Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Judith Godden, Honorary Associate, Department of History, University of Sydney

Florence Nightingale’s birth on May 12, 1820, is commemorated as International Nurses Day, honouring her founding role in modern nursing. Today would be her 200th birthday, so expect to hear even more about her.

Yet mention her name to nurses, the reaction tends to be an eye-roll. Why?

Read more: Florence Nightingale carried the lamp but modern nurses carry the can

Nightingale influenced nursing and health care in two ways.

First there is the impact of her myth. This myth was created when she headed a group of nurses to care for the thousands of British troops dying from disease during the Crimean War (1853-56).

The public revered Nightingale as the Lady with the Lamp, gliding around at night at Scutari Hospital in Turkey embodying selfless care. This image has been a burden for nurses as it ignores the skills involved in effective nursing.

Second, there was the impact of the real Nightingale. After the Crimean War, she spent most of her remaining 54 years as an invalid in her bedroom.

She wrote insightful reports and papers on reforming the army and improving public health. These were highly influential.

So too was her practical guide for women nursing family members at home, Notes on Nursing (1859). Later, her focus was on improving conditions in India.

In all her work, Nightingale aimed to prevent needless deaths from disease, as had occurred during the Crimean War.

In 1869, writing to one of the nurses she sent to Australia, Nightingale described her wartime experience as:

like a horrid spectre one is afraid of conjuring up out of the dark corner of one’s mind […] ready to spring, if one were not so overwhelmed with present work.

Her description resonates with the despair of those caring for COVID-19 patients with inadequate facilities today.

Meanwhile, the public insisted Nightingale reform civilian nursing. They poured money into a Nightingale Fund to establish a training school for nurses under her guidance.

Nightingale complained; she had not asked for the money nor been consulted about its aim. Eventually, in 1860, the Nightingale School of Nursing began at St Thomas’ Hospital, London. Though she tried to influence it, she had little to do with its management.

Nightingale also had little choice but to respond to the innumerable requests she received for advice, especially about hospital design and nursing.

Australians wanted a piece of her too

Australian hospitals and politicians equally clamoured to collaborate with the famed Nightingale.

One result was the spread of the hospital building style she favoured. These hospitals had separate buildings (pavilions) to help prevent cross-infection.

Inside were long, traditional wards that became known as Nightingale wards. They had high windows for light and ventilation; patients and beds were arranged for easy supervision. An example can be seen in the original buildings at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney.

Read more: From army barracks to shopping malls: how hospital design has been a matter of life and death

Nightingale was not immune from imperialist prejudices. An example is her collecting statistics about indigenous health in British colonies.

As the Congress of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nurses and Midwives points out, her involvement did not help Indigenous Australians. Nor was she always successful.

While Australian hospitals and governments boasted they consulted her, the tyranny of distance was against them. In the 1860s, she commented on plans for new wards at Sydney Infirmary (now Sydney Hospital), but in the three months it took for her letter to arrive, the plans had changed.

It was certainly not her fault that, after the building was completed, it was discovered the architects had forgotten to include toilets.

Nightingale advised on a new Australian nursing school

Nightingale’s major contribution to Australian nursing occurred when she was asked to establish a school of nursing at Sydney Infirmary.

The new nurses were expected to be a secular version of the other trained nurses in the colony, the Sisters of Charity.

Read more: Florence Nightingale: a pioneer of hand washing and hygiene for health

Nightingale agreed to send nurses to Sydney, but largely left it to the matron of the UK’s St Thomas’s Hospital to choose them. Only later would Nightingale view the matron as someone who would not know “a sheep’s head from a carrot”.

The six nurses arrived in 1868. Most were inexperienced, including their leader Lucy Osburn. Nightingale tried to advise, but again the length of time letters took to arrive meant they were of little use. Problems mounted. Three years later, Nightingale disowned the project and deemed Osburn a failure.

Strict hygiene, hard work and patients first

Nightingale had been too hasty. Osburn learnt from her mistakes and persisted in her work. She implemented Nightingale’s key ideals including strict hygiene and conscientious, patient-centred nursing.

She demonstrated that nursing needed to be taught, rather than learnt from experience. As important, her nurses had reasonable pay and good living conditions in the Nightingale wing. Better conditions attracted nurses more able to implement the new standards of antiseptic practice.

Today’s nurses have reason to be ambivalent about Nightingale’s impact, but her ideals have helped ensure they are among the most trusted occupational group.

– ref. Which Florence Nightingale will we remember today? The ‘Lady with the Lamp’ or the influential writer and activist? – https://theconversation.com/which-florence-nightingale-will-we-remember-today-the-lady-with-the-lamp-or-the-influential-writer-and-activist-136497

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Currell, Associate Professor in Environmental Engineering, School of Engineering, RMIT University

Australia’s relative success in stopping the spread of COVID-19 is largely due governments taking expert advice on a complex problem. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of decisions on projects that threaten the environment – most notably, Adani’s Carmichael coal mine.

Our research published today in Nature Sustainability documents how state and federal governments repeatedly ignored independent scientific advice when assessing and approving the Adani mine’s groundwater plans.

We interrogated scientific evidence available to governments and Adani over almost a decade. Our analysis shows governments failed to compel Adani to fully investigate the environmental risks posed by its water plans, despite concerns raised by scientists.

There is also evidence the government approval decisions were influenced by the political climate and pressure exerted by members of government.

Our findings come as the Morrison government conducts a ten-yearly review of the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act. It is critical these laws – Australia’s most important environmental legislation – are reformed to put rigorous, independent science at the core.

Advice ignored

In mid-2019, the federal and Queensland governments approved groundwater management plans for Adani’s Carmichael coal mine. It granted the company unlimited access to groundwater in central Queensland’s Galilee Basin.

We and other experts warned the mine threatens to damage aquifers, rivers and ecosystems – in particular, the Doongmabulla Springs Complex. This system contains more than 150 wetlands which support rare plant communities found nowhere else on earth.

The springs are of major cultural significance to the Wangan and Jagalingou people.

We analysed the full suite of evidence on the groundwater plans from agencies and scientists with expertise in hydro-geology. The evidence, provided to state and federal environment ministers, spanned almost a decade and included at least six independent scientific reviews.

The evidence highlighted major shortcomings, and gaps in knowledge and data.

Read more: Unpacking the flaws in Adani’s water management plan

For example in 2013, the federal government’s Independent Expert Scientific Committee on Coal Seam Gas and Large Coal Mining Development (IESC) said key geological characteristics in Adani’s groundwater model were not consistent with available field data.

Expert evidence from court-appointed hydro-geology witnesses in the Land Court of Queensland reiterated this concern and raised new questions over whether the source aquifer for the Doongmabulla Springs had been incorrectly identified.

Subsequent joint reviews by CSIRO and Geoscience Australia in February and June 2019 found Adani had failed to conclusively resolve these issues. The agencies also identified further flaws in Adani’s modelling, including interaction between groundwater and the Carmichael River that was again not consistent with field evidence.

The CSIRO and Geoscience Australia concluded the model was “not suitable to ensure the outcomes sought by the EPBC Act conditions are met”.

Governments under pressure

The federal government received the reviews from CSIRO and Geoscience Australia in February 2019. It did not publicly release them until then-environment minister Melissa Price announced approval of the groundwater plans on April 8. This was effectively the final federal approval the mine needed to proceed.

Media reports at the time suggested Price had been pressured by members of her government to issue approval before the election. What’s more, her department reportedly pushed the CSIRO to endorse Adani’s plans in just hours, and in the absence of critical information.

Within 48 hours of Adani’s approval being announced, the government called a federal election.

Read more: Morrison government approves next step towards Adani coal mine

The Coalition was returned to power at the election. Federal Labor suffered heavy losses in regional Queensland – a result many claimed was due to their lukewarm support for the Adani mine.

The Queensland Labor government was also required to sign off on the groundwater plans. Following the federal election result, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk directed that the assessment be completed quickly. The state approved the plans within four weeks.

This was despite being provided a scientific analysis by authors of this article and others, outlining key remaining scientific deficiencies in the groundwater plans.

Once-in-a-decade chance

Our analysis exposes flaws in how evidence informs major government decisions. It also shows why reform of the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act is so urgent.

The laws are currently under review. Many reputable organisations and scholars have proposed ways the legislation can better protect the environment, increase its independence from government and put science at the core.

Independent scientific committees, such as the federal IESC, are commissioned by governments to advise on mining proposals. We suggest such committees be granted greater powers to request specific data and studies from mining companies to address knowledge gaps before advice is issued.

Alternatively – or in addition – a new independent national commission should be established to oversee environmental impact assessments conducted by mining and other development proponents.

This commission should be empowered to interrogate and resolve key scientific uncertainties, free from political interference. Its recommendations to government should take into account a wide range of expert advice and public feedback.

This would not only improve the evidence base for decisions, but may also speed up assessments – ensuring more effective resolution of uncertainties that often lead to protracted conflict and debate about a mine’s impacts.

Such reform is urgently needed. Australia is suffering unprecedented water stress, environmental harm and declining trust in government.

Australian governments listened to the science when it needed to flatten the curve of COVID-19. The same approach is needed if we’re to preserve the places we love and the ecosystems we depend on.

Read more: Our nature laws are being overhauled. Here are 7 things we must fix

An Adani spokesperson provided the following response to the claims raised by the authors:

Adani’s Groundwater Dependent Ecosystems Management Plan (GDEMP) was finalised and approved by both the Australian and Queensland governments almost 12 months ago, bringing to an end more than eight years of heavily scrutinised planning and approvals processes.

The approvals were confirmation that the GDEMP complies with all regulatory conditions, following an almost two-year process of rigorous scientific inquiry, review and approvals. This included relevant independent reviews by Australia’s pre-eminent scientific organisations CSIRO and Geoscience Australia.

There are more than 270 conditions within the mine approvals to protect the natural environment and more than 100 of those relate to groundwater.

We’re now getting on with construction of the Carmichael Mine and Rail project, having awarded more than $750 million in contracts to the benefit of regional Queenslanders.

We remain on track to create more than 1,500 direct jobs during the construction and ramp up of our project and some further 6,750 indirect jobs. At a time when our country is facing some of its toughest challenges, we’re determined to deliver on our commitments of jobs and opportunities.

– ref. Australia listened to the science on coronavirus. Imagine if we did the same for coal mining – https://theconversation.com/australia-listened-to-the-science-on-coronavirus-imagine-if-we-did-the-same-for-coal-mining-138212

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hal Pawson, Professor of Housing Research and Policy, and Associate Director, City Futures Research Centre, UNSW

Australians had become used to walking past rough sleepers. Policymakers too, seemed unmoved by the people huddled in doorways or sheltering in parks under plastic sheets. That’s until the COVID-19 pandemic rendered rough sleepers visible, because we’ve all been told to stay home and anyone without a home presents a risk of passing on the virus.

State governments have suddenly found tens of millions of dollars to create pop-up accommodation or book rough sleepers into hotel rooms. But such short-term fixes also highlight the entrenched failings of Australia’s housing system. This crisis has laid bare five major vulnerabilities.

1. Thousands are sleeping rough

Before the pandemic, street homelessness affected about 8,000 people on any given night, as indicated by census data. But this is almost certainly an underestimate.

Recent UK research showed the number of people sleeping rough in any given year was five times as many as captured in census-type snapshots. There’s no reason to think it’s much different in Australia.

Many more people are on the fringe of rough sleeping — couch surfing, for example.

2. More than a million in rental stress

Our second housing system vulnerability is the body of people – far larger again – living in insecure and unaffordable rental housing. Even before this current crisis, housing costs had pushed around 1.3 million Australians into poverty. After paying rent they didn’t have enough money left for essentials like food and electricity.

Now many of these renters will have lost jobs or work hours. Government schemes like JobKeeper and JobSeeker will temporarily help only some — temporary migrants and many casual workers are excluded.

Measures like the moratorium on evictions are welcome (provided they prove robust). The same goes for mortgage pauses by the banks, which might help property owners avoid having to sell if tenants can’t afford the rent.

But these are only stopgap efforts.

3. A shrunken social housing sector

The third vulnerability is the shrivelled state of social housing, where rents are fixed at an affordable share of income. Relative to population, the number of properties let by public housing agencies and community housing providers has halved since 1991.

Across most of Australia, waiting lists for social housing are huge. In most jurisdictions the sector lacks the capacity to offer long-term housing to all the rough sleepers and others currently in hotels. Only through emergency unit acquisitions or head-leasing will this be possible.

4. A mountain of debt

Our fourth housing system vulnerability is housing-related debt. If the pandemic-induced downturn persists and unemployment stays high, this mountain of debt could make the recession much worse.

In the early 1990s household debt equated to about 70% of disposable household income. In March 2019, the RBA warned the debt-to-income ratio had risen to 190%. The increase was mostly due to increased borrowing to buy homes and investment properties.

Even before the pandemic, one in five mortgage holders were struggling to meet repayments. If large scale unemployment were to force mass property sales, this could compound the crash as homes flood the market.

We know from the GFC experience in the USA, Ireland, Spain and elsewhere that a sharp fall in property prices can have severe and long-lasting economic consequences that worsen inequality. In the USA, vulture landlords stepped in to buy up large numbers of distressed properties and create rental property empires. Renting from owners of this kind is not an attractive prospect.

5. An unbalanced housing system

Our housing system is vulnerable to shocks because it is unbalanced, our fifth system frailty. Residential construction depends almost entirely on private developers building for sale to individual buyers.

These buyers are highly sensitive to the outlook for property values. The resulting herd mentality magnifies booms and slumps – a particular problem when they are totally dominant in the market. A magnified downturn can bring residential construction to a grinding halt. And while quick to shed labour, construction is slow to re-employ because of risk and long project lead times.

