Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alex Russell, Senior Postdoctoral Fellow, CQUniversity Australia

Sporting codes are restarting as part of easing restrictions amid the coronavirus pandemic. In Australia, the NRL season has just restarted, the AFL will resume on June 11, and Super Netball will return on August 1.

But, to reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission, there’s one crucial ingredient missing: crowds.

To provide atmosphere in the absence of people, broadcasters are experimenting with canned crowd noise, much like the laugh tracks used in sitcoms. Last weekend the NRL unveiled its fake audience noise, drawing a mixed response from viewers.

Germany’s top soccer league has been using it for weeks, and the English Premier League, which returns on June 17, is even considering borrowing crowd noise from EA Sports’ popular soccer video game FIFA.

But why do we care so much about crowd noise, and why do many of us feel we need it?

It’s because it bonds us with members of our tribe, provides us a sense of connection, and acts as a psychological cue for when to pay particular attention to the action, like a goal opportunity. Without it, sport just doesn’t seem as exciting.

Read more: From spit to scrums. How can sports players minimise their coronavirus risk?

We bond over sport

Following a team brings a sense of connection with others who follow the same team. That sense of belonging is an incredibly powerful motivation for people – it drives our thoughts and our emotions. And following a team is an emotional experience. We share the highs when they win, and the lows when they lose.

Spectators may not even play the sport they watch, but still refer to “us” and “we” when talking about their team, and use “they” and “them” for the opposition. And when the crowd supporting our team is the one making all the noise, it drives home that sense of connection.

Crowd noise is a cue

For a couple of rounds of competition, before the COVID-19 suspension, we saw games of AFL where we could actually hear the players yelling to each other. When they scored, the only noise was from the players themselves. It sounded similar to watching an amateur match at the local park. Even the most tense moments, or heroic efforts, were somehow not as exciting without the crowd.

That’s because crowd noise is a cue for spectators. We know something exciting has happened when the crowd goes nuts. When a game comes down to the last few minutes, and the scores are very close, the crowd noise adds to the tension. When my team is getting cheered on, I share in the excitement with others like me – my tribe. It seems the broadcasters are reflecting this by increasing the volume of fake crowd noise during exciting moments.

Without crowd noise, we just don’t get the same level of excitement, because we’ve learned to link excitement with crowd noise. You can have the most amazing players, with so many things to cheer on, but the only noise you’re likely to hear will be from whoever is watching with you in the lounge room (and maybe your neighbour if they’re watching too).

If we’re not sharing the moment with everyone, we’re missing out on that sense of belonging.

Crowds also influence players and referees

The most important factor in home ground advantage appears to be the crowd (though some argue that the home crowd advantage used to be larger than it is now).

Most teams have their own home ground, but in some cases, two or more teams might share a home ground. When they’re playing against each other, one team is still designated as home, and the other as away. Neither team has to travel far, and both teams are familiar with the stadium’s quirks, but the designated “home” team will have a more sympathetic crowd. A 2015 study used this exact scenario at the Staples Centre in Los Angeles to find that essentially the entire home advantage between two teams comes down to the crowd effect. So crowd noise can support players, and spur them on.

Further, home crowd noise has also been found to have an effect on referees, umpires and judges. Teams appear to be less likely to receive yellow cards in soccer when playing at their home ground, because of the home crowd’s impact on referees.

A 2010 study found referees used crowd noise as a cue when making decisions such as whether to give a yellow card for a foul.

The home crowd is more likely to be loud for fouls against their own team, rather than fouls their team has committed against the opposition. Because crowd noise is strongly associated with exciting action, and fouls are exciting, referees may not even be aware they’re using crowd noise as a cue. Further, they may just want to appease the home crowd.

Sport won’t be as exciting without crowds

I distinctly remember the moment when Nick Davis kicked that goal with 5 seconds to go to defeat the Geelong Cats and send the Sydney Swans into the 2005 grand final. The crowd went nuts and I loved sharing that moment with everyone. I belonged.

But if something like that happened this year, and there was no crowd to see it and cheer it on, would it be as exciting? I doubt it.

And that’s precisely why fake crowd noise is on TV. It might feel forced, and some people might not like it much, but at least there’s just a little bit more excitement with it. With any luck, we won’t have to worry about it for too long.

This article is supported by the Judith Neilson Institute for Journalism and Ideas.

– ref. Why does crowd noise matter? – https://theconversation.com/why-does-crowd-noise-matter-139662

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Abby Mellick Lopes, Associate Professor, Design Studies, Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building, University of Technology Sydney

Home cooks have been trying out their skills during isolation. But the way food tastes depends on more than your ability to follow a recipe.

Our surroundings, the people we share food with and the design of our tableware – our cups, bowls and plates, cutlery and containers – affect the way we experience food.

Read more: Should we eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper?

For example, eating from a heavier bowl can make you feel food is more filling and tastes better than eating from a lighter one.

Contrast this with fast food, which is most commonly served in lightweight disposable containers, which encourages fast eating, underestimating how much food you’re eating, and has even been linked to becoming impatient.

These are just some examples of the vital, but largely unconscious, relationship between the design of our tableware – including size, shape, weight and colour – and how we eat.

In design, this relationship is referred to as an object’s “affordances”. Affordances guide interactions between objects and people.

As Australian sociologist Jenny Davis writes, affordances:

…push, pull, enable, and constrain. Affordances are how objects shape behaviour for socially situated subjects.

Designed objects don’t make us do things.

The colour of your crockery

When you visit a restaurant, the chances are your dinner will be served on a plain white plate.

But French chef Sebastien Lepinoy has staff paint the plates to match the daily menu and “entice the appetite”.

Research seems to back him up. Coloured plates can enhance flavours to actually change the dining experience.

In one study, salted popcorn eaten from a coloured bowl tasted sweeter than popcorn eaten from a white bowl. In another, a café latte served in a coloured mug tasted sweeter than one in a white mug.

This association between colour and taste seems to apply to people from Germany to China.

A review of multiple studies conducted in many countries over 30 years finds people consistently associated particular colours with specific tastes.

Red, orange or pink is most often associated with sweetness, black with bitterness, yellow or green with sourness, and white and blue with saltiness.

Read more: Bitter coffee today? Try changing the colour of your cup

The size of your plate

The influence of plate size on meal portions depends on the dining experience and whether you are serving yourself. In a buffet, for example, people armed with a small plate may eat more because they can go back for multiple helpings.

Nonetheless, average plate and portion sizes have increased over the years. Back in her day, grandma used to serve meals on plates 25cm in diameter. Now, the average dinner plate is 28cm, and many restaurant dinner plates have expanded to 30cm.

Our waistlines have also expanded. Research confirms we tend to eat more calories when our plates are larger, because a larger capacity plate affords a greater portion size.

Plastic is too often ignored

The pace of our busy lives has led many people to rely on those handy takeaways in disposable plastic food containers just ready to pop into the microwave. And it’s tempting to use plastic cutlery and cups at barbecues, picnics and kids’ birthday parties.

In contrast to heavy, fragile ceramic tableware, plastic tableware is designed to be ignored. It is so lightweight, ubiquitous and cheap we don’t notice it and pay little mind to its disposal.

Plastics have also changed how we eat and drink. An aversion to the strong smell of plastic containers that once might have caused people to wrap their sandwiches before placing them in Tupperware seems to have disappeared. We drink hot coffee though plastic lids.

Australian economic sociologist Gay Hawkins and his colleagues argue lightweight, plastic water bottles have created entirely new habits, such as “constant sipping” on the go. New products are then designed to fit and reinforce this habit.

Aesthetics matter

Healthy eating is not only characterised by what we eat but how we eat.

