were of phubbing one’s children, partners, staff, friends and family members.
Children
When parents phubbed their children, this sent the message their parents weren’t interested in them. The lack of acceptance felt by the children made them feel rejected and socially disconnected. This was associated with lower life satisfaction, and increased anxiety and depression.
Phubbed children were more likely to become addicted to their smartphones, and displayed hostile behaviour online, such as by cyberbullying their peers. Some even experienced academic burnout.
Partners
In partnerships, phubbing led to increased conflict related to smartphone use. It often made the phubbed partner feel excluded, which resulted in less intimacy, reduced satisfaction with the relationship and in turn led to reduced life satisfaction.
In some cases phubbed partners felt jealous because they were worried their partner may be pursuing someone else romantically. This intensified their anxiety and depression and lowered their wellbeing.
Phubbed partners would also spend excessive amounts of time on social media, possibly to regain some of the attention lost at the hands of their partner’s smartphone habit.
Phubbing made employees feel socially excluded, lowered their motivation and even threatened their self-esteem. To retaliate, employees resorted to misusing the internet at work.
What’s worse is that being phubbed by a boss led to employees phubbing their other colleagues.
Family and friends
Being phubbed by a family member violated the phubbed person’s expectations and made them feel like they don’t matter to the phubber. This weakened their connection to the phubber, lowered their life satisfaction, and increased their loneliness and depression.
In a similar vein, phubbed friends felt socially disconnected. This lowered their friendship satisfaction and life satisfaction and – once more – increased their anxiety and depression. Phubbed friends were also driven to seeking attention on social media.
People who get phubbed by their friends are more likely to go to social media for attention. Shutterstock
How to reduce phubbing
If there’s someone in your life who phubs you, you should try to calmly bring it up. This might be as simple as saying “Hey, can I please have your attention?”
But this may only stop the act once. If it keeps happening – which will be more likely if the phubber is addicted to their phone and/or social media – you’ll need to have a more considered conversation.
Explain how being phubbed affects you and why it needs to stop. It can also help to set ground rules around phone use when you’re together. For instance, parents can establish rules around using phones while eating dinner, and partners can decide to put their phones away before going to bed.
If you’re concerned you may be a phubber, think long and hard about how you use your phone around others. If you catch yourself phubbing, stop and make a commitment to avoid it in the future.
If you’re with someone and absolutely must phub them, do this as considerately as possible. You could say “Sorry, I have to quickly check this/send this text”, or “This is urgent”. And try to keep it short. These small acts can go a long way in reducing the effect of phubbing on the phubbed person.
If your phubbing is out of control, you may have a problematic dependency on your smartphone and/or social media – or maybe a boss who expects you to work at all hours.
Researchers don’t really know the effects of phubbing on family members other than partners and children. My colleagues and I are conducting a study on the impact on parents who are phubbed by their children. If this applies to you, you can help us find out more.
We’re also investigating the consequences of young people being phubbed by their friends. If you’re between 18 and 24, consider participating in our study.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains names and images of deceased people, and mentions of racial discrimination and racist language against First Nations people.
This week marks three years since Kumanjayi Walker was shot and killed by Northern Territory police constable Zachary Rolfe.
Rolfe was initially charged with murder, which was later changed to the alternative charges of manslaughter and violent act causing death. The trial did not come to a conclusion until March 11 2022, when a jury (with no Aboriginal representation) found Rolfe not guilty.
Now an inquest into Walker’s death is taking place.
An inquest is an independent inquiry into the causes of someone’s death that is conducted by a state or territory coroner. Inquests routinely occur in deaths in custody cases in the Northern Territory.
When a death in custody concerns a First Nations person, the police have exhibited a reluctance to pursue criminal investigations. Therefore, it usually requires the coroner to recommend a referral to police and prosecutors before criminal responsibility is considered by these agencies.
In Kumanjayi Walker’s case, the criminal proceeding occurred first. This is likely due to the weight of evidence making the possibility of conviction reasonable and, efforts by the #JusticeForWalker campaign to highlight prosecution was in the public interest. Both factors – evidence and public interest – can inform decisions to prosecute.