Construction normally employs more than 1 million Australians with a range of skill levels. It generates many more jobs through the building materials supply chain as well as in real estate, property management and financial services. This helps to explain why Master Builders Australia and the building union CFMEU have united in a call to government to invest in building 30,000 social housing units as part of Australia’s post-COVID recovery.

The need for a national strategy

The housing system needs more than a one-off crisis boost. The pandemic policy jolt is an opportunity to put Australia’s housing on more stable footings through a Commonwealth-led bipartisan, long-term, national housing strategy.

A key part of this should be routine social housing construction on a scale that at least keeps pace with population growth. That’s up to 15,000 homes a year – around five times the current number. This may sound ambitious, but it’s below the levels regularly achieved between the mid-1950s and the mid-1970s.

And this doesn’t have to mean a return to the post-war approach when state authorities provided public housing. Not-for-profit community housing organisations can now take on the major new supply role.

But we do need a post-war level of ambition. Government has two immediate roles to play in linking housing to a post-pandemic recovery.

The first is to help avoid a house price crash that will deepen an economic slump. Co-ordinating action with mortgage lenders could help minimise repossessions and avoid a glut of discounted properties on the market.

Governments may also need to take on distressed projects from private developers. The New South Wales government has already flagged such action.

The second immediate role for government is to support residential construction as the motor of economic revival by investing in social housing as the central plank of a stimulus package. Government-owned sites and developer-owned landbanks can be used to kick-start activity more quickly than other major infrastructure projects. Community housing providers – especially some larger faith-based players – also have shovel-ready sites.

These should be the first steps in the national strategy, which should aim to diversify both housing supply and demand.

Alongside a greater role for community housing, this could include a build-to-rent sector commissioned by institutional investors to build market rental blocks as long-term, income-generating assets. This would benefit tenants and the economy, by smoothing the boom-bust cycle of residential construction.

As we argue in our recent books, a national housing strategy must also thoroughly overhaul national, state and territory tax settings. Many of these have greater housing policy impacts than any spending program.

Tax reform could make our housing system fairer and more efficient. It could dampen the speculation that fuels rising prices and debt, while raising the revenue we need to provide decent, affordable housing for all Australians.

Peter Mares hosts a new series, Housing the Australian Nation, on Earshot on ABC Radio National from May 30, which features an interview with Hal Pawson.

– ref. Coronavirus lays bare 5 big housing system flaws to be fixed – https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-lays-bare-5-big-housing-system-flaws-to-be-fixed-137162

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joseph L Tomkins, Associate Professor in Evolutionary Biology, University of Western Australia

When a mother gives birth to twins, the offspring are not always identical or even the same gender. Known as fraternal twins, they represent a longstanding evolutionary puzzle.

Identical twins arise from a single fertilised egg that accidentally splits in two, but fraternal twins arise when two eggs are released and fertilised. Why this would happen was the puzzle.

In research published today in Nature Ecology & Evolution we used computer simulations and modelling to try to explain why natural selection favours releasing two eggs, despite the low survival of twins and the risks of twin births for mothers.

Why twins?

Since Michael Bulmer’s landmark 1970 book on the biology of twinning in humans, biologists have questioned whether double ovulation was favoured by natural selection or, like identical twins, was the result of an accident.

Read more: Curious Kids: why are some twins identical and some not?

At first glance, this seems unlikely. The embryo splitting that produces identical twins is not heritable and the incidence of identical twinning does not vary with other aspects of human biology. It seems accidental in every sense of the word.

In contrast, the incidence of fraternal twinning changes with maternal age and is heritable.

Those do not sound like the characteristics of something accidental.

The twin disadvantage

In human populations without access to medical care there seems little benefit to having twins. Twins are more likely to die in childhood than single births. Mothers of twins also have an increased risk of dying in childbirth.

In common with other great apes, women seem to be built to give birth to one child at a time. So if twinning is costly, why has evolution not removed it?

Paradoxically, in high-fertility populations, the mothers of twins often have more offspring by the end of their lives than other mothers. This suggests having twins might have an evolutionary benefit, at least for mothers.

But, if this is the case, why are twins so rare?

Modelling mothers

To resolve these questions, together with colleagues Bob Black and Rick Smock, we constructed simulations and mathematical models fed with data on maternal, child and fetal survival from real populations.

This allowed us to do something otherwise impossible: control in the simulations and modelling whether women ovulated one or two eggs during their cycles. We also modelled different strategies, where we switched women from ovulating one egg to ovulating two at different ages.

We could then compare the number of surviving children for women with different patterns of ovulation.

Women who switched from single to double ovulation in their mid-20s had the most children survive in our models – more than those who always released a single egg, or always released two eggs.

This suggests natural selection favours an unconscious switch from single to double ovulation with increasing age.

A strategy for prolonging fertility

The reason a switch is beneficial is fetal survival – the chance that a fertilised egg will result in a liveborn child – decreases rapidly as women age

So switching to releasing two eggs increases the chance at least one will result in a successful birth.

Read more: Same same but different: when identical twins are non-identical

But what about twinning? Is it a side effect of selection favouring fertility in older women? To answer this question, we ran the simulations again, except now when women double ovulated the simulation removed one offspring before birth.

In these simulations, women who double ovulated throughout their lives, but never gave birth to twins, had more children survive than those who did have twins and switched from single to double ovulating.

This suggests the ideal strategy would be to always double ovulate but never produce twins, so fraternal twins are an accidental side effect of a beneficial strategy of double ovulating.

– ref. Not all twins are identical and that’s been an evolutionary puzzle, until now – https://theconversation.com/not-all-twins-are-identical-and-thats-been-an-evolutionary-puzzle-until-now-138209

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alice Richardson, Associate professor, Australian National University

When you’re in a medical emergency, you don’t typically think of calling a statistician. However, the COVID-19 outbreak has shown just how necessary a clear understanding of data and modelling is to help prevent the spread of disease.

One person understood this a long time ago. Were she alive today, Florence Nightingale would understand the importance of data in dealing with a public health emergency.

Nightingale is renowned for her career in nursing, but less well known for her pioneering work in medical statistics. But it was actually her statistical skills that led to Nightingale saving many more lives.

Read more: Florence Nightingale: a pioneer of hand washing and hygiene for health

An early spark

Nightingale was one of the first female statisticians. She developed an early passion for statistics. As a child she collected shells and supplemented her collection with tables and lists. Nightingale was home-schooled by her father but insisted on learning maths from a mathematician before she trained as a nurse.

Upon arriving at the British military hospital in Turkey in 1856, Nightingale was horrified at the hospital’s conditions and a lack of clear hospital records.

Even the number of deaths was not recorded accurately. She soon discovered three different death registers existed, each giving a completely different account of the deaths among the soldiers. Using her statistical skills, Nightingale set to work to introduce new guidelines on how to record sickness and mortality across military hospitals.

This helped her better understand both the numbers and causes of deaths. Now, worldwide, there are similar standards for recording diseases, such as the International Classification of Diseases.

Outbreak monitoring

The ability to compare datasets from different places is critical to understanding outbreaks. One of the challenges in monitoring the COVID-19 pandemic has been the lack of standardised datasets experts can compare on the number of people infected. This is due to differences in testing rules in different countries.

More than 150 years after Nightingale pointed out the need to standardise datasets before comparing them, we are certain she would have something to say about this.

Read more: From election upsets to climate chaos, rolling the dice helps us appreciate the odds

With her improved data, Nightingale put her statistical skills to use. She discovered deaths due to disease were more than seven times the number of deaths due to combat, because of unsanitary hospital conditions.

However, knowing numbers alone have limited persuasive powers, Nightingale used her skills in statistical communication to convince the British parliament of the need to act. She avoided the dry tables used by most statisticians of the time, and instead devised a novel graph to illustrate the impact of hospital and nursing practice reform on army mortality rates.

Today, graphs remain one of the most effective ways to understand the effects of health care interventions, including those used to illustrate the effectiveness of physical distancing to curb COVID-19’s spread.

Florence Nightingale down under

Nightingale may not have travelled much after her wartime experience in Turkey, but she was engaged in improving public health in many countries, including Australia.

She wrote papers on the benefits of pavilion-style hospital building designs, which were later incorporated into Australian hospitals. This style consists of small wings, or pavilions, leading off a central corridor – this is convenient for nursing staff and encourages good ventilation.

In 1868, Lucy Osburn headed the first team of nurses sent to Australia to establish Nightingale-style nursing. One of the team’s first tasks was to nurse Prince Alfred, Queen Victoria’s second son, who had been shot in an attempted assassination.

Nightingale never visited Australia herself, but this did not stop her using her usual tactics of requesting data from her wide network of contacts and drawing conclusions from what she found. She was a prolific correspondent – we have more than 12,000 of her letters, and those are only the ones which haven’t been burned, lost or otherwise destroyed.

Nightingale would surely have embraced 21st-century communication. We can imagine her sitting at her laptop tweeting under the moniker @ladywiththelamp.

A trailblazer for women

In 1858, Nightingale’s achievements in statistics were recognised by the Royal Statistical Society in the UK, when she became the first woman Fellow of the Society.

After Nightingale’s fellowship, it would be more than 100 years before a woman was elected President of the Royal Statistical Society, with Stella Cunliffe’s election in 1975. It was only in 1995 that the Statistical Society of Australia had a woman as president, with the election of Helen MacGillivray.

As in many STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) disciplines, female statisticians are still fighting for equal recognition. To date, only two women have received the Statistical Society of Australia’s highest honour, the Pitman Medal.

But it’s clear female statisticians are still making headway. In 2019, five major statistical associations had women presidents. Today, on her 200th birthday, Nightingale would have been proud.

– ref. The healing power of data: Florence Nightingale’s true legacy – https://theconversation.com/the-healing-power-of-data-florence-nightingales-true-legacy-134649

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Belgrave, Professor History, Massey University

New Zealand’s 2020 budget will be one of the most significant in the country’s history. Whatever its content, it will be remembered alongside those of 1938 and 1991 as a pivotal event.

For any minister of finance, the stakes have never been higher and the problems facing the country never more dire. Over a few short weeks, Grant Robertson has put the New Zealand economy on life support. Now he will have to bring it back for a world all but unimaginable three months ago.

Given the cost of recovery, it’s unlikely any subsequent finance minister will get a second shot at it. The budget Robertson presents on May 14 will define this government in ways that are critical for the country’s future, even if it is only the first step on a longer road.

It will also mark the return of the budget as an event in itself. In recent decades we have almost forgotten just how important they used to be. Governments have deliberately downplayed their significance, releasing and spinning most of their goodies over the preceding weeks.

Now, with New Zealanders having been asked to trust the government through eight weeks of lockdown, and as the rules are relaxed, economic and social fears for the future will overtake heartening tales of life in our “bubbles”.

Read more: Past pandemics show how coronavirus budgets can drive faster economic recovery

Budgets that changed the way we live

In the post-war era most New Zealanders gathered around radios to hear budgets. They were delivered in the evening after work and with the pubs closed at 6pm. Many had by then queued to top up with petrol, buy cigarettes or take home some beer or spirits, in the expectation of a few pennies added to excise duties on these precious items.

In 1958, when Labour’s finance minister Arnold Nordmeyer did just this, then-opposition leader Keith Holyoake successfully condemned it as the “Black Budget”, setting a clear path to 12 years of National government after the next election.

Dramatic as that was, the budgets of 1938 and 1991 were far more important in laying down lasting policy directions. Many of them still underpin the expectations and challenges Grant Robertson faces in 2020.

In 1938, Michael Joseph Savage’s Labour government was facing re-election after its landslide victory in 1935. The budget outlined an expansive depression-driven programme of social security, caring for New Zealanders from the “cradle to the grave”.

That budget’s other big policy of economic protectionism did not survive the following decades. But the social security provisions, which created our current health system and introduced new benefits and consolidated others, remain a cornerstone of government spending today.

Read more: Beyond travel, a trans-Tasman bubble is an opportunity for Australia and NZ to reduce dependence on China

The mother of all budgets and its children

Half a century later, in 1991, the newly elected National government laid out a very different path, dramatically building on the direction set by the 1984-1990 Labour government.

National retreated from the promises of 1938, emphasising small government, market-driven policies, reduced benefits and a more competitive labour market. Low-income New Zealanders were to pay for what National demonised as decades of growth-stifling and wasteful state spending.

The more ambitious expectations of finance minister Ruth Richardson’s “mother of all budgets” were not met. New Zealand’s welfare state remained a far more significant safety net than she and her government had intended.

But her budget still refashioned the way government operated. It helped crystallise the belief that governments should balance their books and that taxes should not rise, even for the wealthy. The 1991 budget’s pursuit of surpluses, then still a dream for the future, also helped put New Zealand in a better financial position to face today’s crisis.

Offering hope by balancing security with freedom

In 1938, with New Zealand still emerging from depression, many in the Labour Party wanted more dramatic socialist reforms. In 1991, the more radical neo-liberal wing of the National Party won the day. Both budgets reflected intense ideological debates about policy which had been fermenting for years, if not decades. And both painted very different pictures of New Zealand’s future, as they attempted to resolve challenges inherited from the country’s past.

In 1938 it was a future marked by security from want or illness; in 1991 it was a future of free market competition.

Read more: The coronavirus survival challenge for NZ tourism: affordability and sustainability

In imagining a future for all New Zealanders in 2020, Robertson must balance these two competing aspirations. Both are deeply rooted in New Zealand’s past. But they must be applied to today’s situation beyond the immediate problems of limiting unemployment and its impact, sustaining small business and finding replacements for international tourism.

The budget must also aspire to longer-term solutions, including for climate change and social inequality. It cannot be backward looking – the world has changed in the past few weeks and some things may never return as they were. To succeed, it must draw on the degree of consensus and community that has already seen the country well placed to avoid the worst health impacts of the pandemic.

Above all, it will be crucial this budget promises a future that gives hope.