For instance, eating mindfully – more thoughtfully and slowly by focusing on the experience of eating – can help you feel full faster and make a difference to how we eat.

And the Japanese cuisine Kaiseki values this mindful, slower approach to eating. It consists of small portions of beautifully arranged food presented in a grouping of small, attractive, individual plates and bowls.

This encourages the diner to eat more slowly and mindfully while appreciating not only the food but the variety and setting of the tableware.

Japanese people’s slower eating practices even apply to “fast food”.

One study found Japanese people were more likely to eat in groups, to stay at fast food restaurants for longer and to share fast food, compared with their North American counterparts.

Affordance theory is only now starting to account for cultural diversity in the ways in which designed objects shape practices and experiences.

The studies we have reviewed show tableware influences how we eat. Size, shape, weight, colour and aesthetics all play a part in our experience of eating.

This has wide implications for how we design for healthier eating – whether that’s to encourage eating well when we are out and about, or so we can better appreciate a tastier, healthier and more convivial meal at home.

– ref. Plates, cups and takeaway containers shape what (and how) we eat – https://theconversation.com/plates-cups-and-takeaway-containers-shape-what-and-how-we-eat-137059

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jeremy Moss, Professor of Political Philosophy, UNSW

Queensland Nationals Senator Matt Canavan on Monday night denied suggestions the government subsidises Australia’s fossil fuel industry. The comments prompted a swift response from some social media users, who cited evidence to the contrary.

Canavan was responding to a viewer question on ABC’s Q&A program. The questioner cited an International Monetary Fund (IMF) working paper from May last year that said Australia spends US$29 billion (A$47 billion) a year to prop up fossil fuel extraction and energy production.

The questioner also referred to media reports last year that Australia subsidised renewable energy to the tune of A$2.8 billion. He questioned the equity of the subsidy system.

Canavan disputed the figures and said there was “no subsidisation of Australia’s fossil fuel industries”. You can listen here:

So let’s take a look at what the Australian government contributes to the fossil fuel industry, and whether this makes financial sense.

What does Australia contribute to the fossil fuel industry?

Canavan said the figures cited by the questioner didn’t accord with the view of the Productivity Commission.

The commission’s latest Trade and Assistance Review doesn’t specifically mention federal subsidies. But it describes “combined assistance” for petroleum, coal and chemicals in mining of about A$385 million for 2018-19.

Subsidies to fossil fuel companies and other products can be difficult to categorise. Often there is disagreement as to what counts and what doesn’t.

For example, the IMF paper includes subsidising the costs of fuels used to extract resources, accelerated depreciation for assets and funding for fossil fuel export projects.

Read more: Morrison government dangles new carrots for industry but fails to fix bigger climate policy problem

Estimates by other organisations of the annual federal subsidies for the fossil fuel industry range from A$5 billion to A$12 billion a year.

So despite the disparities, it’s clear the fossil fuel industry receives substantial federal government subsidies. Earlier this month a leaked draft report by a taskforce advising the government’s own COVID-19 commission recommends support to a gas industry expansion.

Importantly, these subsidies benefit the fossil fuel industry relative to its competitors in the renewable sector.

Do these payments make sense?

The subsidies are also aimed at a sinking industry.

As Tim Buckley, of the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, notes, COVID-19 and the falling cost of renewables are delivering a hit to the export fossil fuel industry in Australia from which it may never recover.

Fossil fuel companies such as Santos are also under extreme pressure from some super funds to adopt strict emissions targets.

Moreover, these subsidies produce very few direct jobs in fossil fuel extraction.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, coal, oil and gas extraction create just 64,300 direct jobs. Only around 10% of coal industry employees are women.

If we divide the IMF subsidy figure by the number of direct jobs, the governments of Australia spend A$730,000 each year for every direct job in the coal, oil and gas industry. That equates to A$1,832 for every Australian.

Where are the profits?

Setting aside the madness of this support for fossil fuels given the climate crisis, the subsidies make no financial sense.

With so much government support, you’d think the industry would be full of profitable companies filling the government’s coffers with taxes. But this is not the case.

Australian Taxation Office data for 2016-17 show eight of the ten largest fossil fuel producers in Australia paid no tax. That’s despite nine of these companies having revenue of about A$45 billion for that period.

Not all of these benefits go to these big producers, but many of them do.

If Prime Minister Scott Morrison really wants to lessen the impact of the coronavirus on Australians and save jobs, then this gross level of subsidies must be phased out.

Money needed elsewhere

Subsidies paid each year to the fossil fuel industry could be used far better elsewhere.

It could help retrain or provide generous redundancy packages for the relatively small number of workers in fossil fuel industries and their communities.

Read more: Yes, carbon emissions fell during COVID-19. But it’s the shift away from coal that really matters

The subsidies are unconscionable when you consider the resources so desperately needed now for health and the broader economy. The coronavirus must force us as a country to re-evaluate how we distribute taxpayer funds.

As International Energy Agency head Fatih Birol notes, we now have an “historic opportunity” to use stimulus to transition to clean energy.

Directing funds to companies that have had 30 years to prepare for their demise is simply throwing away public money. It could be put to so much better use.

– ref. Matt Canavan says Australia doesn’t subsidise the fossil fuel industry, an expert says it does – https://theconversation.com/matt-canavan-says-australia-doesnt-subsidise-the-fossil-fuel-industry-an-expert-says-it-does-131200

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ralph Sims, Professor, School of Engineering and Advanced Technology, Massey University

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

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

If we stopped oil, gas and coal extraction immediately – what would happen? What would we need to change about the way our economies and societies work in order to adjust to that resource no longer being available? Do alternatives already exist that mean it could be business as usual if we (governments and individuals) make changes, or would it mean a major adjustment to the way we live our lives?

It is not feasible to immediately stop extracting and using fossil fuels. The global economy, human health and livelihoods currently depend heavily on oil, coal and gas. But over time, we need to displace fossil fuels with low-carbon renewable energy sources.

The first priority should be on switching to renewable energy, not just for electricity but also for heating, cooling and transport fuels. It will be much harder to substitute fossils fuels used for chemical processing, such as the manufacture of plastics or fertiliser, but it is technically possible with biomass (organic material from plants and animals). After all, the hydrocarbons in coal, oil and gas were originally derived from biomass millions of years ago.

The aim of governments, local and national, should be to encourage reduced use of fossil fuels by supporting renewable energy systems.

Read more: Climate crisis: six steps to making fossil fuels history

Increasing contribution from renewables

One issue is that global subsidies for fossil fuel extraction remain large, at around US$4.7 trillion per year according to the International Monetary Fund.

In a recent global energy review, the International Energy Agency described a significant drop in energy demand from fossil fuels as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Demand is likely to rise again, but in the meantime, the use of renewable electricity continues to increase and now has a 25% share of global electricity.

Countries with good renewable resources can reach a significantly higher share. New Zealand, for example, now produces around 85% of its total electricity from renewable sources (including hydro, wind, solar and geothermal) without government intervention. But overall, renewable energy contributes only 40% of all energy demands in New Zealand, and far less globally.

There are many examples of how renewable energy can meet intensive industry demands, in New Zealand and elsewhere. New Zealand’s aluminium smelter uses electricity generated by the country’s largest hydro power station built underground at Lake Manapōuri. A steel mill in Sweden uses “green hydrogen”, produced by using renewable electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.

Green hydrogen can also be used to displace natural gas for heating and cooking as well as for fuelling trucks, cars, boats and planes.

Read more: Immediate phase out of fossil fuels could keep warming below 1.5°C

The costs and benefits of change

There are many alternatives to fossil fuels with far lower carbon footprints. This includes electricity generated by nuclear power plants.