The coroner can not address criminal responsibility. They inform causes of the death, and action that can be taken to prevent similar deaths in custody. The coroner can also recommend disciplinary action against people who may be at fault.
The scope of the inquest
The inquest into the death of Kumanjayi Walker commenced on September 5 and is due to conclude on December 2 this year. An inquest aims to examine the broad causes of death, rather than lay blame. It has already begun to hear and receive evidence on the matters of Rolfe’s past, including violent conduct and racist attitudes.
The inquest will continue to consider whether the supervision and response by senior police to Rolfe’s past use of force, firearms and failure to turn on body-worn video was adequate. It will explore questions of the appropriateness of police arrangements, including the role of the Immediate Response Team to arrest Kumanjayi. Questions such as why violence was used in the arrest, and why police were arresting Kumanjayi in his home on the night of his uncle’s funeral are being explored.
The inquest will also receive evidence on structural racism in the NT, and the NT Police in particular. It will examine the role of the Northern Territory Intervention (a series of federal government laws and policies since 2007 that racially target Aboriginal communities in the NT) in police relations, and specifically in Yuendumu.
The inquest will consider police accountability mechanisms and the culture of the NT Police Force, and identify strategies for change to prevent similar deaths in custody. However, there is no legal obligation for governments and agencies to implement coronial recommendations.
Who does the inquest hear from?
Unlike in the criminal trial, Kumanjayi Walker’s family and the Warlpiri community at Yuendumu has legal representation and a voice in the proceedings. Evidence will also be provided by others outside of the law enforcement system. This includes expert statements by critical race theorists, including leading First Nations scholars, anthropologists, and police accountability scholars.
However, there are also at least 147 statements by police, and the inquest hearings have thus far heard from many more police witnesses than Warlpiri people and other Aboriginal people in the NT. Their lived experiences are valuable as they can provide unique insight in highlighting what needs to change about policing in the NT.
How will the inquest be different from the trial?
While an inquest receives information from a wide range of sources and witnesses and is overseen by a coroner, a trial only considers information within the rules of evidence and guilt is usually determined by a jury.
In the days that followed Rolfe’s acquittal, text messages were released which were ruled inadmissible by the judge in criminal trial, because they may not have reflected Rolfe’s thinking at the time he shot Kumanjayi.
These text messages revealed Rolfe described his job as “a sweet gig, just get to do cowboy stuff with no rules”. A few months later, text messages emerged in which Rolfe described Aboriginal people as “neanderthals who drink too much alcohol”.
Thus far, the inquest has focused on the conduct of the Immediate Response Team on the night of the shooting and the violent behaviour of Rolfe more generally as well as the failure of the police and prosecutors to punish his violence.
Kumanjayi Walker’s family have expressed their ongoing suffering and fear from the shooting. They have called for action to follow the inquest, including a ban on police guns in Aboriginal communities.
The opening statement of the inquest from Warlpiri man Ned Jampajimpa Hargraves – a strong advocate in the “Justice for Walker” campaign – spoke about the sense of danger that kardiya (white people), including police, had brought to his community. His final words to the coroner were
Your Honour, one last thing, there should be not – there should be no guns in the remote communities. There should be no guns, period, no guns.
What can an inquest find and what happens with its findings?
The coroner is likely to make a wide range of findings and recommendations in relation to NT police practises, policies, training and accountability. There may also be findings on Rolfe’s conduct and recommendations for NT police to take appropriate action.
Findings could also extend to whether there is racism embedded in the NT Police, in the conduct and attitudes of Rolfe, in Northern Territory and federal laws, and in government practises at Yuendumu. Whether anything changes is a matter for the agents implicated in the death in custody itself: the NT Police as well as the NT and federal governments.
Recommendations relating to other Aboriginal deaths in custody in the NT, such as requests to repeal certain police powers, have fallen on deaf ears. Instead, families have had to carry the burden of rallying for change. The consequence of agencies and governments failing to heed coronial recommendations is that First Nations deaths in custody tragically continue to occur.
Thalia Anthony receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