– ref. The ghosts of budgets past haunt New Zealand’s shot at economic recovery – https://theconversation.com/the-ghosts-of-budgets-past-haunt-new-zealands-shot-at-economic-recovery-138290

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

Improved demand including in the retail sector and the re-opening of schools will be the largest contributors to an estimated $9.4 billion monthly rise in GDP from the planned three-stage lifting of COVID restrictions, according to Treasury estimates.

The first stage of easing, which the states are now implementing at varying paces, will increase monthly GDP by an estimated $3.1 billion. Of this, $0.97 billion is estimated to come from stronger demand and $0.73 billion from reopening schools.

Easing of first stage restrictions is also set to see jobs increase by 252,500, with the second and third stage easing boosting employment by 275,100 and 323,200 respectively. The government has said it aims for a “COVID-safe economy” by July.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s economic update to parliament on Tuesday will document the huge downturn caused by the virus, as well as providing estimates for the road back.

But he will not give a forecast for the massive deficit the October budget will contain. Only a few months ago Frydenberg expected to deliver a surplus in a budget that would have been brought down this Tuesday.

As people start to hit the shops, the largest single increase in monthly GDP from the three-stage easing is $2.9 billion expected to come from improved demand.

This is followed by $2.18 billion from schools opening, which allows more parents to return to work. The big number is one reason why Scott Morrison has been so strong on the need for schools to return to normal.

Victorian premier Daniel Andrews, the most conservative of the premiers on schools as well as other restrictions, is due to provide an update on Victoria schools reopening.

The coming weeks will be a delicate balance between the health and economic issues as restrictions are eased.

There is mounting impatience from some parts of business to move things faster, especially in Victoria.

Deputy Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly warns of second-wave risk

But Deputy chief medical officer Paul Kelly told The Conversation on Monday “there is a very large risk of a second wave”.

Kelly said if a second wave developed there was the option of reintroducing some restrictions, though that could be “in a very measured and localised way” to deal with outbreaks, even if they were large.

Scott Morrison has made it clear he doesn’t want restrictions to have to be reimposed.

According to the government’s figures if NSW, instead of lifting restrictions, had to go back to those in place before the May 8 national cabinet meeting, it would cost its economy about $1.4 billion per week.

Frydenberg will say the government debt incurred to get the country through the recovery “will take many years to repay”, while indicating there has to be a limit to government support.

“Rebuilding consumer and business confidence will be key as the nation’s finances can only be sustained by a strong and growing market-led economy. Australians know there is no money tree. What we borrow today, we must pay back in the future,” he says in an extract of his statement issued ahead of delivery.

The emerging debate, as both sides of politics look to the other side of the crisis, will be over how big a role the government needs to play directly in the recovery.

Asked on Monday whether, in light of the success in containing the virus, the Treasury’s scheduled review into JobKeeper would assess whether to truncate or alter the program before its September expiry, Morrison said: “All of this is very premature. We are six weeks into a six-month program. And the impact of the virus, how it will impact on Australia in the months ahead with a reopening economy, is very much a work in progress. That’s why we’ve put this six-month lifeline in place.”

Morrison also said: “How that program can be adjusted to better support over that period, or if there are sectors that come under greater strain over a longer period of time, these are all things that the government is fully aware of. But we are not going to get ahead of ourselves”.

Frydenberg will highlight the “sobering” data of the economic plummet.

“In March, business and consumer confidence saw the largest declines on record. The ASX lost a third of its value in just four weeks.

“In April, surveys showed that job ads halved and activity in the construction, manufacturing and services sector had their largest ever month falls. New motor vehicle sales fell by 48%. Their largest ever fall. House sales by 40%.”

As part of the government’s response, “over $25 billion of support has already flowed to households and businesses in recent weeks, with more than $30 billion to flow next month”.

Treasury estimates that easing restrictions on cafes, restaurants, pubs and clubs will boost monthly GDP by $1.75 billion over the three steps. But the first stage boost of $0.5 billion reflects the slowness of the easing in this sector.

Domestic and international travel contributes only $0.72 billion increase in monthly GDP over the three stages, reflecting the closure of the international border for the foreseeable future as well as limitations on domestic travel and the depressed economy.

With restrictions eased, NSW would contribute $3.1 billion increase in monthly GDP over the three steps and Victoria $2.2 billion. For the first stage, the figures for NSW and Victoria are $1 billion and $717 million respectively.

Indicative split of coronavirus cost of $4B per week to the economy [based on restrictions in place before May 8]

– ref. First stage of ‘road back’ will boost monthly GDP by $3.1 billion and jobs by 252,500: Frydenberg – https://theconversation.com/first-stage-of-road-back-will-boost-monthly-gdp-by-3-1-billion-and-jobs-by-252-500-frydenberg-138330

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicholas Tochka, Head of Musicology and Ethnomusicology, University of Melbourne

When he landed in Australia in October 1957, Little Richard should have been on top of the world. In just two years, the wild showman had traded the chitlin’ circuit for an international audience. Instead, he was pondering his future – and reading the Bible.

A fast-talking American entrepreneur named Lee Gordon had organised the two-week package tour, which also included Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps, Eddie Cochran, and “the female Elvis” Alis Lesley. When the Blue Caps got stuck in Hawaii, the Sydney-based Dee Jays filled in – on the condition that their singer, a 21-year-old unknown named Johnny O’Keefe, could also do a few numbers.

“R. and R. may never come to Australia,” journalist Bernard Fletcher wrote the previous year, “but then, on the other hand, juvenile crazes have a habit of spreading.”

And spread it had. “[Rock and roll] is so far just a pleasant form of musical novelty to our youngsters,” one Perth journalist wrote in 1956, “and it is hoped it never reaches the hysterical, violent stage that is shocking America.”

A violent world

“Hundreds of screaming teenagers fought with each other to souvenir a shirt, tie, belt, socks and three sets of underwear which Little Richard stripped off and threw to them”, went the review in The Age. The singer finished in only a green turban and loose-fitting pyjama pants.

(Commentators were more bemused than alarmed: the Melbourne Herald called the stunt “an amusing and quite decent strip tease”.)

Read more: A-lop-bam-boom: Little Richard’s saucy style underpins today’s hits

But it was the violence of the outside world that was troubling the singer: an exploitative recording industry, racialised violence of white supremacy in the US, and the looming threat of nuclear armageddon.

This final apocalyptic possibility proved too much for Little Richard’s fragile psyche. Already on edge with Great Britain conducting nuclear weapon tests at Maralinga in South Australia, the Soviets’ surprise satellite launch shook the singer. Here is what the consummate fabulist, who never failed to embellish a story, told biographer Charles White:

On our fifth date of the two-week tour […] forty thousand people came to see me at the municipal outdoor arena. That night Russia sent off that very first Sputnik. It looked as though the big ball of fire came directly over the stadium about two or three hundred feet above our heads. It shook my mind. It really shook my mind. I got up from the piano and said, “This is it. I am through. I am leaving show business to go back to God.”

The next day, Little Richard confirmed his conversion by throwing thousands of dollars’ worth of jewellery from the Stockton Ferry into the Hunter River. Cutting short the tour, he flew home to enrol in a theology program at Oakwood College in Huntsville, Alabama.

“I’m quitting showbiz, I wanna go straight,” the now Reverend Richard Penniman sang in 1960. “I wanna serve my Lord before it’s too late.”

As critic Ainslie Baker bemoaned in The Australian Women’s Weekly: “Little Richard was in great vogue among the rock-‘n-rolling fraternity until he retired to ponder upon the threat to the future of man posed by the nuclear age.”

While he returned to secular music in 1962, he never again visited Australia.

Nuclear music

True or not (and the singer told many different versions of this episode), this story suggests we look closer at music’s often forgotten Cold War context.

Rock ‘n’ roll fans “live in a world of mixed emotions”, Phyllis Battelle wrote in 1956.

Prosperity has built up financial security for them and their families, so they do not want. At the same time, they hear all the talk of world insecurity. Of psychiatry and psychology, of atomic warfare in abeyance. In the back of their minds, like an uncomfortable dream, is the inkling that living-for-today may be a wise course to follow.

This anxiety about young people and their place in an uncertain world travelled across the globe right alongside the big beat. And the stakes couldn’t be higher.

“During the past few years we have had numerous reports of bodgie activities in our larger cities,” one reader wrote in to Australian Women’s Day from Sunshine, Victoria in 1958.

“It’s not a matter to be pushed aside, either. After all, today’s youth will run tomorrow’s world.”

Many tributes to the late singer have included the curious saga of the rock ’n’ roll pioneer’s abrupt, if ultimately brief, retirement in Australia. His five-year departure for the gospel wilderness is not, however, merely a bit of trivia.

If today we can still hear a transgressive, liberatory power in Little Richard’s voice, we should also remember the political context that made that voice meaningful in the first place.

Rock ‘n’ roll mattered precisely because of the kind of world its young listeners inhabited – a world that frightened some of its most famous singers, too.

– ref. Rock and roll and nuclear weapons: how the Cold War shaped Little Richard – https://theconversation.com/rock-and-roll-and-nuclear-weapons-how-the-cold-war-shaped-little-richard-138295

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Weihuan Zhou, Senior Lecturer and member of Herbert Smith Freehills CIBEL Centre, Faculty of Law, UNSW Sydney, UNSW

Australia’s surprising call for an investigation into the origin of the coronavirus in China has provoked escalating threats of retaliation by China.

China started with a warning that Australia’s position might spark a Chinese consumer boycott.

It’s now threatening tariffs on Australian barley that would include a “dumping margin” of up to 73.6% and a “subsidy margin” of up to 6.9%.

The subsidy claims are thought to refer to drought support measures and Australia’s diesel fuel tax rebate.

Read more: Barley is not a random choice – here’s the real reason China is taking on Australia over dumping

Together with the dumping tariff (a penalty for allegedly selling barley too cheaply) they would amount to a tariff of 80.5%, effectively putting an end to Australian barely sales to China.

Australia’s exporters and the government have been given 10 days to respond.

There’s more to it than barley

A series of decisions and reactions to events that were perceived as anti-China has pushed relations between Australia and China to the verge of a historic low.

Each time, China has urged Australia to reconsider its position and on some occasions has threatened to retaliate.

Recent examples include Australia’s exclusion of Huawei from its 5G network for fear of the influence of the Chinese government on its activities, and the COVID-19 travel ban which singled out China when introduced on February 1 even though by then the virus had spread to other countries.

China targeted barley for good reasons.

Why barley?

China is Australia’s largest market for barley exports.

Between 2015 and 2018, China imported, on average, 4.6 million tonnes or A$1.3 billion of Australian barley accounting for over 70% of Australia’s barley exports.

A tariff increase would have significant impacts on Australia’s barley producers who are scattered over several Australian states, putting considerable political pressure on the Australian government.

China meanwhile has other suppliers from which to choose. It can restrict imports of Australian barley while continuing to buy barley from elsewhere.

And contrary to the claims by Trade Minister Simon Birmingham, the Chinese tariffs are not legally unjustifiable.

The tariffs would be the result of an ongoing anti-dumping investigation into barley exported from Australia that China’s Ministry of Commerce initiated on November 19, 2018.

Read more: It’s time to drop Australia’s protectionist anti-dumping rules

Anti-dumping measures, which seek to prevent lower-priced imports from causing injury to domestic industries, are permitted under the rules of the World Trade Organisation and the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement.

Australia itself has been one of the most frequent users of anti-dumping measures, particularly against China.

The 2015 China-Australia Free Trade Agreement cut Chinese tariffs on Australian barley exports to zero. But it included an exemption: anti-dumping provisions that could increase the tariffs to any rate.

At the start of the 2018 investigation, China’s barley industry requested an anti-dumping tariff of 56.14%. The proposed rate was increased to 73.6% after investigations by Chinese authorities.

That is the investigation that authorities will finalise by May 19, the one started eighteen months ago, on November 19, 2018.

Read more: Australia may be engaging in ‘free trade’ but it’s becoming more protectionist too

It began long before COVID-19, motivated among other things by Australia’s enthusiastic use of anti-dumping measures on products such as Chinese steel.

But its timing has made it a useful way to push Australia to change its anti-China position on an inquiry and on other matters in the future.

Since China’s investigation began, Chinese customers have become “very cautious about buying Australian barley” in the assessment of the Canadian barley industry which has benefited by selling Chinese customers barley they once would have sourced from Australia.

The actual imposition of the tariff will hurt more.

Read more: Australia has to prepare for life after the World Trade Organisation

The only legal avenue for Australia to challenge it would be the World Trade Organisation’s dispute settlement mechanism which had been brought to a near halt by the United States refusing to appoint appellant judges and would in any case take years to process without a guaranteed win.

Even if Australia is successful, China may simply begin a reinvestigation which may maintain the original decision.

What’s the best way out?

Australia needs to take actions to ease the tensions and strengthen economic relationship with China.

Abundant evidence has shown that China will remain an irreplaceable Australian customer meaning it would be neither possible nor wise for Australia to decouple from China.

Diplomatic actions, such as the appointment of a special Australian China envoy, will be desirable but not sufficient. Australia has to ensure its future policy decisions are not biased against China.

Read more: Why the global battle over Huawei could prove more disruptive than Trump’s trade war with China

To help, Australia could consider a gradual reduction of travel restrictions on China based on China’s success in fighting the virus and renewed more realistic assessment of the potential health risks posed by Chinese travellers.

Australia needs to be cautious in foreign investment decisions which have already been regarded as discriminatory against China before the pandemic.

The pandemic brought forth temporary changes of Australia’s foreign investment rules, making all proposals the subject of Foreign Investment Review Board scrutiny regardless of size.

Read more: Public gatherings restricted to two people and all foreign investment proposals scrutinised, in new coronavirus measures

While the changes applied to foreign investors from all countries, Australia’s decision to reject two from China has raised concerns about whether the decisions have been compromised by anti-China politics.

Instead of direct rejection, Australia might have been better off offering to approve them under conditions sufficient to address national interest concerns.