But the problem is fossil fuels remain relatively cheap, because the cost of their pollution isn’t usually factored in, and energy dense (there is more energy contained in a lump of coal than a piece of wood of a similar size). Displacement is not easy and will take time to allow those working in the fossil fuel industry to go through a “just transition” to work in other sectors.

Government intervention is often required for low-carbon options to increase their share in meeting total energy demands. But changing people’s behaviour around energy use is more challenging than deploying new low-carbon technologies to provide the same energy services.

Read more: Why our response to climate change needs to be a just and careful revolution that limits pushback

We should not forget the additional benefits that come with a shift to low-carbon energy generation. More walking and cycling improves health, electric vehicles reduce local air pollution (compared with petrol and diesel vehicles) and using public transport and carrying more freight by rail can reduce traffic congestion. Other simple energy-saving measures – switching off lights, not wasting food – can all save money while lowering someone’s carbon footprint.

We have become a wasteful society, with consequences for the environment. Perhaps now is the time to make major adjustments to how we live before climate change impacts do it for us.

– ref. Climate explained: could the world stop using fossils fuels today? – https://theconversation.com/climate-explained-could-the-world-stop-using-fossils-fuels-today-138605

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Marshman, Honorary Principal Fellow, Melbourne Centre for the Study of Higher Education, University of Melbourne

Most of Australia’s universities have adequate cash and investment reserves to deal with the immediate impact of a downturn in international student revenue in 2020. But the longer term prospects are grim.

We modelled the impact of the loss of international student fee income resulting from COVID-19. We used 2018 data and categorised 38 Australian universities into three risk categories: high, medium and low.

We found seven universities are most at risk of having their international student revenue losses exceed available cash and investment reserves. These are: Monash University, RMIT, University of Technology Sydney, La Trobe, Central Queensland and Southern Cross University, and The University of Canberra.

The decade from 2009 to 2018 saw Australian universities enjoy an unprecedented boom in international student enrolments. The revenue from this activity increased by 260% – from A$3.4 billion to A$8.8 billion.

This has created significant threats to universities, which became increasingly reliant on international student fee income to fund teaching, research and capital infrastructure programs.

Read more: How universities came to rely on international students

Just four months ago this strategic threat was realised. The most pervasive impact of COVID-19 on Australian university finances will be the loss of international student fee revenue.

Modelling by Universities Australia shows the sector will lose A$16 billion by 2023. This is similar to our predicted losses of international student fee revenue amounting to A$18 billion by 2024.

A critical issue is how well universities are placed to manage this pandemic-induced financial crisis.

Short and long term scenarios

Our study examined the short (for 2020) and longer term (to 2024) impacts of the loss of international student fee revenue.

We assessed the risks using short term and longer term optimistic and pessimistic scenarios.

The optimistic scenario considered overall international student numbers will return to pre-COVID-19 levels by 2024. The pessimistic expected longer term damage to international education.

We used cash and investment reserves to assess universities’ financial resilience. These reserves are the most accessible forms of liquidity available to offset a sudden loss in income.

We determined only a proportion of total cash and investments to be able to offset revenue shortfalls. The proportion increases over the longer term. Universities do have other assets, but most are not readily accessible for alternative deployment.

Read more: Why is the Australian government letting universities suffer?

Seven universities (as cited above) have insufficient available cash and investment reserves to offset predicted losses in international fee revenue for 2020. This is also the case for both the pessimistic and optimistic longer term scenarios.

Of these, Monash University, RMIT and UTS have very large numbers of international enrolments. Revenue from international student fees constitutes 34% for Monash, 36% for RMIT and 35% for UTS. Across the sector international student fee income constituted 26.2% of total revenue in 2018.

For Central Queensland and Southern Cross University, international fee income as a proportion of total revenue is above the sector average – 33% and 27% respectively in 2018.

In absolute terms two of seven universities at most risk – Southern Cross and Canberra – have very low levels of available cash and investment reserves. This that adds to their financial vulnerability.

In the longer term another 13 universities – including the research-intensive UNSW and The University of Queensland, as well as The University of Adelaide, South Australia and Flinders University – face medium financial management risk in having insufficient available reserves to deal with the predicted outcomes for the pessimistic scenario.

The remaining 18 universities, just under half of the total sector institutions, are in the low risk category, but most still face significant financial challenges. All five Western Australian universities are in this category.

Of the large research intensive universities, The University of Melbourne is the only university with sufficient reserves to offset the predicted revenue loss under both short and longer term scenarios.

Read more: More than 10,000 job losses, billions in lost revenue: coronavirus will hit Australia’s research capacity harder than the GFC

Given their relative smaller cohorts of international students, the majority of regional universities are predicted to be less exposed financially.

What universities need to do

Few universities have sufficient operating margins or available cash and investment reserves to withstand a sustained reduction in international fee revenue.

Without significant increases in public funding (which is unlikely), each university will, to varying degrees, need to identify and build additional revenue streams, and/or significantly reduce spending.

Universities are actively planning and implementing various strategies to mitigate potential losses. The most important strategies will include:

• delay or scaling back of uncommitted capital works and other major projects

• a re-appraisal of infrastructure requirements for a post-COVID-19 environment may realise assets surplus to future needs

• universities with multiple campuses should conduct a major review of the viability of each in a post-COVID-19 world

• a rationalisation of course and subject offerings to ensure individual program viability over the longer term

• a rigorous review of “other expenditure” costs. Possible areas for savings include travel, entertainment, use of consultants and marketing expenses

• a reappraisal of head office structures and remuneration levels, with a view to consolidate roles which may have emerged in a period of plenty

• a further review of administrative and professional staff costs which amounted to A$8.6 billion in 2018. Sector-wide benchmarking is already available to assess relative efficiency on a function by function basis

Given employee costs represent 57% of total university spending, further reductions in this area are inevitable to reflect the decline in student enrolments. Each university may also need to adjust its workforce capability to meet changed future requirements.

One unprecedented measure involves university leaders seeking collaboration with unions to modify existing enterprise agreements to allow for a temporary salary freeze. Job losses will nevertheless occur, with casual and fixed term staff most at risk.

At the same time, universities will need to continue investing in digital education and new forms of student experience capable of attracting and retaining both domestic and international market share in a post-COVID-19 era.

COVID-19 will test the resilience of all Australian universities in a manner rarely – if ever – seen before. Not all 38 universities will emerge from the pandemic in their current form.

– ref. COVID-19: what Australian universities can do to recover from the loss of international student fees – https://theconversation.com/covid-19-what-australian-universities-can-do-to-recover-from-the-loss-of-international-student-fees-139759

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sameer Hasija, Associate Professor of Technology and Operations Management, INSEAD

“This virus may become just another endemic virus in our communities and this virus may never go away.” – WHO executive director Mike Ryan, May 13

Vaccine or not, we have to come to terms with the reality that COVID-19 requires us to rethink how we live. And that includes the idea of smart cities that use advanced technologies to serve citizens. This has become critical in a time of pandemic.

Read more: Coronavirus recovery: public transport is key to avoid repeating old and unsustainable mistakes

Smart city solutions have already proved handy for curbing the contagion. Examples include:

But as we prepare to move beyond this crisis, cities need to design systems that are prepared to handle the next pandemic. Better still, they will reduce the chances of another one.

Issues of trust are central

In a world of egalitarian governments and ethical corporations, the solution to a coronavirus-like pandemic would be simple: a complete individual-level track and trace system. It would use geolocation data and CCTV image recognition, complemented by remote biometric sensors. While some such governments and corporations do exist, putting so much information in the hands of a few, without airtight privacy controls, could lay the foundations of an Orwellian world.

Read more: Darwin’s ‘smart city’ project is about surveillance and control

Our research on smart city challenges suggests a robust solution should be a mix of protocols and norms covering technology, processes and people. To avoid the perils of individual-level monitoring systems, we need to focus on how to leverage technology to modify voluntary citizen behaviour.