Australia should reassess its position on the 5G network to ensure it focuses on risks associated with 5G equipment rather than the nationality of 5G suppliers, as have Britain and the European Union.

These actions would signal a strong political will to repair the relationship that would build the foundation for the two economies to broaden and deepen economic engagement for mutual benefits.

– ref. China might well refuse to take our barley, and there would be little we could do – https://theconversation.com/china-might-well-refuse-to-take-our-barley-and-there-would-be-little-we-could-do-138267

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael-Shawn Fletcher, Associate Professor in Biogeography, University of Melbourne

If you go to the Surrey Hills of northwest Tasmania, you’ll see a temperate rainforest dominated by sprawling trees with genetic links going back millions of years.

It’s a forest type many consider to be ancient “wilderness”. But this landscape once looked very different.

The only hints are a handful of small grassy plains dotting the estate and the occasional giant eucalypt with broad-branching limbs. This is an architecture that can only form in open paddock-like environments – now swarmed by rainforest trees.

These remnant grasslands are of immense conservation value, as they represent the last vestiges of a once more widespread subalpine “poa tussock” grassland ecosystem.

Our new research shows these grasslands were the result of Palawa people who, for generation upon generation, actively and intelligently manicured this landscape against the ever-present tide of the rainforest expansion we see today.

This purposeful intervention demonstrates land ownership. It was their property. Their estate. Two hundred years of forced dispossession cannot erase millennia of land ownership and connection to country.

Read more: Strength from perpetual grief: how Aboriginal people experience the bushfire crisis

Myths of “wilderness” have no place on this continent when much of the land in Australia is culturally formed, created by millennia of Aboriginal burning – even the world renowned Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area.

British impressions

Today, the Surrey Hills hosts a vast 60,000-hectare timber plantation. Areas outside the modern plantations on the Surrey Hills are home to rainforest.

On first seeing the Surrey Hills from atop St Valentine’s Peak in 1827, Henry Hellyer – surveyor for the Van Diemen’s Land company – extolled the splendour of the vista before him:

an excellent country, consisting of gently rising, dry, grassy hills […] They resemble English enclosures in many respects, being bounded by brooks between each, with belts of beautiful shrubs in every vale.

It will not in general average ten trees on an acre. There are many plains of several square miles without a single tree.

And when first setting food on the estate:

The kangaroo stood gazing at us like fawns, and in some instances came bounding towards us.

He went on to note how the landscape was recently burnt, “looking fresh and green in those places”.

It is possible that the natives by burning only one set of plains are enabled to keep the kangaroos more concentrated for their use, and I can in no way account for their burning only in this place, unless it is to serve them as a hunting place.

The landscape Hellyer described was one deliberately managed and maintained by Aboriginal people with fire. The familiarity of the kangaroo to humans, and the clear and abundant evidence of Aboriginal occupation in the area, implies these animals were more akin to livestock than “wild” animals.

A debated legacy

Critically, Hellyer’s accounts of this landscape were challenged later in the same year in a scathing report by Edward Curr, manager of the Van Diemen’s Land company and, later, a politician.

Curr criticised Hellyer for overstating the potential of the area to curry favour with his employers, for whom Hellyer was searching for sheep pasture in the new colony.

Read more: Explainer: how Tasmania’s Aboriginal people reclaimed a language, palawa kani

These contrasting perceptions are an historical echo of a debate at the centre of Aboriginal-settler relations today.

Authors such as Bruce Pascoe (Dark Emu) and Bill Gammage (The Biggest Estate on Earth) have been challenged, ridiculed and vilified for over-stating the agency and role of Aboriginal Australians in modifying and shaping the Australian landscape.

These ideas are criticised by those who either genuinely believe Aboriginal people merely subsisted on what was “naturally” available to them, or by those with other agendas aimed at denying how First Nations people owned, occupied and shaped Australia.

New research backs up Hellyer

We sought to directly test the observations of Hellyer in the Surrey Hills, using the remains of plants and fire (charcoal) stored in soils beneath the modern day rainforest.

Drilling in to the earth beneath modern rainforest, we found the deeper soils were full of the remains of grass, eucalypts and charcoal, while the upper more recent soil was dominated by rainforest and no charcoal.

We drilled into more than 70 rainforest trees across two study sites, targeting two species that can live for more than 500 years: Myrtle Beech (Nothofagus cunninghami) and Celery-top Pine (Phyllocladus aspleniifolius).

None of the trees we measured were older than 180 years (from 1840). That’s just over a decade following Hellyer’s first glimpse of the Surrey Hills.

Our data unequivocally proves the landscape of the Surrey Hills was an open grassy eucalypt-savanna with regular fire under Aboriginal management prior to 1827.

Read more: 1 in 10 children affected by bushfires is Indigenous. We’ve been ignoring them for too long

Importantly, the speed at which rainforest invaded and captured this Indigenous constructed landscape shows the enormous workload Aboriginal people invested in holding back rainforest. For millennia, they used cultural burning to maintain a 60,000-hectare grassland.

Learning from the past

Our research challenges the central tenet underpinning the concept of terra nullius (vacant land) on which the tenuous and uneasy claims of sovereignty of white Australia over Aboriginal lands rests.

More than the political implications, this data reveals another impact of dispossession and denial of Indigenous agency in the creation of the Australian landscape.

Left unburnt, grassy ecosystems constructed by Indigenous people accumulate woody fuels, in Australia and elsewhere.

Forest has far more fuel than grassland and savanna ecosystems. Under the right set of climatic conditions, any fuel will burn and increasing fuel loads dramatically increases the potential for catastrophic bushfire.

That’s why Indigenous fire management could help save Australia from devastating disasters like the recent Black Summer.

Read more: Our land is burning, and western science does not have all the answers

– ref. This rainforest was once a grassland savanna maintained by Aboriginal people – until colonisation – https://theconversation.com/this-rainforest-was-once-a-grassland-savanna-maintained-by-aboriginal-people-until-colonisation-138289

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Lesh, University of Melbourne

Jack Mundey, who has died at the age of 90, was a pioneer of the Australian heritage movement. As well as contributing to labor and environmental politics, Mundey reconceived of the ways that Australians related to their cities and heritage places.

As the NSW Builders’ Labourers Federation (BLF) secretary, Mundey created the “green ban” (a term first used in 1973). No union member would work on a site subject to a green ban.

Read more: Bondi Pavilion ‘green ban’: why revive an old union heritage protection tactic?

These bans were placed to give communities a say in development and to protect heritage and the environment. At a time of historically high union membership in the construction industry, a green ban effectively prevented development from proceeding.

By painting the traditional union “black ban” in a new colour, Mundey and the BLF created a new conception of urban and labor politics which highlighted community heritage concerns. As Mundey explained:

The adjective “green” was more apt than “black”. It also explained our wish to extend our help to other citizens, not to unionists alone.

Applying the first ban

The first green ban was applied in Sydney at Hunter’s Hill in 1971. A group of women founded “Battlers for Kelly’s Bush” to campaign against a proposed housing development by Melbourne firm A.V. Jennings. The housing estate was to be built on the Parramatta River at Kelly’s Bush, the last undeveloped open space in the area.

It was a typical housing project in this era of suburban expansion. But the rise of resident and civic groups fighting for heritage across Australia shifted the development terrain.

The Hunter’s Hill residents heard Mundey’s claim that workers “had a right to express an opinion on social questions relating to the building industry”. After a meeting between Mundey and the Battlers, a green ban was applied, eventually foiling the development. Kelly’s Bush was saved.

It did not matter that Hunter’s Hill was a solidly middle-class suburb. The green bans would be instituted on behalf of a range of communities.

Read more: Preserving cities: how ‘trendies’ shaped Australia’s urban heritage

A time of public revolt

Australian cities underwent dramatic change in the postwar period. Funded by a long economic boom, it was the era of modernist architecture and planning. Many parts of cities would be redeveloped following wholesale demolition.

Although goals of postwar urban planning for the welfare state included housing for all, full employment and exciting new environments, sizeable cracks in the vision were appearing in the 1960s. Planners and architects were increasingly criticised for being technocratic and adopting overly scientific and rationalised modes for urban design and development.

Their efforts were too often disconnected from communities and needlessly destroyed historic and natural environments. Widespread demolitions of commercial and public buildings in Australian CBDs and of terrace and free-standing homes in the inner suburbs were increasingly seen as unacceptable by the community.

More broadly, the late 1960s and early 1970s was a dramatic time for Australian social movements. Second-wave feminists, anti-Vietnam war protesters and historic and environmental conservationists rubbed shoulders during street marches. The federal Liberal Party had been in power for two decades and there was a great deal of energy among progressives for change.

An expanding movement

The Australian heritage movement was gaining momentum. National Trusts had been active in designating heritage places from the late 1940s. By the late 1960s, thousands of historic places were identified by National Trust classifications, metropolitan planning schemes and sympathetic governments and property owners.

However, a new generation of heritage activists had come to see the National Trusts as narrow in their architectural interests, tame in their advocacy methods, and led by a coterie of elites. Green bans were seen as a more effective means of safeguarding heritage and were swiftly expanded from Hunter’s Hill.

Mundey and his fellow unionists Joe Owens and Bob Pringle, as part of the broader green ban movement, engaged with the ten inner-suburban Melbourne resident groups that comprised the Committee for Urban Action, established in 1970, and the 40 such groups that in 1971 had formed the Coalition of Resident Action Groups in Sydney. From Woolloomooloo and Pott’s Point to Fitzroy and Collingwood, residents took to the streets to protest comprehensive urban renewal and freeway construction plans.

Unions backed these citizen movements by placing green bans on these neighbourhoods. The green bans extended across Australia’s historic suburbs into the CBDs.

Perth’s Palace Hotel and The Mansions in Brisbane were subject to these efforts. In Sydney, Mundey was arrested during protests at The Rocks. In Melbourne, the City Baths, Mac’s Hotel, Victoria Market, Gothic Bank, Regent Theatre, Windsor Hotel, Princess Theatre, Collins Street and the Rialto precinct, and Tasma Terrace all received the attention of the union movement. (The Victorian National Trust would find a new home at Tasma Terrace despite the Australian National Trust movement’s reticence about supporting the radical green bans.)

The Victorian Housing Commission’s high-rise housing program was brought to a sudden halt. Corrupt Melbourne unionist Norman Gallagher, who notoriously clashed with Mundey, took part in applying green bans in his city.

Read more: Saving Sirius: why heritage protection should include social housing

Heritage laws come into being

The election of the Whitlam Government in 1973, a soon-to-be-declining economy and expanded heritage laws marked the beginning of the end for the green bans. Whitlam had been elected on a platform of protecting the national estate, incorporating built and natural heritage. These policies included curtailing urban development impacts on historic areas as well as maintaining green belts.

Whitlam’s minister for cities, Sydneysider Tom Uren, supported the green bans. He wanted Mundey to join the Inquiry into the National Estate, but the NSW Askin government refused to support the inquiry if Mundey was involved. The federal government’s National Estate Report (1974) nevertheless recorded:

Is it any wonder that ‘green bans’ and other forms of direct action are not being resorted to more and more frequently? Governments must act to meet these demands, and act decisively, for they have delayed too long already.

The green bans were part of a decisive shift in Australian urbanism. Conservation became a mainstream planning, architectural and policy concern. The federal government passed heritage legislation in 1975, followed by every state over the next 16 years or so. Victoria was first in 1974.

The green bans remained in place as the urban development pipeline collapsed amid the economic shocks of the mid-1970s Oil Crisis. By the time construction picked up in the 1980s, tens of thousands of heritage places had potential statutory protections. A new specialist industry of conservation architects, planners and policymakers had emerged from the ranks of heritage activists.

Mundey’s legacies live on

Mundey’s tenure as BLF secretary ended in 1974. He continued to shape urban environmental politics as a City of Sydney councillor in the 1980s and by advocating for conservation at sites such as the Sydney Opera House, the Sirius Building and the Bondi Pavilion. He also inspired German Greens founder Petra Kelly.

Read more: Speaking with: Nicole Cook on union ‘green bans’, housing affordability and the Sirius building

Green bans symbolised the democratic spirit of the 1970s Australian heritage movement. Countless places survived the closing moments of modernist urbanism because of them. The Australian heritage industry was built on the foundations of radical union activism.

For these reasons, there are often calls to re-apply green bans today. But the changed structure of cities, the economy and unionism make this unlikely. At a remarkable historic moment, Mundey’s green bans empowered people to claim their right to the heritage of their city.

– ref. Our cities owe much of their surviving heritage to Jack Mundey – https://theconversation.com/our-cities-owe-much-of-their-surviving-heritage-to-jack-mundey-138293

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Leberman, Professor of Leadership, Massey University

Sports representatives are calling on New Zealand’s government not to return to normal when the nation begins to ease restrictions from Thursday this week. Instead, they argue, it is time to create a more even playing field by addressing chronic underfunding for women’s sports.

The Epidemic Response Committee focused on sports in one of its hearings last week and several sporting bodies argued that women’s sports will struggle to rebuild without substantial targeted financial support.

Netball NZ chief executive Jennie Wylie told the committee her sport has more than 350,000 players, many from under-privileged groups, and the recovery period presents an chance to prioritise equal access and support.

Getting sports up and running as soon as it’s safe will play a vital role in New Zealand’s economic and social recovery. Because sport is rebuilding in so many capacities, the time is right to create equality […] and New Zealanders should not squander the change to address the systemic inequities across sport.

Our research focus is on sport management and leadership, and on equity in sports and active recreation for girls and women. We have welcomed the momentum for achieving gender equity in sports before the coronavirus pandemic, and believe women should now be at the forefront of planning as we rebuild.

Read more: The war on women coaches

Designing sport for equity

Before the pandemic, corporate sponsorship for women’s sport increased by 47% between 2013 and 2017, and investment in women’s professional leagues increased girls’ participation at the grassroots level.