This is not a trivial challenge. Desired behaviours that maximise societal benefit may not align with individual preferences in the short run. In part, this could be due to misplaced beliefs or misunderstanding of the long-term consequences.

As an example, despite the rapid spread of COVID-19 in the US, many states have had public protests against lockdowns. A serious proportion of polled Americans believe this pandemic is a hoax, or that its threat is being exaggerated for political reasons.

Design systems that build trust

The first step in modifying people’s behaviour to align with the greater good is to design a system that builds trust between the citizens and the city. Providing citizens with timely and credible information about important issues and busting falsehoods goes a long way in creating trust. It helps people to understand which behaviours are safe and acceptable, and why this is for the benefit of the society and their own long-term interest.

In Singapore, the government has very effectively used social media platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Telegram to regularly share COVID-19 information with citizens.

Densely populated cities in countries like India face extra challenges due to vast disparities in education and the many languages used. Smart city initiatives have emerged there to seamlessly provide citizens with information in their local language via a smartphone app. These include an AI-based myth-busting chatbot.

Read more: How smart city technology can be used to measure social distancing

Guard against misuse of data

Effective smart city solutions require citizens to volunteer data. For example, keeping citizens updated with real-time information about crowding in a public space depends on collecting individual location data in that space.

Individual-level data is also useful to co-ordinate responses during emergencies. Contact tracing, for instance, has emerged as an essential tool in slowing the contagion.

Technology-based smart city initiatives can enable the collection, analysis and reporting of such data. But misuse of data erodes trust, which dissuades citizens from voluntarily sharing their data.

City planners need to think about how they can balance the effectiveness of tech-based solutions with citizens’ privacy concerns. Independent third-party auditing of solutions can help ease these concerns. The MIT Technology Review’s audit report on contact-tracing apps is one example during this pandemic.

Read more: The trade-offs ‘smart city’ apps like COVIDSafe ask us to make go well beyond privacy

It is also important to create robust data governance policies. These can help foster trust and encourage voluntary sharing of data by citizens.

Using several case studies, the consulting firm PwC has proposed a seven-layer framework for data governance. It describes balancing privacy concerns of citizens and efficacy of smart city initiatives as the “key to realising smart city potential”.

As we emerge from this pandemic, we will need to think carefully about the data governance policies we should implement. It’s important for city officials to learn from early adopters.

While these important issues coming out of smart city design involve our behaviour as citizens, modifying behaviour isn’t enough in itself. Civic leaders also need to rethink the design of our city systems to support citizens in areas like public transport, emergency response, recreational facilities and so on. Active collaboration between city planners, tech firms and citizens will be crucial in orchestrating our future cities and hence our lives.

The author acknowledges suggestions from Aarti Gumaledar, Director of Emergentech Advisors Ltd.

– ref. Smart cities can help us manage post-COVID life, but they’ll need trust as well as tech – https://theconversation.com/smart-cities-can-help-us-manage-post-covid-life-but-theyll-need-trust-as-well-as-tech-138725

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Hawkins, Assistant Professor, School of Politics, Economics and Society, University of Canberra

Later today we’ll know what the bushfires and the coronavirus did to the economy in the three months to March: whether gross domestic product grew (as is usual) or whether it shrank (as is rare, and heralds a recession).

Gross domestic product (GDP) is an imperfect measure of everything that’s produced in the three months (and also everything that’s spent and earned).

Imperfect or not, it is measured the same way every time, which is why changes in it give us a good idea of changes in what we produce and earn.

Most likely it will tell us that what we produced and earned shrank.

Read more: Australia’s first service sector recession will be unlike those that have gone before it

There is a minority view, held by five of 25 economists surveyed by Bloomberg, that it could tell us the economy grew, perhaps because of panic buying of toilet paper and the like in March, although much of the demand will have been satisfied by running down inventories in March rather than producing more.

This has led to headlines saying Australia might avoid a recession.

It would come as a surprise to those who have lost their jobs, had no work or closed their businesses. It reflects the media’s common, but flawed, definition of a recession as two consecutive quarterly falls in real GDP.

The ‘technical’ definition is wrong

This is sometimes referred to this as a “technical” recession, which is an odd distinction given that no-one refers to a “generic”, an “artistic” or a “lay” recession.

The inadequacy of the definition is illustrated by looking at the Australian economy’s response to the 1973 oil shock and subsequent global economic slowdown.

Quarterly change in GDP, seasonally adjusted 1960 – 2000

Real GDP contracted in only one quarter of 1974, but by a massive 2%, the biggest plunge on record, and enough to mean that less was produced in the last quarter of 1974 than in the last quarter of 1973.

The unemployment rate more than doubled in the space of year. Consumer confidence plummeted.

Any reasonable person would have concluded that during 1974 the Australian economy was deep in recession.

So what is a recession?

Probably the most reputable source is the US National Bureau of Economic Research which has been studying business cycles for a century, and in the United States is regarded the arbiter of when recessions begin and end.

It defines a recession as

a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production and wholesale-retail sales

Note that there is nothing in this definition that limits a recession to (or requires) two quarters of sliding GDP in a row.

A “depression” is a very severe recession.

An elephant would still be an elephant if it didn’t have a trunk. As with a recession, there are many ways of defining an elephant, but we know what one is when we see one.

The narrower two-quarters-in-a-row definition was introduced in a 1974 newspaper article by Julius Shiskin, an economist then serving as the US Commissioner of Labor Statistics.

He set out some “useful guidelines” that could be used to guess at whether something was a recession while waiting for the formal declaration from the National Bureau of Economic Research.

One was “declines in real GNP for two consecutive quarters”.

It’s a rule of thumb…

The simplicity of the suggestion struck a chord, and it was widely adopted.

Australia has no institution comparable to the National Bureau of Economic Research to date recessions, but there is broad consensus we have had six:

• the prolonged depression in the 1890s when the Federation drought coincided with the collapse of a speculative boom in Melbourne and weak global demand

• the global great depression of the 1930s which followed the Wall Street crash and was exacerbated by tariff wars

• the milder recession that followed a credit squeeze in the early 1960s

• the mid-1970s recession also caused by a tightening of access to credit in the face of inflation and a sudden jump in oil prices

• the early 1980s brought on a US recession and exacerbated by drought

• the early 1990s “recession we had to have”, brought on by extremely high interest rates that caused the collapse of several Victorian financial institutions

During the 2008 global financial crisis, Australia’s economy performed better than almost all its peers, with no annual fall in GDP and a relatively small increase in unemployment.

When, after having fallen in the December quarter of 2008, real GDP climbed rather than fell again in the following quarter, Prime Minister Rudd said he had never been as elated.

It allowed him to claim he had avoided a “technical” recession.

…with real-world consequences

It is widely agreed that GDP will have fallen in the June quarter of 2020, the one following the March quarter.

So long as lockdowns do not need to be reimposed, the economy is likely to recover a bit in the September quarter, meaning that, unless GDP fell in the March quarter, Australia might be able to boast it has “technically” avoided a recession.

It would happen in the midst of what the Reserve Bank governor described this week as the biggest economic contraction since the 1930s.

It’ll turn on whether today’s figures show show a small rise (maybe 0.1%) or a small fall (maybe 0.1%) in March quarter GDP.

In other words, it’ll depend on nothing much.

Read more: The Reserve Bank thinks the recovery will look V-shaped. There are reasons to doubt it

But the media definition of “technical” recession might be influencing policy design. When the government was concerned that the bushfires would lead to GDP contracting in the March quarter, its focus seemed to be on avoiding a second fall in the June quarter.

Its A$750 payments to income support recipients were rolled out only after March 31. Its increase in the instant asset write-off and cash flow assistance to small businesses were to end on June 30.

Once it became clear that GDP would fall in the June quarter, it appeared to shift its focus to avoiding a further fall in the September quarter, announcing JobKeeper and JobSeeker programmes that would run to the end of September.

It’s not the same as providing help when needed. It might be a consequence of our needlessly-precise definition of a recession.

– ref. Our needlessly-precise definition of a recession is causing us needless trouble – https://theconversation.com/our-needlessly-precise-definition-of-a-recession-is-causing-us-needless-trouble-133694

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Dawson, Professor and Chair of Anthropology, University of Melbourne

June, 1980, Laibach was formed. Soon, they became the musical wing of the Slovenian arts collective Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK), or New Slovenian Art. Comprising visual artists, theatre companies and a unit dedicated to social theory, NSK was concerned with exploring the relationships between art and politics.

Laibach took its name from Austro-Hungarian and then Nazi occupied Ljubliana, the capital city of Slovenia. They were the first Western band to perform in North Korea and their most recent album is a cover of the Sound of Music, which re-presents that most saccharine of musicals as an exercise in the celebration of Austrian fascism and paedophilia.

Laibach is one of the most controversial, innovative and truly strange bands in rock history.

Exile

Cultural provocateurs par excellence, Laibach has managed to offend all points in the political spectrum.

Its earliest concerts were performed against a backdrop of images of “Tito”, the revered former leader of the then in-decline Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), next to a drooping penis.

In a strategy that lent the appearance of tolerance while in fact inviting public retribution, the state invited Laibach to explain its actions on prime-time TV. The band appeared in military garb and gave an interview of totalitarian-esque slogans.

Laibach was promptly declared a fascist organisation by state officials, a descriptor thrust on anyone the state disagreed with.

In response, Laibach revealed its members were dressed in their Yugoslav army conscript uniforms, their words a mash-up of SFRY propaganda. The state banned Laibach from performing, and its members were forced into exile.

Laibach similarly raised the ire of the very ethnonationalist forces that brought down the SFRY. In 1984, they covered Live is Life, by Austrian Europop band Opus. In Laibach’s video, stags and majestic landscapes – symbols of romantic nationalism – are combined with symbols of Nazism and militarism, reminding Slovenian viewers of an uncomfortable public secret: the rural peasantry, who embody Slovenian nationalism most, were also willing collaborators in the violent Germanisation of the country in World War II.

Rehabilitation and the totalitarian cure

After many pariah years, Laibach came to be rehabilitated. In 2017, the philosopher Slavoj Žižek wrote an article titled “Why are Laibach and NSK not fascists”. Žižek had critiqued liberal and leftists alike for their condemnation of Laibach’s use of fascist and other totalitarian symbolism. There was nothing at all ironic in Laibach’s actions, he argued. Rather, Laibach sought to promote an over-identification with such symbolism and it was through this that identification with fascism could be overcome.

Laibach’s recordings are now regarded widely as key examples of Soviet postmodernism, exploring relationships between ideology and art. Laibach demonstrates how apparently benign musical forms conceal repressed totalitarian sentiments by transforming the musical arrangement of famous pop songs into martial anthems. The Beatles’ Get Back was written as a song about homecoming; in Laibach’s hands it is a warning to immigrants to keep out.

Read more: First foreign band to play North Korea is famed for its ‘fascism’

Laibach’s live performances are even more affecting, using the discordant sounds of martial music, feedback, recordings of political speeches and barking dogs,described by the band as “ritualised demonstrations of political force”. Within each show the audience goes through a full circle of alienation by identification with, and dis-identification from, totalitarianism.

Not surprisingly, Laibach has cemented its status as a darling of the leftist avant-garde. Nowadays, they are just as likely to be found performing at the Tate Modern, the Venice Biennale, MONA or with philharmonic orchestras as in sweaty rock venues.

Eternal Laibach

With typical bombast, NSK once declared “only God can subdue LAIBACH. People and things never can.” Laibach has gone about making itself eternal.

Mimicking the totalitarian state, NSK eschews individualism. Its manifesto states “each individual is subjugated to the whole.” Indeed, when the original lead singer Tomaž Hostnik died by suicide, he was was posthumously thrown out of the band for undertaking an act that was not collectively sanctioned.

More recently, Laibach’s anti-individualism has manifested in core members relegating themselves to tech roles like lighting engineers, with the musicians replaced by younger artists who will outlive them. In 1991, NSK declared itself a virtual non-territorial state, with some displaced people unsuccessfully trying to use NSK passports at actual border crossings.

The Slovenian state now cherishes Laibach as a national icon. Children march into school assemblies to the accompaniment of a Laibach song, and rumours abound the Slovenian state is striving to have Laibach classified by UNESCO as an intangible site of World Heritage.

Laibach’s method for longevity contrasts sharply with the narcissistic cult of personality approach deployed by its main cultural colleagues: totalitarian political leaders and pop stars. The SFRY was unable to survive the death of its charismatic leader Tito. Despite frantic attempts on social media, pop stars will disappear as quickly as they shoot to fame. Perhaps the key lesson to learn from Laibach is the best way to remain a star is to go out of your way to not be one.

Happy birthday Laibach! It is likely to be just one of many more to come.

– ref. 40 years of Laibach – is this Slovenian avant-garde band the most controversial in rock history? – https://theconversation.com/40-years-of-laibach-is-this-slovenian-avant-garde-band-the-most-controversial-in-rock-history-139751

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Luke Strotz, Professor, Northwest University, Xi’an

The COVID-19 outbreak has put into stark relief the disruption parasites can cause, both in human society and ecosystems.

Researchers have long sought to better understand the evolutionary importance of parasites, to help lessen their impact.

Although parasites are common in modern ecosystems, we actually know little about parasitism in the distant past. And when parasites first evolved remains a mystery.

But our research, published today in Nature Communications, brings us one step closer to an answer, as we document the oldest known example of a parasite-host relationship.

The tricky task of identifying parasitism

Parasitism is typically defined as an ongoing relationship in which one organism, the parasite, increases its own success by exploiting another organism known as the host.

Importantly, parasitism is a form of symbiosis. Symbioses are commonly thought of as positive partnerships. For instance, the relationship between coral polyps and microscopic algae that is crucial to the formation of coral reefs benefits both organisms.

However, the term symbiosis can be applied to any persistent relationship between organisms. In the case of parasitism, the parasite always benefits while the host is harmed.

This definition of parasitism is perhaps one of the reasons why the history of parasites remains relatively unknown.

Read more: Why evolution must be at the centre of fighting parasitic infections

Much of our understanding of the evolution of life comes from the fossil record. And although fossils provide abundant evidence of evolutionary and ecological change, evidence of direct interaction between fossil organisms is less likely to be preserved. It’s often difficult to demonstrate a suspected fossil parasite was actually exploiting a host.

Also, many parasites that live inside a host – including bacteria and viruses – are unlikely to be fossilised as they often decompose too quickly to be preserved.

The origins of parasitism

Despite these issues, there are demonstrated examples of fossil parasites.

And our latest findings have identified the earliest parasite-host interaction in the fossil record.

We examined exquisitely preserved, 515-million-year-old fossils from southern China belonging to organisms called brachiopods (Neobolus wulongqingensis). Brachiopods are marine invertebrates that resemble clams but are actually quite different. They are rare today, but were much more common in the geological past.

Our research revealed the hardened tubes encrusting the surface of fossil brachiopod shells were once occupied by parasitic worms.

We know the worms were parasites because we identified a clear negative effect on the host, as brachiopods without parasites grew larger than those with them.