Viewership for women’s sports was rising around the globe, including a 64% rise in TV ratings for the 2019 Women’s National Basketball Association season and a record 1.12 billion viewers for the women’s soccer World Cup final.

The coronavirus pandemic has changed the landscape, and international sports organisations are also concerned about its impact on women’s sport.

But as sports resume, this offers a chance for decision makers to change dominant narratives and structures away from the male-dominated model. Those working in women’s sports have always done the hard work — built, marketed and run our sports teams and programs – with limited funding and resources.

Data indicate more women and people with diverse backgrounds on boards and in leadership positions contribute to better decisions and outcomes on all measures.

Diversity of thought is critical to rebuilding sports. It requires different models of collective leadership and a rethink of success going beyond winning and profit margins.

Read more: Toxic sport cultures are damaging female athletes’ health, but we can do better

There’s more to sport than coming first

A sports management model developed in 2017 includes social, cultural and environmental benefits of sports – such as working with under-served communities to improve team and leadership skills – alongside a traditional focus on investment return. It also adds a focus on the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.

We believe girls and women have a basic human right to physical activity and the UN’s development goals provide a framework for equity in sport. They clearly state that social inclusion means gender equality, human rights and the reduction of inequalities.

Sport can play an important role in sustainable development and contribute to peace because it promotes tolerance and respect and the empowerment of women and young people.

Read more: The importance of sports in recovery from trauma: lessons from and for Christchurch

To achieve long-term sustainable and ethical outcomes for sports organisations, structural change designed for equity is critical, from the grassroots to the top level. There are some examples of progress, where girls and women are challenging the norms of traditionally masculine sports such as skate boarding.

We also need to explore alternative funding models to minimise reliance on broadcasting revenue and gambling returns. COVID-19 lockdown has shown us that physical activity is critical to health and well-being. It should be funded by government and commercial partners committed to equity.

As the coronavirus was spreading globally, in March 2020, UN Women joined with the International Olympic Committee to launch the Sports for Generation Equality Initiative to accelerate progress on making gender equality a reality.

Emerging from a pandemic should not be a return to the status quo, and this includes access to participation and competition in sports and physical activity. When sport resumes, we must regain momentum to truly advance gender equity for all girls and women. To do anything else wastes an unprecedented opportunity.

– ref. As sport resumes after lockdown, it’s time to level the playing field for women and girls – https://theconversation.com/as-sport-resumes-after-lockdown-its-time-to-level-the-playing-field-for-women-and-girls-137697

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

In the wake of our success so far in containing the spread of COVID-19, the prime minister has been prodding us to come out from under the doona.

With the premiers, he has prepared a three-step plan.

The problem, he said on Friday, is that it would be tempting to stay in lockdown tucked up under the doona forever.

And you know, you’ll never face any danger. But we’ve got to get out from under the doona at some time. And if not now, then when?

The treasurer Josh Frydenberg says continuing the lockdown is costing the economy A$4 billion per week.

Economists have sharply polarised positions.

To stay safe, or to live boldly

The preamble to an open letter by 265 Australian economists published in The Conversation last month said that to use those costs as a reason to end the lockdown would represent a “callous indifference to life”.

Others seem to think that the lives lost matter less than the huge economic and social costs staying locked down.

In between those extremes lies a huge band of uncertainty.

A more circumspect comparison of the risks of unlocking compared to the risks of staying locked down suggests that, in purely economic terms, the restrictions make good sense so far.

You start by putting a value on lives

One way to evaluate the merits of relaxing restrictions is to put a monetary value on the fatalities avoided, and compare that cost with the cost imposed by the restrictions.

Putting a monetary value on human life is often viewed as unsavoury. But, whether explicitly or implicitly, it is what is being done every time a government or non government entity makes a decision that affects the risk of increased mortality, from whether to put up a road sign to how to conduct hospital triage.

Being explicit gives some assurance that the proposed measures are proportional. It can alleviate fears that what’s proposed is an under or over reaction.

Read more: The calculus of death shows the COVID lock-down is clearly worth the cost

But numbers alone can not tell us what is the right thing to do. That requires making value judgements – which is the job of politicians.

It is nevertheless helpful to understand how the COVID-19 policy responses measure up to standards used in normal public health decision making.

Making this difficult is the is enormous uncertainty over some of the key variables.

It’s hard to know how many lives

A critical number is the infection fatality rate.

The Oxford Centre for Evidence Based Medicine puts the infection fatality rate at between 0.1% and 0.4% of the population.

For Australia, if 90% were infected, this implies 22,000 to 90,000 thousand fatalities.

This range could further be increased by as much as 50% if not enough intensive care units are available.

Professor Tony Blakely of the University of Melbourne, and Professor Nick Wilson of the University of Otago have reported a larger estimate of 134,000 fatalities.

For planning purposes the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet values a full statistical life, when converted to 2019 dollars – allowing for inflation and growth – of approximately A$5.1 million.

Reasonable arguments could be made that it should be many times larger or smaller.

As an example, when the lone British sailor Tony Bullimore was rescued from the Antarctic Ocean by the HMAS Adelaide in 1997, the nation celebrated as he emerged from under the hull after hour days trapped in winds of up to 160 km per hour.

Australia’s defence minister dismissed any criticism of the cost.

“We have an international legal obligation. We have a moral obligation obviously to go and rescue people, whether in bushfires, cyclones or at sea,” he said.

In today’s dollars it cost about $10 million to save 57 year old Bullimore’s life. When age is factored in this represents a value that is many times more than the normal value of a full statsitical life used by the prime minister’s department.

A reference figure is $150 billion…

Nevertheless, taking $5.1 million as a conservative estimate of the value of a full life and reducing it by two thirds to take account of the fact that most of the people who die from COVID-19 are in the final third of their lives, gives a conservative cost of 90,000 COVID-19 fatalities in a “do-nothing” scenario of about $150 billion, or 8% of gross domestic product.

By comparison, at $4 billion per week, the economic cost of the first month of restrictions amounts to a little under 1% of gross domestic product.

Spending many times that much to avoid a health crisis that could cost 8% of gross domestic product, and perhaps much more, seems reasonable.

This makes Australia’s lockdown and social distancing regulations eminently justifiable by standard public policy criteria.

…which means we can’t keep doing this forever

But there’s a catch: continuing the regulations indefinitely isn’t an option.

Lockdowns make more sense if there is an exit strategy or end game – such as a vaccine or medical intervention.

Unfortunately, neither are likely within six to twelve months, if ever.

Like cures for cancer, it’s possible they will always remain just over the horizon.

This kind of indefinite time-frame would see the economic and social costs of restrictions rise over time and potentially exceed the statistical value of the lives saved, all the while leaving the vast majority of the population susceptible. Even if COVID-19 were eliminated in Australia, so that economic activity resumed, this would impose substantial costs on tourism and accommodation sectors – potentially for ever.

Read more: COVID lockdowns have human costs as well as benefits. It’s time to consider both

There is a danger of a double tragedy. Without a plan to exit and with no vaccine, we could find ourselves having spent 8% or more of gross domestic product in lockdowns and still face the threat of a national epidemic.

Waiting for a vaccine could become like having yet another go on the pokies – without a commitment to exit, you end up broke with nothing else to spend.

At the moment, the restrictions are justified in financial terms.

But rising economic and social costs mean we will need an exit strategy. This may simply mean learning to live with COVID-19.

With that end-game in mind, taking a cautious peeks out from under the doona soon, makes sense.

– ref. It’s hard to know when to come out from under the doona. It’ll be soon, but not yet – https://theconversation.com/its-hard-to-know-when-to-come-out-from-under-the-doona-itll-be-soon-but-not-yet-137879

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Karnon, Professor of Health Economics, Flinders University

Nothing our leaders can do now will return the economy to where it was before COVID-19. For one thing, international travel is likely to remain closed for a long time.

But there are things they can do, and on Friday the prime minister outlined a roadmap.

Of interest to us is whether it makes sense to reopen bars and restaurants.

The Australian Government committed A$320 billion over six months to support businesses and workers whose incomes has been hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.

That amounts to $12 billion per week.

Reported job losses suggest around 29% is being paid out to support the accommodation and food services industry.

Read more: COVID lockdowns have human costs as well as benefits. It’s time to consider both

That’s about $3.4 billion per week. Bars and restaurants are likely to account for half of it, $1.7 billion per week.

That can be thought of as one of the costs of keeping bars and restaurants closed.

What about the benefits? What costs do we avoid by keeping bars and restaurants closed?

It helps to illustrate our thinking as a decision tree.

The upper branches of the tree represent the decision about whether or not to lift restrictions.

If restrictions are lifted, there may, or may not, be a new outbreak that requires the reintroduction of restrictions.

While we don’t know the likelihood of a new outbreak, we can test different assumptions.

Read more: The calculus of death shows the COVID lock-down is clearly worth the cost

Given the very low number of new cases of COVID-19, the assumption we have tested is that there would be a one in ten chance of a new outbreak requiring the reintroduction of restrictions.

We also assume that if there was a new outbreak, there would be a 95% chance it could be controlled by re-imposing restrictions on bars and restaurants and only a 5% chance it could not.

It’s a matter of probabilities

If the outbreak was controlled by reimposing restrictions (the 95% probability) we assume an extra 40 COVID-19 deaths and an extra four weeks of restrictions at a financial cost to the government of $6.8 billion.

If the outbreak was more severe and a broader set of restrictions are required (the 5% case) we assume an additional 200 deaths and extra cost to the government of $17 billion.

(We also assume that 25% of the government spending to support the hospitality industry would remain because a decision to reopen bars and restaurants would not result in the industry returning to it’s pre-COVID-19 state – many people would remain cautious about the risks of contracting COVID-19 or have become conditioned to less frequent socialising.)

When we weigh these costs by their probabilities we get expected costs to the government from reopening of $1.1 billion, compared to costs from keeping bars and restaurants closed for another week of $1.7 billion.

Is the $600 million per week value for money?

It suggests the government would be $600 million per week better off it it reopens bars and restaurants.

We would expect a number of extra COVID-19 deaths. Multiplying the probabilities of the extra deaths under each scenario by the likelihood of each scenario suggests there would be an extra 4.8 deaths if bars and restaurants are reopened this week.

Because the average age of people dying due to COVID-19 is around 80 years, and each might have around ten more years to live, the number of life years per week that would be lost as a result of the $600 million per week the government saved would be 48.

Read more: New cancer drugs are very expensive – here’s how we work out value for our money

It suggests each life year saved as a result of keeping bars and restaurants closed costs around $12.5 million.

Decisions on whether government should fund health interventions are commonly based on an assessment of whether the health gains justify the additional costs.

As a ballpark figure, new measures are funded if they are shown to gain an additional life year at a cost of around $50,000.

This suggests that by keeping bars and restaurants closed the government is paying 250 times more than it would usually pay to gain a life year.

It is funding that doesn’t pass the usual test

A separate guideline used by Australian governments to assess regulations and infrastructure projects puts the value of a statistical life year at $200,389 in today’s dollars.

This suggests that by keeping bars and restaurants closed the government is paying 60 times more than it would usually pay to save a life.

It’s why we think governments should reopen them, next week.

Like all such analyses, ours depends on the assumptions used.

We have put a spreadsheet of our decision tree online to allow readers to experiment with different ones.

Read more: Open letter from 265 Australian economists: don’t sacrifice health for ‘the economy’

Our analysis leaves much out. It includes neither the negative impact of COVID-19 on people’s quality of life, nor the negative impact of shutting bars and restaurants on people’s health and quality of life.

It gives us an indication of how many life years the government is saving for the $600 million per week it is costing it to keep bars and restaurants closed.

It suggests the government could save many more life years by spending the money in a different way.

– ref. Should we re-open pubs next week? The benefits seem to exceed the costs – https://theconversation.com/should-we-re-open-pubs-next-week-the-benefits-seem-to-exceed-the-costs-137609

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kelly Richards, Associate Professor, Queensland University of Technology

In recent years, the biggest increases in Australia’s prison population have come from people convicted of sexual offences. From 2017-18, this segment of the prison population increased by 10%. The following year, it was up again by 7%.

As a corollary, more and more sexual offenders are being released from prisons back to our communities. Understandably, a great deal of public concern often accompanies the release of sexual offenders, especially those who have committed offences against children.

Despite this, very few programs exist to support sexual offenders as they reintegrate into the community, thereby making society safer by reducing their risk of reoffending.

Read more: 3 ways to help sex offenders safely reintegrate back into the community

Our recent research examined one rare exception: Adelaide’s Circles of Support and Accountability (CoSA) program.

Because it is vital to understand how victim/survivors of sexual violence feel about the release of offenders from prison and their reintegration into society, we also interviewed 33 of them in our work.

Our study was the first of its kind; no prior research has been conducted on this topic in Australia.

What community-based outreach looks like

CoSA was founded in Canada in 1994 and now operates in parts of the US, UK, the Netherlands and several other countries. The Adelaide program, launched in 2015, is the first of its kind in Australia.

The program is comprised of small groups of trained community volunteers who support people who have committed sexual offences (usually against children) to reintegrate into the community after prison.

The organisation’s core belief is that helping an ex-prisoner (known as a “core member”) in this way will reduce the likelihood of recidivism. It has two mottos: “no one is disposable” and “no more victims”.

In other words, even those people who have sexually offended should be offered a dignified and humane response once they have “done their time”.

Read more: Sex offender registries don’t prevent re-offending (and vigilante justice is real)

International research has shown that CoSA programs have reduced sexual recidivism. A study in Minnesota comparing 50 sex offenders in CoSA and 50 others in a control group found that the rate of re-arrest for the core members was 88% lower than for those not in the program.

As the Adelaide program is so new, it is too early to gauge definitively whether it has had an effect on recidivism here.

How volunteers engage offenders after prison

Our study involved interviewing core members in the Adelaide program, as well as staff, volunteers and other stakeholders. We also examined program documentation, such as the minutes of CoSA meetings.

Our aim was to understand how the program worked and identify key ways it could be improved in the future.

Volunteers come from a variety of backgrounds, including students, former criminal justice professionals and even victim/survivors of sexual violence. All share a commitment to making the community safer. They are also carefully screened and receive training in the causes and effects of sexual offending, criminal justice processes and the CoSA model.

Read more: New data shows sex offenders in Victoria are going to prison for longer

The program depends on a lot of face-to-face time between core members and volunteers. They are often in daily contact during the initial period following the offender’s release from prison and then usually meet weekly.

During these discussions, volunteers provide support to help core members stick to their release conditions and feel less lonely and isolated. They also watch out for any “red flags”, such as reduced engagement with the CoSA program, and importantly, encourage offenders to accept responsibility for the crimes they’ve committed.

Volunteers also work with core members to minimise the stresses they face, such as conflicts with authorities and neighbours, and financial or familial problems. This is critical because research has shown that these types of stresses and conflicts often lead to sexual reoffending.

What victim/survivors of sexual violence think

Victim/survivors had a diverse range of views on offenders rebuilding their lives after prison. For some, the release of perpetrators was an inevitability, and because of this, they were largely supportive of efforts to reintegrate them into society. As one put it,

What’s the alternative? We can’t keep them in prison forever.

Understandably, others would prefer to see perpetrators remain behind bars.

I think they should all rot. I don’t think they should be given any assistance whatsoever.

Despite these differences, victim/survivors were unanimous about one thing: they wanted to ensure their perpetrators did not harm anyone else. To this end, most of our interviewees were supportive of practical measures to prevent recidivism, rather than seeking revenge for past offences.

We also asked victim/survivors their thoughts about the CoSA program specifically. Views were again mixed, although most were supportive of the program due to its focus on preventing future sexual harm by supporting offenders to reintegrate into society.

Victim/survivors also liked the increased monitoring from volunteers that CoSA provides. As one of the participants said,

If they’ve got support and people are watching out for them, and watching over them I … think it’s a good thing.

Indeed, a handful even indicated they would personally support and even volunteer for CoSA.

I see myself in the longer-term future maybe even considering looking into helping because … at least something is being done.

Reducing sexual recidivism is in everyone’s best interests. Our research suggests that engaging community volunteers is an effective way of meeting this aim.

Moreover, while governments may be reluctant to support sexual offenders to reintegrate due to concerns about what victim/survivors think, our research shows most victim/survivors endorse the CoSA motto: no more victims. ​

– ref. Inside an innovative program helping sex offenders reintegrate into society – and why it works – https://theconversation.com/inside-an-innovative-program-helping-sex-offenders-reintegrate-into-society-and-why-it-works-136513

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Burridge, Professor of Linguistics, Monash University

People love creating words — in times of crisis it’s a “sick” (in the good sense) way of pulling through.

From childhood, our “linguistic life has been one willingly given over to language play” (in the words of David Crystal). In fact, scientists have recently found learning new words can stimulate exactly those same pleasure circuits in our brain as sex, gambling, drugs and eating (the pleasure-associated region called the ventral striatum).

Read more: The shelf-life of slang – what will happen to those ‘democracy sausages’?

We’re leximaniacs at heart and, while the behaviour can occasionally seem dark, we can learn a thing or two by reflecting on those playful coinages that get us through “dicky” times.

Tom, Dick and Miley: in the ‘grippe’ of language play

In the past, hard times birthed playful rhymes. The 1930s Depression gave us playful reduplications based on Australian landmarks and towns – “ain’t no work in Bourke”; “everything’s wrong at Wollongong”; “things are crook at Tallarook”.

Wherever we’re facing the possibility of being “dicky” or “Tom (and) Dick” (rhyming slang for “sick”), we take comfort in language play. It’s one thing to feel “crook”, but it’s another thing again to feel as “crook as Rookwood” (a cemetery in Sydney) or to have a “wog” (synonymous with “bug”, likely from “pollywog”, and unrelated to the Italian/Greek “wog”).

Remedies may be found in language’s abilities to translate sores into plasters, to paraphrase William Gouge’s 1631 sermon on the plague. New slang enables us to face our fears head-on — just as when the Parisians began calling a late-18th century influenza “la grippe” to reflect the “seizing” effect it had on people. The word was subsequently taken up in British and American English.

In these times of COVID-19, there are the usual suspects: shortenings like “sanny” (hand sanitizer) and “iso” (isolation), abbreviations like BCV (before corona virus) and WFH (working from home), also compounds “corona moaner” (the whingers) and “zoombombing” (the intrusion into a video conference).

Plenty of nouns have been “verbed” too — the toilet paper/pasta/tinned tomatoes have been “magpied”. Even rhyming slang has made a bit of a comeback with Miley Cyrus lending her name to the virus (already end-clipped to “the Miley”). Some combine more than one process — “the isodesk” (or is that “the isobar”) is where many of us are currently spending our days.

Slanguage in the coronaverse: what’s new?

What is interesting about COVID-lingo is the large number of creations that are blended expressions formed by combining two existing words. The new portmanteau then incorporates meaningful characteristics from both. Newly spawned “coronials” (corona + millennials) has the predicted baby boom in late 2020 already covered.

“Blursday” has been around since at least 2007 but originally described the day spent hung over — it’s now been pressed into service because no one knows what day of the week it is anymore. The official disease name itself, “COVID”, is somewhere between a blend and an acronym because it takes in vowels to make the abbreviation pronounceable (CO from corona, VI from virus and D from disease).

True, we’ve been doing this sort of thing for centuries — “flush” (flash + gush) dates from the 1500s. But it’s never been a terribly significant method of coinage. John Algeo’s study of neologisms over a 50-year period (1941–91) showed blends counting for only 5% of the new words. Tony Thorne’s impressive collection of over 100 COVID-related terms has around 34% blends, and the figure increases to more than 40% if we consider only slang.

Not only have blends become much more common, the nature of the mixing process has changed too. Rather than combining splinters of words, as in “coronials”, most of these corona-inspired mixes combine full words merged with parts of others. The “quarantini” keeps the word “quarantine” intact and follows it with just a hint of “martini” (and for that extra boost to the immune system you can rim the glass with vitamin C powder). Many of these have bubbled up over the past few weeks — “lexit” or “covexit” (the strategies around exiting lockdown and economic hardship), “coronacation” (working from home) and so on.

Humour: from the gallows to quarantimes

Humour emerges as a prevailing feature of these blends, even more so when the overlap is total. In “covidiot” (the one who ignores public health advice and probably hoards toilet paper), both “covid” and “idiot” remain intact. There’s been a flourishing of these types of blend — “covideo party”, “coronapocalypse”, “covidivorce” to name just a few.

Clearly, there is a fair bit of dark comedy in the jokes and memes that abound on the internet, and in many of these coinages too — compounds like “coronacoma” (for the period of shutdown, or that deliciously long quarantine sleep) and “boomer remover” (used by younger generations for the devastation of the baby boomer demographic).

Read more: Oi! We’re not lazy yarners, so let’s kill the cringe and love our Aussie accent(s)

Callous, heartless, yes. But humour is often used as a means of coming to terms with the less happy aspects of our existence. People use the levity as a way of disarming anxiety and discomfort by downgrading what it is they cannot cope with.

Certainly, gallows humour has always featured large in hospital slang (diagnoses like GOK “God only knows” and PFO “pissed and fell over”). For those who have to deal with dying and death every day, it is perhaps the only way to stay sane. COVID challenges us all to confront the biological limits of our own bodies – and these days humour provides the much-needed societal safety valve.

So what will come of these creations? The vast majority will fall victim to “verbicide”, as slang expressions always do.

– ref. ‘Iso’, ‘boomer remover’ and ‘quarantini’: how coronavirus is changing our language – https://theconversation.com/iso-boomer-remover-and-quarantini-how-coronavirus-is-changing-our-language-136729

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samuel Alexander, Research fellow, Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, University of Melbourne

The massive economic disruption brought by COVID-19 has revealed that for many, economic security is an illusion. And our biggest vulnerability is housing costs – the biggest expense for most households.

This fact is pertinent when we consider the crucial task of how to create a more resilient and sustainable economy after the crisis.

We mustn’t forget COVID-19 is actually a crisis within a much bigger and more complex crisis – climate change and environmental degradation.

But housing costs make many of us utterly dependent on a return to business-as-usual, despite the catastrophic environmental consequences.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Friday flagged the first stage in loosened coronavirus restrictions, expected to boost Australia’s economy by more than A$3 billion a month.

But we believe bouncing back to a path of untrammelled economic growth is no solution at all.

A tragic paradox

Rich nations such as Australia must permanently reduce and stabilise economic growth – and with it, resource and energy demands – to maintain a liveable planet.

But here lies the tragic paradox. How can we deliberately orchestrate an economic slowdown, when the COVID-19 experience has caused so much personal pain and left many unable to pay rent and bills?

Read more: Want an economic tonic, Mr Morrison? Use that stimulus money to turbocharge renewables

Treasury forecasts suggest unemployment in Australia will jump from around 700,000 to 1.4 million as a result of COVID-19. Casuals, many of whom are not eligible for the JobKeeper payments, are already at serious risk of becoming homeless.

Governments and banks have taken immediate steps to keep people afloat, such as stimulus spending on unemployment benefits, a six-month freeze on mortgage repayments and a ban on certain rental evictions.

These stopgap measures show the emerging housing crisis is unprecedented and serious – but they are merely band-aid solutions to personal economic insecurity.

What’s more, they ignore the obvious environmental devastation wrought by a growing economy. It’s clear we must look for other solutions.

Public housing offers a new way

We propose that federal and state authorities offer unemployed people the opportunity to access public housing and a “participation income”.

The voluntary program would first be offered to eligible people either living in public housing, or at the top of the waiting list. If a pilot proved successful, and as public housing investment increased, the program could be offered more widely.

Participants would be paid a modest living wage in exchange for about 15 hours of local community service each week. This work could include growing food, maintaining the neighbourhood, helping to run sharing schemes such as a community tool bank, or even building new homes under expert guidance.

Read more: Why it doesn’t make economic sense to ignore climate change in our recovery from the pandemic

The payment and associated activities would replace a person’s unemployment benefits and job-seeking obligations.

Such a program would provide a secure home and livelihood to the poorest members of society. It would also provide real-world examples of alternative ways of meeting basic human needs, and governing access to land.

This proposal is built on the basic premise that land (just like air and water) was not created by the market and so should not be a commodity. Access to land for housing should be a human right granted to all, not just to those who can afford it.

New grounds for idealism

A scheme such as ours could show how people are liberated from their reliance on economic growth when land is not commodified.

Urban commons, such as the R-Urban project in Paris, demonstrate how everyday citizens can create an alternative economy. There, several hundred people co-manage land that includes a small farm for collective use, a recycling plant and cooperative eco-housing.

Read more: Using lots of plastic packaging during the coronavirus crisis? You’re not alone

This is not a new concept. Local collaboration on common land is humanity’s oldest and most widespread mode of economic operation. For First Australians, it underpinned their way of life for tens of thousands of years.

And in Britain, people lived and locally collaborated on common land for many thousands of years before it became privatised.

Our proposal is about creating new futures based on common land, not a return to the past. It would initially involve the unemployed in public housing. But it could be expanded to include others alienated from the market: victims of the automation of jobs, the globalisation of labour – such as manufactured goods being increasingly produced in developing nations – or the decline in polluting industries such as fossil fuels.

We need a new ‘golden age’ for public housing

Scaling up new land governance arrangements to the point where they influence the broader economy would require a huge expansion in public housing.

COVID-19 has highlighted Australia’s public housing shortage. Social welfare advocates, unions and the building industry have recognised the problem.

Reserve Bank governor Phillip Lowe says Australia must exploit low interest rates to invest in infrastructure. The stimulus following the Great Depression and the end of World War II offers a precedent: it led to the “golden age” of Australian public housing.

We call on governments to be innovative and ambitious. Building a more resilient and sustainable future requires the courage to experiment with new housing and living arrangements. Now is the time to act.

– ref. Coronavirus shows housing costs leave many insecure. Tackling that can help solve an even bigger crisis – https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-shows-housing-costs-leave-many-insecure-tackling-that-can-help-solve-an-even-bigger-crisis-137772

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Theresa Dicke, Senior Research Fellow, Australian Catholic University

Almost all (97%) school principals in Australia work overtime. More than 70% work more than 56 hours per week during school terms and 25 hours each week of the holidays.

The latest yearly report on the well-being of Australian principals provides a sobering picture of harassment, violence, burnout and mental-health concerns. More than 2,000 Australian principals participated in the 2019 survey.

More than 40% of principals reported being a victim of physical violence in 2019 compared to 27.3% in 2011. Threats of violence toward principals have increased from 37.8% in 2011 to 51.0% in 2019.

Parents are the main offenders of threats, bullying, sexual harassment, conflicts and gossip. Students were responsible for most actual instances of physical violence. These included hitting principals during a meltdown or throwing broken glass.

Read more: Teachers are more depressed and anxious than the average Australian

School principals recognise, promote and build the leadership capacity of staff, students, parents and the community. Research shows school principals play a role in teachers’ well-being. And teachers’ well-being affects student achievement and motivation.

This means improving school principals’ well-being isn’t only important in its own right. It’s important for the school’s other staff and students.

What the survey found

Most school principals told us they had been subjected to two or more types of offensive behaviour in the last 12 months.

Over the last nine years of our surveys, a growing percentage of school principals have been exposed to behaviours such as bullying, physical violence, gossip and slander, sexual harassment, threats of violence and verbal harassment.

Principals told us of parents sometimes threatening them with lawyers or going on social media to downgrade the school. Principals reported being micromanaged by the department, being forced out of school and humiliated by regional management.