While the parasites in question were almost certainly worms, we don’t know exactly what type of worm. What we do know is the worm would have been attached to its host brachiopod for its entire life.

Based on the orientation of the tubes, we also know the worms were kleptoparasites, meaning they stole food from the host before it could be ingested.

Other remarkable discoveries of parasites in the fossil record include spiral-shaped bacteria, almost identical to the bacteria responsible for Lyme Disease, discovered inside a 15 million-year-old fossil tick entombed in amber.

“Tongue worms” (Pentastomida), a parasite still found today, have a fossil record stretching back hundreds of millions of years. We even have evidence of damage to dinosaur feathers caused by lice.

An explosive period of evolution

The age of these newly discovered fossil parasites coincides with what is known as the Cambrian Explosion.

This event began roughly 540 million years ago during the Cambrian Period. It was a time of rapid evolutionary change, and includes the first appearance of animals with eyes, organs and limbs.

These changes had a marked affect on how organisms interact with each other. For example, active predation is thought to have first begun during this time.

Our discovery indicates parasitism is perhaps another important biological interaction that arose during this critical event.

The importance of understanding the history of parasites

Determining when parasites may have first evolved is the first step in understanding their impact on the history of life.

Many questions still remain. Perhaps the most important is how parasitism first evolved.

Some modern parasites exploit multiple hosts throughout their life. And many parasites that live inside a host are capable of surviving without a host at least part of the time. This suggests the first parasites may not have needed to rely on a single host for survival.

We know parasitism has evolved multiple times, and almost every animal group includes one or more parasites.

There are even parasitic mammals. For instance, vampire bats are considered a type of parasite. Transitioning to becoming a parasite seems to be a ubiquitous evolutionary strategy.

Parasites may have also driven major changes in evolution. The origin of sexual reproduction has been connected to the need for host organisms to develop greater resistance to parasites. Parasites also dominate food web links. In fact, parasitism may be the most common consumer strategy in modern food webs.

Nonetheless, we still don’t know how common parasites were in the past, or what innovations in life’s history occurred due to biological pressures exerted by parasites.

Because of this, identifying if parasitism is the cause of major evolutionary changes remains an ongoing challenge.

Read more: Bites and parasites: vector-borne diseases and the bugs spreading them

– ref. A 515 million-year-old freeloader: this nutrient-stealing marine worm is the oldest known parasite – https://theconversation.com/a-515-million-year-old-freeloader-this-nutrient-stealing-marine-worm-is-the-oldest-known-parasite-139560

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Philip Russo, Associate Professor, Director Cabrini Monash University Department of Nursing Research, Monash University

The death of African-American man George Floyd at the hands of police has sparked protests across the United States and inspired many people to reflect on our own history of police violence against Indigenous people in Australia and New Zealand.

After thousands marched across New Zealand on Monday, a series of rallies and vigils are planned across Australian cities this week, many have wondered: how should we safely protest during a pandemic?

As an infection prevention researcher, I am, of course, genuinely worried by the prospect of large crowds gathering. But I also completely understand why people want to go and make their feelings known on racism – not just in Australia and New Zealand, but internationally. It is a clash when we are trying to manage COVID-19 and puts us in a dilemma.

But I can’t stand and judge people who want to go.

Colleagues in the US who are so moved by what’s happening there are forgoing their social distancing and putting themselves and their colleagues at risk by attending the protests. For them, it is a personal decision and a risk they are prepared to take.

In New Zealand, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said while “I utterly understand” why people had marched, New Zealand had social distancing rules in place to protect people’s health – and the June 1 marches were “a clear breach of them”.

If we had one person, one person in that crowd, just think what could happen there because we’ve seen it before […] I understand the strength of feeling and I understand the sentiment and I understand that sense of urgency that everyone felt. But my job is to look after the country’s health as well.

In Australia, people should remember many states have strict rules about public gatherings and it’s likely you’ll be breaching them if you attend a protest. In Victoria, there’s a limit of 20 people at an outdoor gathering. For NSW the limit is 10, while in Queensland the limit is 20.

Remember, coronavirus is spread via close contact, so you are significantly increasing your risk of infection if you are in a large crowd.

All that said, if you’re considering attending a protest, here are four things to think about.

Read more: The fury in US cities is rooted in a long history of racist policing, violence and inequality

1. Is there another way I can show support?

Given I’m an infection prevention researcher, working to prevent the spread of COVID-19, I have to say this: if there is any other way you can show support, other than attending a mass gathering – whether that’s donating to a group doing good work, doing any sort of online protest or whatever option you can find – you should consider it.

Think about whether you yourself are at higher risk – by being older or immuno-compromised, for example – and whether there is a more sustainable way for you to support a movement you care about.

2. Think about how you’ll get there

Plan your trip to and from the protest carefully. Avoid crowded public transport – consider driving or riding a bike if possible – and follow social distancing rules if you must travel by bus, train or tram.

Make sure you bring hand sanitiser and use it liberally. Wash hands as soon as you get home.

3. If you go, observe social distancing

Download and use the COVIDSafe app. Try as best you can to observe social distancing at any event you attend. That means staying at least 1.5 metres apart from everyone else – whether you are standing in an open space or marching down a street. Remember that coronavirus is spread by droplets released when people breathe, talk, cough, sneeze, sing or shout in close proximity to others. No hugging to demonstrate solidarity.

When you get lots of people together and emotions run high, things can go awry very quickly. I’d be prepared to leave the demonstration if I started to get concerned about the proximity of people around me. There’s a risk more people will turn up than you or the event organisers anticipated; if there are bigger crowds than expected, be prepared to make a decision to head home.

A mask alone will not protect you, they’re only one piece of the armoury and are only useful if you socially distance and wash hands as well. If you throw yourself into a situation where you are close to other people, a mask will not be enough to protect you or others.

Read more: Are you wearing gloves or a mask to the shops? You might be doing it wrong

4. Do not attend if you feel unwell or have any COVID-19 symptoms

This should go without saying: absolutely stay home, no matter how strongly you feel about the issue, if you have any symptoms, such as a sore throat or a cough.

Indigenous Australians are an at-risk demographic for COVID-19, as are Māori and Pasifika, so you need to think carefully about the risk you may pose to others if you turn up while experiencing symptoms. If there was to be a small cluster in one of these protests, and the virus was passed to an Indigenous community, the effects could be devastating.

If you feel that compelled to attend a demonstration, think about anything you can do to minimise the chances of spread, or you will undo the gains Australia and New Zealand have made in keeping the coronavirus spread under control.

Read more: Riot or resistance? How media frames unrest in Minneapolis will shape public’s view of protest

– ref. Can you socially distance at a Black Lives Matter rally in Australia and New Zealand? How to protest in a coronavirus pandemic – https://theconversation.com/can-you-socially-distance-at-a-black-lives-matter-rally-in-australia-and-new-zealand-how-to-protest-in-a-coronavirus-pandemic-139875

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Thalia Anthony, Professor of Law, University of Technology Sydney

I can’t breathe, please! Let me up, please! I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!

These words are not the words of George Floyd or Eric Garner. They weren’t uttered on the streets of Minneapolis or New York.

These are the final words of a 26-year-old Dunghutti man who died in a prison in south-eastern Sydney.

Read more: The fury in US cities is rooted in a long history of racist policing, violence and inequality

David Dungay Jr was killed when prison officers restrained him, including with handcuffs, and pushed him face down on his bed and on the floor. One officer pushed a knee into his back. All along, Dungay was screaming that he could not breathe and could be heard gasping for air.

Dungay’s death in custody occurred in Long Bay prison during the 2015 Christmas season. It happened a short drive from an elite university, next to affluent, waterside suburbs.