In the 2019 survey, principals said they experienced levels of burnout, stress and sleep difficulties that were all at least 1.6 times higher than the general population.

Since our first principal well-being survey in 2011, principals have consistently reported “the sheer quantity of work” and “the lack of time to focus on teaching and learning” as their main sources of stress.

Read more: Bullying, threats and violence: report details the difficult job of a principal

The increasing demands for accountability also cause distress because principals simply do not have enough time to do the “real work” of school leadership – facilitating teaching and learning.

One WA primary school principal told us

The role of Principal is becoming increasingly complex and difficult. Some of this is due to the unrealistic expectations from parents and their lack of support for the school in regard to behaviour management. I feel we have become a toothless tiger. The department of education also places unrealistic expectations on schools with many mandated administrative tasks that take us away from our core business of leading a school.

In 2019, principals reported the mental health issues of students as their third highest source of stress. They reported job demands, on average, to be 1.6 times higher than for people in the general population.

A secondary school principal from NSW said:

I have significant concerns with the prevalence of students, staff and parents that are now presenting with a myriad of mental health conditions within the workplace. The management of these conditions/situations constitutes a significant part of my job on a daily basis. It takes a large toll on my own mental health and well-being, and that of my wife who has to listen to the vast amount of war stories on a daily basis.

What needs to be done

In 2017, Victoria was the first state to implement substantial changes to work practices consistent with the recommendations from our survey. The government allocated A$4 million to conduct principal health checks and implement well-being strategies which included a principal mentoring program, an early intervention program and free health consultations. It also appointed a principal health and well-being expert to the Victorian Department of Education and Training.

Victoria now has the lowest number of principal reports of self-harm, poor quality of life and poor occupational health. Victorian principals also reported the highest level of job satisfaction.

The Northern Territory also implemented substantial, evidence-based changes to their system in 2019 in line with our recommendations. And Queensland will put in place similar solutions this year.

Both the NT and Queensland’s measures emerged from an extensive top to bottom review of their education systems. Our survey shows the Northern Territory now reports the equal lowest number of serious ill-health indicators along with Victoria, and the second highest level of job satisfaction in the country.

We anticipate Queensland’s new workplace changes will also show marked improvement in subsequent surveys.

Read more: Being able to adapt in the classroom improves teachers’ well-being

These results suggest systematic approaches to the challenges of education make the greatest difference to school principals, and not approaches which seek to address challenges of any specific school setting.

The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the massive amount of responsibility and strain endured by Australia’s educational staff. Principals were responsible for keeping schools open (or in the case of private schools, making the call to close them). They were also responsible for everybody adhering to social distancing guidelines to keep staff and students safe.

And they had to oversee the implementation of a system (online and in hard copy) to provide home-schooled students with adequate learning materials to keep up with the curriculum.

We believe the COVID-19 pandemic could herald a positive shift in community attitudes toward school leaders. It seems, the national school shutdown from COVID-19 restrictions have reminded communities of the vital role school leaders play.

– ref. 40% of Australian principals are victims of physical violence – https://theconversation.com/40-of-australian-principals-are-victims-of-physical-violence-132002

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joy Damousi, Director, Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences, Australian Catholic University

One of the haunting images of this pandemic will be stationary cruise ships – deadly carriers of COVID-19 – at anchor in harbours and unwanted. Docked in ports and feared.

The news of the dramatic spread of the virus on the Diamond Princess from early February made the news real for many Australians who’d enjoyed holidays on the seas. Quarantined in Yokohama, Japan, over 700 of the ship’s crew and passengers became infected. To date, 14 deaths have been recorded.

The Diamond Princess’s sister ship, the Ruby Princess, brought the pandemic to Australian shores. Now under criminal investigation, the events of the Ruby Princess forced a spotlight on the petri dish cruise ships can become. The ship has been linked to 21 deaths.

History shows the devastating role ships can play in transmitting viruses across vast continents and over many centuries.

Read more: This could be the end of the line for cruise ships

Rats in the ranks

Merchant ships carrying rats with infected fleas were transmitters of the Plague of Justinian (541-542 AD) that devastated the Byzantine Empire.

Ships carrying grain from Egypt were home to flea-infested rats that fed off the granaries. Contantinople was especially inflicted, with estimates as high as 5,000 casualties a day. Globally, up to 50 million people are estimated to have been killed – half the world’s population.

The Black Death was also carried by rats on merchant ships through the trade routes of Europe. It struck Europe in 1347, when 12 ships docked at the Sicilian port of Messina.

Subsequently called “death ships”, those on board were either dead or sick. Soon, the Black Death spread to ports around the world, such as Marseilles, Rome and Florence, and by 1348 had reached London with devastating impact.

The Italian writer, poet and scholar, Giovanni Boccaccio, wrote how terror swept through Florence with relatives deserting infected family members. Almost inconceivably, he wrote, “fathers and mothers refused to nurse their own children, as though they did not belong to them”.

Ships started being turned away from European ports in 1347. Venice was the first city to close, with those permitted to enter forced into a 40-day quarantine: the word “quarantine” derives from the Italian quarantena, or 40 days.

By January 1349, mass graves proliferated outside of London to bury the increasing numbers of dead.

Read more: This isn’t the first global pandemic, and it won’t be the last. Here’s what we’ve learned from 4 others throughout history

Army and naval ships, as well as travellers around the globe, also carried cholera pandemics throughout the 19th century. In the first pandemic in 1817, British army and navy ships are believed to have spread cholera beyond India where the outbreaks originated.

By the 1820s, cholera had spread throughout Asia, reaching Thailand, Indonesia, China and Japan through shipping. British troops spread it to the Persian Gulf, eventually moving through Turkey and Syria.

Subsequent outbreaks from the 1820s through to the 1860s relied on trade and troops to spread the disease across continents.

At war with the Spanish Flu

The Spanish influenza of 1918-1919 was originally carried by soldiers on overcrowded troop ships during the first world war. The rate of transmission on these ships was rapid, and soldiers died in large numbers.

One New Zealand rifleman wrote in his diary in September 1918:

More deaths and burials total now 42. A crying shame but it is only to be expected when human beings are herded together the way they have been on this boat.

The flu was transmitted throughout Europe in France, Great Britain, Italy and Spain. Three-quarters of French troops and over half of British troops fell ill in 1918. Hundreds of thousands of US soldiers travelling on troop ships across the Atlantic and back provided the perfect conditions for transmission.

The fate of cruising

A new and lethal carrier in the 21st century has emerged in the pleasure industry of cruise ships. The explosion of cruise holidays in the past 20 years has led to a proliferation of luxury liners plying the seas.

Like historical pandemics, the current crisis shares the characteristic of rapid spread through ships.

The unknown is in what form cruise ships will continue to operate. Unlike the port-to-port trade and armed forces that carried viruses across continents centuries ago, the services cruise lines offer are non-essential.

Whatever happens, the global spread of COVID-19 reminds us “death ships” are an enduring feature of the history of pandemics.

– ref. Fleas to flu to coronavirus: how ‘death ships’ spread disease through the ages – https://theconversation.com/fleas-to-flu-to-coronavirus-how-death-ships-spread-disease-through-the-ages-137061

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Lapworth, Lecturer in Cultural Geography, UNSW

In March, amateur scientists in Sydney announced they had created a COVID-19 test kit that is simpler, faster, and cheaper than existing tests. While the test has not yet been approved by regulators, if effective it could play a role in scaling up the world’s coronavirus testing capability.

The test’s creators, associated with a “community lab for citizen scientists” called Biofoundry, are part of a growing international movement of “biohackers” with roots stretching back 30 years or more. Biohacking, also known as DIY biology, takes cues from computer-hacking culture and uses the tools of biological science and biotechnology to carry out experiments and make tools outside any formal research institution.

Read more: Hacking the body: the scientific counter-culture of the DIYbio movement

Who’s afraid of biohacking?

But biohacking is under threat as governments, wary of potential risks, pass laws to restrict it. A more balanced approach is needed, for the benefit of science and society.

As biohacking has gained increased visibility, it has also attracted increased scrutiny. Media coverage has played up the risks of biohacking, whether from malice (“bioterror”) or by accident (“bioerror”).

Local and national governments have also sought to legislate against the practice.

In August 2019, politicians in California introduced a law that forbids the use of CRISPR gene-editing kits outside professional labs. Australia has some of the world’s most stringent regulations, with the Office of the Gene Technology Regulator monitoring the use of genetically modified organisms and risks to public health and safety.

Some authorities have gone so far as to arrest biohackers on suspicion of bioterrorism.

But such anxieties around biohacking are largely unfounded.

Ellen Jorgensen, co-founder of the Genspace community lab in New York, argues that such responses overestimate the abilities biohackers and underestimate their ethical standards. Research shows shows the great majority of biohackers (92%) work within community laboratories, many of which operate under the Ethical Code for Safe Amateur Bioscience drawn up by the community in 2011.

Read more: No, you can’t tap your hand to get on the train – where biohacktivists stand under the law

Connoisseurs of science

One way to think of biohackers is as what the Belgian philosopher Isabelle Stengers calls “connoisseurs of science”.

Somewhere between an expert and an amateur, a connoisseur is able to relate to scientific knowledge and practice in an informed way, but can also pose new questions that scientists are unable to.

Connoisseurs can hold scientists to account and challenge them when they skip over concerns. They highlight how science might be done better. Like other pursuits such as music or sport, science can benefit from a strong and vibrant culture of connoisseurs.

Biohackers are an important node in the relationship between science institutions and wider society. Stengers highlights how it is not enough for there to be a relationship between science and society. It is the nature and quality of this relationship that matters.

A two-way relationship

Traditional models of science communication assume a one-way relationship between science and society at large, with scientists transmitting knowledge to a public who passively receive it. Biohackers instead engage people as active participants in the production and transformation of scientific knowledge.

Biohacking labs like BioFoundry and Genspace encourage hands-on engagement with biotechnologies through classes and open workshops, as well as projects on local environmental pollution.

Biohackers are also making discoveries that advance our understanding of current scientific problems. From devising coronavirus tests to making science equipment out of everyday items and producing open-source insulin, biohackers are reshaping the sense of where scientific innovation happens.

Read more: DIY scientists should not trade creativity for funding

From law to ethics

While biohacking can produce great benefits, the risks can’t be neglected. The question is how best to address them.

While laws and regulations are necessary to prevent malicious or dangerous practice, their overuse can also push biohackers underground to tinker in the shadows. Bringing biohackers into the fold of existing institutions is another approach, although this could threaten the ability of biohackers to pose tough questions.

In addition to law, ethical guidelines and codes drawn up by the biohacking community themselves offer a productive way forward.

For Stengers, an “ethical” relationship is not based on the domination or capture of one group by another. It instead involves symbiotic modes of engagement in which practices flourish together and transform each other.

A balance between law and ethics is necessary. The 2011 code of ethics drawn up by biohackers in North America and Europe is a first step toward what a more open, transparent, and respectful culture of collaboration could look like.

In the US we have seen experiments with a more open and symbiotic relationship between the FBI and the biohacking community in recent years.

But this is just the beginning of a conversation that is in danger of stalling. There is much to lose if it does.

– ref. From coronavirus tests to open-source insulin and beyond, ‘biohackers’ are showing the power of DIY science – https://theconversation.com/from-coronavirus-tests-to-open-source-insulin-and-beyond-biohackers-are-showing-the-power-of-diy-science-138019

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

Anthony Albanese says Australia must use the pandemic experience to move to a more resilient society, creating more permanent jobs and revitalising high value manufacturing.

In his fifth “vision statement”, delivered against the background of the government foreshadowing an extensive post-crisis reform agenda, Albanese is giving a broad outline of Labor’s priorities for change.

The Monday speech, issued ahead of delivery, comes a day before parliament resumes for a three-day sitting expected to be more combative than the previous two one-day sittings. It also precedes Josh Frydenberg’s economic update on Tuesday – the day the treasurer was, pre-pandemic, due to deliver the budget, now delayed until October.

Read more: Grattan on Friday: The delicate art of political distancing during the pandemic

Referring to the government’s “SnapBack” terminology, Albanese says: “Let’s not SnapBack to insecure work, to jobseekers stuck in poverty, to scientists being ignored.”

“It’s no time for a ‘SnapBack’ to the Liberal agenda of cutting services, suppressing wages and undermining job security.

“This pandemic has shown that Labor’s values of fairness and security and our belief in the power of government to shape change to the advantage of working people are the right ones.

“A constrained fiscal position does mean difficult choices. But a reform agenda that doesn’t work for all Australians isn’t one we should pursue”.

Albanese says Labor has been constructive during the crisis, not allowing “the perfect to be the enemy of the good”; he contrasts its approach with the Coalition’s negativity against the Labor government during the global financial crisis.

While Australians have been getting through the crisis together, it has been tougher for some than others, including those who have lost jobs and businesses, he says.

“Sharing the sacrifice to get through the crisis together has to mean working to secure a recovery in which no one is left behind.

“We have to be clear in recognising that those with the least, have suffered the most through this crisis – something that must change.

“It’s critical that we are still saying , ‘we’re all in this together’, after the lockdown has come to an end,” Albanese says.

“We must move forward to having not just survived the pandemic, but having learned from it.

“To secure a more resilient society, given just how quickly things can change, through no fault of anyone.

“To better recognise the contributions of unsung heroes, like our cleaners, supermarket workers and delivery workers. To honour our health and aged care workers.

“To recognise that young people have done more than their share.

“Young people deserve better than an economy and society that consigns them to a lifetime of low wages, job insecurity, and unaffordable housing.

“We must ensure that what emerges is a society that no longer seems stacked against them, or denies them the opportunity and economic security of older generations”.

Albanese says this is a once-in-a-political lifetime event that “creates once-in-a-century opportunity to renew and revitalise the federation” and “a once-in-a-generation chance to shape our economy so it works for people and deepens the meaning of a fair go”.

“We must build more permanent jobs, an industrial relations system that promotes co-operation, productivity improvements and shared benefits,” he says.

“We must revitalise high value Australian manufacturing using our clean energy resources.”

He also urges nation building infrastructure including high speed rail and the local construction of trains; a decentralisation strategy including restoring public service jobs in agencies such as Centrelink that deliver services to regional areas; a conservation program to boost regional employment; and governments working with the private sector and superannuation funds to deliver investment in social and affordable housing.

“A housing construction package should include funding to make it easier for essential workers to find affordable rental accommodation closer to work.”

Albanese says that “too much of the risk in our economy has been shifted onto those with the least capacity to manage in tougher times.

“The broadest burden has been put on the narrowest shoulders.

“Our economy has become riskier, and we need to think through what that means for us all.

“We need to realise that a good society can’t thrive when the balance between risk and security falls out of step.”

Albanese says there needs to be an emphasis on growth, “because only inclusive economic growth can raise our living standards.

“We need to put more emphasis on secure employment – especially for the next generation of younger workers who nowadays have little idea of the meaning of reliable income or holiday pay”.

– ref. Let’s “SnapBack” to better society with more secure jobs: Anthony Albanese – https://theconversation.com/lets-snapback-to-better-society-with-more-secure-jobs-anthony-albanese-138265

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Wood, Program Director, Energy, Grattan Institute

Australia has an historic opportunity to build a new, export-focused manufacturing sector based on renewable energy.

As a bonus, it could enable a less politically fraught conversation about climate change. Global action on climate change is in Australia’s national interest.

The changing climate is already reducing profits for Australian farmers. Tens of thousands of jobs depend on the again-bleached Great Barrier Reef.

But for too long, political leaders have struggled to balance the national interest with the legitimate concerns of Australians who live and work in regions that host coal mining and other carbon-intensive industries – most notably central Queensland and the Hunter Valley in NSW.

This climate conundrum has greatly complicated the national debate about climate change: neither commitments to a “just transition” to a low-emissions future, nor promises of coal exports in perpetuity, have proven convincing, leaving regional jobs in the lurch.

Australians want industry

In the 2019 federal election, voters in these carbon regions, perhaps fearing for their livelihoods, seemingly rejected Labor’s more ambitious climate policies.

But with 85% of our black coal exported each year, decisions made in Beijing and New Delhi matter more to these communities than decisions made in Canberra.

Australia needs a credible plan to replace carbon jobs as the world decarbonises, and ideally the new jobs will offer similar salaries, need similar skills, and be located in similar places.

Read more: How to transition from coal: 4 lessons for Australia from around the world

This is the key to cracking the climate conundrum: a plan based on sound economics that can offer hope to communities that currently depend on carbon-intensive activities.

A new Grattan Institute report, Start with steel, finds that manufacturing green steel for export is the largest job opportunity for these regions of Australia.

We can start with steel

Green steel can be made by using renewable energy to produce hydrogen, and then using that hydrogen in place of metallurgical coal in the steelmaking process.

The byproduct is water, rather than carbon dioxide.

Winding back the 7% of global emissions that come from steel production will require creating demand for low-emissions steel.

Australia has far better renewable resources than many of our major Asian trading partners, allowing us to make low-emissions hydrogen more cheaply, and therefore to make cheaper green steel.

And because hydrogen is expensive to transport, it makes sense to use it to make green steel here rather than exporting it to make green steel somewhere else.

The Pilbara in Western Australia is the world’s largest iron ore province, which makes it look like the natural place to make green steel.

But it is difficult to attract workers to remote Western Australia. Making green steel for export would require large industrial workforces like those in central Queensland and the Hunter Valley.

Our calculations suggest that the availability of reasonably-priced labour on the east coast of Australia more than outweighs the cost of shipping iron ore from Western Australia to turn it into green steel there.

Read more: Enough ambition (and hydrogen) could get Australia to 200% renewable energy

If Australia captured just 7% of the global steel market, it could create 25,000 ongoing manufacturing jobs.

Seven per cent is much higher than the 0.3% of globally-traded steel that Australia produces today – but it is much less than our share of iron ore production, which is 38%.

Crucially, the opportunity does not rely on leaps of faith or endless subsidies – it is one of the few economically-credible ways to make the low-emissions steel the world will need if it gets serious about tackling climate change.

We should act quickly

There are also opportunities for Australia’s regions to manufacture biofuels for aviation and use renewable hydrogen to make ammonia.

The markets for these products are less certain, but if the world moves decisively to limit emissions, the projects that respond will deliver thousands of jobs.

Governments cannot single-handedly create these industries, and nor should they.

Instead, they should focus on bringing down the cost of the key intermediate product – hydrogen – by funding pre-commercial studies of geological structures suitable for storing hydrogen cheaply.

And they should invest in Australia’s low-emissions steel making capabilities by partly funding a flagship project that uses the direct reduction technology needed to use hydrogen to make steel.

Read more: For hydrogen to be truly ‘clean’ it must be made with renewables, not coal

The politics of climate change skewered a decade’s worth of prime ministers. And an inability to communicate the costs of action – and why they’re justified – contributed to a would-be prime minister losing an unlosable election.

Green steel offers Australia a reset button: a chance to get bipartisan cooperation to tackle a wicked problem that threatens our national interest.

We’ve heard plenty about the climate crisis. It’s time to talk about the opportunities.

– ref. Australians want industry, and they’d like it green. Steel is the place to start – https://theconversation.com/australians-want-industry-and-theyd-like-it-green-steel-is-the-place-to-start-137999

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Blakely, Professor of Epidemiology, University of Melbourne

The federal government has laid out a three-step guide for the states and territories for relaxing the physical distancing measures that have served Australia so well. We need to get back to school, work and play.

Australia is one of the lucky countries, blessed by being “girt by sea”, with a little bit more time to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic – and some good, strong early leadership (such as closing the border to China). We have used that time well, getting the case numbers down to not much more than New Zealand’s low rate, even though they faced a more severe lockdown. Some states, such as WA, may even have succeeded in eliminating community transmission.

Morrison’s language last week of expecting ongoing outbreaks suggests the goal is not to eliminate, but to suppress case numbers. This means accepting there will be grumbling transmission of the virus that pops up here and there as (hopefully) small outbreaks we can stamp out. But there is a risk of things getting out of control, with a second wave of infections possibly much greater than the first.

Read more: We may well be able to eliminate coronavirus, but we’ll probably never eradicate it. Here’s the difference

The best way forward in a suppression world

Think of it like a seesaw. On one side we have things we want back – the kids at school, going back to work, going to the pub, playing team sports. The problem is each one of these things will make it easier for the virus to circulate. If we went straight back to our old normal ways, it’s inevitable COVID-19 would take off as an epidemic that would swamp our health system – and cause substantial illness and death. We are not going to do that.

So we have to stack the other side of the seesaw with the counterbalancing of really good surveillance systems, testing, keeping our distance, and contact tracing (in which case, yes, the COVID-Safe App can help here).

Read more: COVIDSafe tracking app reviewed: the government delivers on data security, but other issues remain

With each of these things together, it will in theory allow us to get out and about without the epidemic taking off again.

But we do need to remember it is a theory the world has not tested before. We need to approach this cautiously, learn as we go, and generate the evidence in real time.

How do we do that? By relaxing measures in batches. Hit “release” on the first tranche, then monitor what happens very closely for three to four weeks. (And do not stuff it up by muddying the waters with more loosening ups before the three to four-week window has passed.)

If by three to four weeks, there has not been an unacceptable surge in cases, then release the next tranche and repeat the cycle. If and when the case load gets too high, we then have reached the tipping point for the seesaw – and we will need to stabilise or even tighten up again.

Thus the stepped proposal by the federal government looks like a good framework to follow.

The issue, though, is how far we can get before the seesaw looks like it is tipping. We may get a rude shock; we may not get much of our liberty back before we have to equilibrate, and even go back into lock-down if there is a strong surge in cases.

The fear that is often mentioned is that of a “second wave” of infections that could surpass the first. That will happen in the states and territories that have not eliminated the virus if we open up too rapidly – hence the need for a stepped approach that can be stopped at or before the tipping point that will lead to an unacceptable second wave.

What is an acceptable level of community transmission in Australia?

Understandably, no politician has been brave enough to state publicly how much of an increase in cases is acceptable. But we will find out once restrictions are relaxed and cases start to inevitably rise.

The “acceptable” number of cases we want to remain under might be as low at ten cases per day – a number that would see low levels of death and severe illness. Alternatively, and perhaps better, we may use the number of outbreaks – something like no more than one new outbreak per week in each state or territory.

An outbreak could be defined as one new case with no detectable infection source, through to dozens of infections from the same source (as per the current abattoir outbreak in Victoria).

Learning to live with the virus in this suppression world is likely to be hard work. Which gives reason to pause and ask “is elimination really off the table?” For the country as a whole, probably. The government (and society) has decided to trade off the risk of more infections for some of our freedoms back. Which is understandable.

Everything about COVID-19 is calculated risk-taking. While some states, such as WA, may have achieved elimination, most have not. So loosening up now will likely mean elimination is unachievable, and suppression our only path forward.

– ref. The stepped approach out of lockdown is the only way forward, but how much we’ll allow the curve to rise is still an unknown – https://theconversation.com/the-stepped-approach-out-of-lockdown-is-the-only-way-forward-but-how-much-well-allow-the-curve-to-rise-is-still-an-unknown-138260

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Sheehan, Lecturer in the Sociology of Gender and Program Director of Gender Studies, Macquarie University

Little Richard was washing dishes at a Greyhound bus station in Macon, Georgia when he wrote Tutti Frutti, Good Golly Miss Molly and Long Tall Sally. The singer, who died Saturday at 87, sent the songs as demos to Specialty Records.

Soon he was having lunch with talent scout Robert “Bumps” Blackwell at a New Orleans nightclub, leaping onto the piano and belting out:

Tutti Frutti, good booty

if it don’t fit, don’t force it

you can grease it, take it easy

tutti frutti, good booty.

Watching the flamboyant performer sing about the pleasures of anal sex, Blackwell knew he had a hit.

The recorded lyrics were toned down for the conservative 1950s, but Little Richard’s wild whoops and falsetto screeches infused the song with the saucy spirit of the original.

Preaching as Princess Lavonne

Born Richard Wayne Penniman and nicknamed for his smallness as a child, Little Richard was one of 12 children. He developed his charismatic singing, piano and performance styles playing in black and Pentecostal churches.

He was thrown out of home at age 13 by his father who didn’t like his loudness, in music or dress – a clear rejection of his queerness. As a teenager Little Richard performed in minstrel shows across the American South as the drag queen Princess Lavonne.

He brought his charismatic style and drag persona into his showmanship as Little Richard, with a camp style that enabled him to call himself the “king and queen of the blues”.

Historian Marybeth Hamilton argues Little Richard came out “of a black gay world and a tradition of black drag performance that formed an integral part of the culture of rhythm and blues”. Even when young audiences didn’t understand his lyrics, he “made the drag queen’s sly ironies part of every white teenager’s soundtrack”.

He described his songs as ballads that covered a range of experiences. The term “molly” in Good Golly Miss Molly referred to a male sex worker. Long Tall Sally was about a drunk woman Richard used to see as a child. Lucille was about a female impersonator.

Threatening the status quo

Little Richard confronted audiences with his suggestive lyrics and sexually charged sound, his gender bending falsetto, high hair and makeup, and his blackness.

Journalist Jeff Greenfield recalled his parents’ horror when he picked up the 1957 debut record Here’s Little Richard.

On a yellow background, a tight shot of a Negro face bathed in sweat, the beads of perspiration clearly visible, mouth wide open in a rictus of sexual joy, hair flowing endlessly from the head.

In conservative, racially segregated, 1950s America, when interracial marriage was illegal, and homosexuality was a crime, Little Richard’s popularity embodied the perceived dangers of the new generation’s music. There was particular concern that young people would be influenced into alternative lifestyles including via mixing across lines of race and class at dance halls.

To counter the perceived threat he posed to conservative white America, Richard worked to present himself as so outré, so out there – dressing as the pope and the Queen at different performances – as to present no menace.

After he had a religious epiphany during his Australian tour, he took a break from music, returning in the 1960s. This was the first of many times he quit rock ‘n’ roll for God.

Despite having once described himself as gay and “omnisexual”, in the final years of his life Richard called gay and trans identities “unnatural”, a position that hurt some of his queer fans.

Generations

Little Richard’s urgent, intense delivery, the drama of his falsetto, his exuberant costuming and moves, his howling wildness, influenced generations of musicians and figures including Muhammad Ali.

Artists who owe enormous debts to his influence include Tina Turner, Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Otis Reading, Jimi Hendrix, James Brown, Patti Smith, Led Zeppelin, Elton John, Prince and Bruce Springsteen. Following news of his death, artists from Bob Dylan to Paul McCartney to Janelle Monáe posted tributes on social media.

In 1991, as part of the campaign to get Little Richard recognised with a Grammy award, David Bowie said, “without him, I think myself and half of my contemporaries wouldn’t be playing music”.

For younger generations, his name might not be as recognisable as those of his peers like Elvis Presley. This is in part likely the result of Richard’s own ambivalent relationship with rock ’n’ roll. But it’s also the result of the combined impact of racism, homophobia, and respectability politics. For some (including himself) he was at various times, too queer, too black, too feminine, too close to the devil.

And yet his gift lay, through music, in transmuting this otherness into a transcendent, shared permission to be free.

As one 1970 reviewer described his stage performance, Little Richard was “mesmerizing because he hits the cosmic mainline, a source of radiant energy that has the power to dissolve the ghosts of identity”.

As Little Richard sang it: “A-wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-lop-bam-boom”.

– ref. A-lop-bam-boom: Little Richard’s saucy style underpins today’s hits – https://theconversation.com/a-lop-bam-boom-little-richards-saucy-style-underpins-todays-hits-138263