But his horrific death did little to pierce this white bubble of privilege. The media barely blinked. The politicians did not emerge from their holiday retreats. None of the officers involved were disciplined or called to account.

Australia’s glass house

It is comfortable for us in Australia to throw stones at racist police violence in the United States. It is comfortable because we do not see our own glass house.

This is evident in Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s comments to 2GB on Monday:

And so as upsetting and terrible is the murder that took place, and it is shocking … I just think to myself how wonderful a country is Australia.

It is “wonderful” because we do not see the horror inflicted by the criminal justice system on First Nations people.

It is “wonderful” because we do not ever call their deaths in custody “murder”, using instead the euphemisms of “accident” or “natural causes”.

It is “wonderful”, because we have so normalised the passing of First Nations people that we are never shocked when they are killed.

It is “wonderful”, because we have a vocabulary to defend police officers responsible for racist violence, including people doing an “extremely difficult job”.

The official response to the killing of Dungay has wide ripples in the white Australian community and the legal community. His family maintain that the killing of their son, brother and uncle, who was unarmed, was murder. No criminal charges have been brought and the coroner in November 2019 blamed Dungay’s pre-existing health conditions. His comments minimised the responsibility on the part of the officers:

it is most likely that the cause of David’s death was cardiac arrhythmia. It is noted that David had a number of comorbidities, both acute and chronic, which predisposed him to the risk of cardiac arrhythmia … However, the expert evidence also established that prone restraint, and any consequent hypoxia, was a contributing factor although it is not possible to quantify the extent or significance of its contribution.

First Nations people are the most incarcerated in the world

The deaths in custody of First Nations Australians are not hidden. As a nation, we are choosing not to look at them. In 1991, the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody documented 99 deaths in custody.

Since then, 432 Indigenous Australians have died in custody, according to Guardian Australia’s Deaths Inside project.

First Nations people are the most incarcerated in the world, surpassing the rates of African American people in the United States. In 2019, for every 100,000 First Nations adults, 2,481 are in prisons, compared with 164 non-Indigenous people.

Read more: FactCheck Q&A: are Indigenous Australians the most incarcerated people on Earth?

Despite comprising 2% of the general adult population, First Nations Australians are 28% of the prison population. For First Nations women, the rate is 33% and they are 21 times more likely to be imprisoned than non-Indigenous women. This is a product of systemic racism that also contributes to disproportionate deaths in custody.

Yet the deaths are only the tip of the iceberg. Everyday occurrences of police brutality against First Nations people, frequently filmed and uploaded on social media platforms, have even less formal oversight. The casual complacency about the harm inflicted on First Nations people means we do not know the true extent of its occurrence.

On Tuesday, a NSW police officer was put on restricted duties after a video emerged on social media of him appearing to kick an Aboriginal teenager.

Protesting deaths in custody in our backyard

In the wake of Floyd’s death, Dungay’s nephew, Paul Silva pointed to the lack of response to First Nations deaths in Australia:

We don’t get the same big response in Australia as they do in the United States with the Black Lives Matter movement, but we have had many people, both First Nations and non-Indigenous people standing with us. We can build on that – we need many more to join us. We can take inspiration from the United States and get back out on the streets in our own backyard, where there is so much brutality against Black people too, that’s the only way to get justice.

While the spotlight has been shone on the protests in the United States, most Australians would be unaware that each year on the anniversary of Dungay’s killing, there has been a protest, mostly at Long Bay jail.

This week in cities around Australia, protests are planned in the name of First Nations people who have died in custody. The numbers of those who converge on the streets is a litmus test of national tolerance for racial violence against First Nations people in the criminal justice system.

Where does racial violence against First Nations people end?

Despite more than 500 First Nations deaths in custody since 1980, there has never been a successful homicide prosecution in the criminal courts. Indeed, only a handful have resulted in charges being laid in manslaughter or, less frequently, murder.

A police officer has been charged with murder following the shooting death of a 19-year-old Warlpiri man last year. The officer intends to plead not guilty.

Read more: Three years on from Uluru, we must lift the blindfolds of liberalism to make progress

The Victorian Coroner this April also referred the death of Yorta Yorta woman Tanya Day to prosecutors for further investigation.

Without accountability, justice will not flow for the families and the chain of racial violence will not be broken.

The danger of expressing outrage towards African American deaths in custody is that we deflect our own agency and responsibility. We legitimise the violence at our doorstep that is in our control.

It allows us to walk past racist police interventions on the false assumption that the problem is with the First Nations person rather than the police and Australian culture.

The only response to racism is resistance. This must take place not simply in passive solidarity with African Americans, but in our active support, protest and sacrifice for the lives of First Nations Australia.

– ref. ‘I can’t breathe!’ Australia must look in the mirror to see our own deaths in custody – https://theconversation.com/i-cant-breathe-australia-must-look-in-the-mirror-to-see-our-own-deaths-in-custody-139848

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Roberto Musotto, Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre Postdoctoral Fellow, Edith Cowan University

Alongside growing concerns over a possible resurgence of the coronavirus during winter, the pandemic is now creating even more victims as cybercriminals aim to capitalise on the economic upheaval.

According to news reports, people have had money stolen from their super funds by fraudsters exploiting the COVID-19 early access scheme.

The attackers reportedly used victims’ stolen identity credentials to create fake myGov accounts and lodge applications for the early release of up to A$10,000 from superannuation accounts.

If you’re worried about accessing the scheme, there are a few ways you can strengthen your protection against fraudsters looking for quick financial gain at your expense.

Read more: Don’t be phish food! Tips to avoid sharing your personal information online

Always looking for weak points

COVID-19 has threatened the national economy and left more than 700,000 people without work. In April, the federal government responded by allowing access to A$10,000 worth of super funds for eligible applicants in this financial year, and a further A$10,000 after June 30, to help sustain people during this difficult time.

Unsurprisingly, cybercriminals have sought to take advantage of flaws in the scheme.

In May, the Australian Taxation Office reportedly found at least 100 cases of applications lodged using stolen personal information.

It’s not known how attackers managed to access the personal information required for such fraud. It may have been stolen earlier this month from the hacked customer files of a tax agent, as confirmed by federal home affairs minister Peter Dutton.

Or this may have been a less sophisticated scheme. All it takes to steal identity details is a fake email or web page that looks trustworthy enough to dupe you into sharing your information.

Cybercriminals often try a broad approach, sending the same malicious email to hundreds of thousands of people in the hope someone will fall into the trap. And someone usually does.

What can you do to stay safe?

Now is a good time to check your super fund statement to make sure there hasn’t been any unauthorised withdrawal. Even better, you should regularly check all financial statements, including bills. If you see a transaction you don’t remember making, block your bank cards and inform your bank immediately.

Although there are algorithms that help detect credit card fraud, you are the only person who can recall whether you made a specific purchase. With online shopping booming during lockdown, the pool of potential victims has increased.

It’s also common for fraudsters to “test” whether a credit card works by deducting a very small amount (as little as 10 cents) with a generic description such as “service fee” or “top-up charge”.

This may seem insignificant, but for cybercriminals it’s the “perfect crime” as its simplicity and perceived lack of damage means it often escapes detection. Also, the operational costs of committing such a crime are very low, which means more people can be targeted.

Verify information and report

One foolproof way to keep your personal information safe from hackers is to double-check the websites you use – whether it’s for online shopping, checking emails or chatting with friends online. Make sure there are no obvious spelling mistakes in the URL, or otherwise.

If in doubt, try to verify the site’s legitimacy through a quick Google search. Often some online cross-checking, or a phone call to an organisation’s official phone number, is enough to reveal a scammer. And if you can’t confirm authenticity, ask yourself: is sharing my details worth the risk?

If anything doesn’t seem right, always report it to the relevant authorities so others don’t fall victim. In Australia and New Zealand, you can report identity theft on IDCARE and any type of cybercrime on the government’s ReportCyber website.

And if do become victim to fraud, alert your superannuation provider and bank as soon as possible. Cybercrime victims should always be empowered to report fraud, as this is the first step to potentially getting your money back.

Read more: ‘Click for urgent coronavirus update’: how working from home may be exposing us to cybercrime

Are more checks needed?

Some ways to potentially make the early release of super funds more secure include allowing only one verified account per person which should be confirmed, potentially via a physical interview, before any account activity is carried out. Requiring double-factor authentication throughout the process of submitting an application would also be helpful.

The successful exploitation of the scheme indicates the government may have rushed trying to process and complete applications. One member of the public said it took 12 hours to have their application approved.

This sudden administrative efficiency raises reasonable doubt about the level of security checks in place. And if fraudsters have managed to bypass security protocols, it’s very likely more checks will be needed.

– ref. Is your super money safe? Here’s how you can dodge cyber fraud – https://theconversation.com/is-your-super-money-safe-heres-how-you-can-dodge-cyber-fraud-139758

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

Scott Morrison has asked the Australian embassy to investigate the assault by police of an Australian Channel 7 news crew during the Washington demonstrations.

The embassy, which is headed by ambassador Arthur Sinodinos, is to provide advice on registering Australia’s “strong concerns” with the responsible local authorities in Washington.

Cameraman Tim Myers and 7 News’ US correspondent Amelia Brace were reporting live as police cleared protesters ahead of President Trump going from the White House to a nearby church.

Footage shows Myers being bashed with a riot shield.

Brace said later: “I actually managed to get a rubber bullet to the backside and Tim got one in the back of the neck so we’ll have a few bruises tomorrow but we’re perfectly safe”.

“You heard us yelling that we were media … but they don’t care. They are being indiscriminate at the moment,” she said.

Morrison wasn’t aware of the assault when he and Trump spoke on Tuesday; Trump had contacted Morrison to formally invite him to the G7 meeting in September.

After hearing of the incident, Morrison contacted Channel 7 to assure the network of the government’s support if it wished to lodge a formal complaint with the police through the embassy.

Anthony Albanese, speaking earlier, said Sinodinos “should be certainly making representation on behalf of these Australians who effectively have been assaulted”.

In their conversation, the Prime Minister told Trump he would be pleased to attend the G7 meeting. It is the second consecutive year Australia has been invited – last year French host, President Macron, extended an invitation.

A spokesman for Morrison said participation would “give Australia another significant opportunity to promote our interests during highly uncertain times in the global economy. It’s important for Australians that we are there”.

The G7 group of large advanced economies includes – apart from the US – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom. Its discussions cover economic, security and other issues.

But this meeting, which has been delayed from July to September, is surrounded by controversy. Trump wants to have Russian President Vladimir Putin there. Russia was expelled some years ago after its invasion of Crimea.

While Trump would like Russia readmitted as a member of the G7, this is strongly opposed by the UK and Canada – although their stand would not necessarily rule out Putin’s attending the September meeting.

At the weekend Trump said he did not think the G7 “properly represents what’s going on in the world. It’s a very outdated group of countries.” He flagged inviting Russia, South Korea, Australia and India.

The PM’s spokesman said Morrison and Trump canvassed in their conversation the “distressing situation” in the US – which has seen the country wracked by violent protests in the wake of the death at police hands of the unarmed African-American George Floyd – and “efforts to ensure it would be resolved peacefully”.

AUSTRALIAN DOWNTURN MIGHT BE LESS THAN EXPECTED: RESERVE BANK

On the home front, Reserve Bank Governor Philip Lowe on Tuesday said it is possible the depth of Australia’s downturn will be less than earlier expected.

In a statement after Tuesday’s Reserve Bank Board meeting, which as anticipated kept rates unchanged, stressed the nature and speed of the recovery “remains highly uncertain”.

The economy was going through its biggest contraction since the 1930s depression, he said.

But “the rate of new infections has declined significantly and some restrictions have been eased earlier than was previously thought likely. And there are signs that hours worked stabilised in early May, after the earlier very sharp decline. There has also been a pick-up in some forms of consumer spending”.

Lowe said while the pandemic would likely have lasting effects on the economy, most immediately “much will depend on the confidence that people and businesses have about the health situation and their own finances”.

The bank’s statement comes ahead of Wednesday’s national accounts for the March quarter, and the government’s imminent announcement of help for the residential sector.

– ref. Scott Morrison intervenes over Washington police assault of Australian TV crew – https://theconversation.com/scott-morrison-intervenes-over-washington-police-assault-of-australian-tv-crew-139869

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Shalini Arunogiri, Addiction Psychiatrist, Senior Lecturer, Monash University

COVID-19 has significantly affected our collective mental health.

For many people, social disconnection, financial strain, increased obligations in the home and ongoing uncertainty have created distress – and with it, a need for new ways of coping.

One way people may choose to cope with stress is through the use of alcohol.

We’re now starting to understand the degree to which alcohol use has increased in Australia during COVID-19. While the data aren’t alarming so far, they suggest women are drinking at higher levels than usual during the pandemic, more so than men.

This trend is likely linked to the levels of stress and anxiety women are feeling at the moment – which, research suggests, are disproportionate to the distress men are experiencing.

Read more: Worried about your drinking during lockdown? These 8 signs might indicate a problem

Alcohol consumption and COVID-19

Early reports of increased alcohol purchasing raised the alarm that we might see an increase in alcohol use across the population during lockdown.

However, recent data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics suggests overall, alcohol consumption remained relatively stable during April. Only 14% of Australians reported increased use of alcohol in the previous month.

But women are over-represented in this group. Some 18% of women reported increased alcohol use in the previous month, compared with only 10.8% of men.

Similarly, preliminary results from our COVID-19 mental health survey of 1,200 Australians in April found a significantly higher proportion of women had increased their alcohol intake: 31.8%, versus 22.5% of men.

Why are we seeing this disparity between women and men? The answers may lie in what we know about why women drink, and in the disproportionate burden of stress women are facing as a result of COVID-19.

Women tend to drink for different reasons to men

In Australia in 2016, 14% of men and 7% of women drank alcohol to risky levels.

Although fewer women than men drink alcohol regularly, alcohol consumption among women has increased in the past decade, particularly in middle-aged and older women. This mirrors international trends that suggest women may be catching up to men in terms of their alcohol consumption.

Read more: Did you look forward to last night’s bottle of wine a bit too much? Ladies, you’re not alone

Overall, Australia has observed a reduction in risky drinking across the population, with increasing numbers of young people choosing not to drink.

In contrast, women in their 50s are the only subset of the Australian population with rising rates of alcohol use. In 2016, data showed for the first time, they were more likely to drink at risky levels than younger women.

Drinking has become more normalised among women in this middle-to-older age group, potentially contributing to the rise in alcohol use. Alcohol has become a commonly accepted coping mechanism for distress, with women feeling comfortable to say “I just had a bad day. I needed to have a drink”.

This highlights a theme that frequently underpins problematic alcohol use in women: what’s termed a “coping motive”. Many studies have found more women drink alcohol to cope – with difficult emotions or stressful circumstances – as compared to men, who more often drink alcohol in social settings or as a reward.

Read more: Women’s alcohol consumption catching up to men: why this matters

Women seem to be struggling more during the pandemic

With this in mind, it’s unsurprising we’re seeing increased alcohol consumption among women during COVID-19. International data show women have been more likely to experience symptoms of stress, anxiety and depression during the pandemic.

Meanwhile, Australian data show loneliness has been more of a problem for women (28%) than men (16%) during this past month under lockdown.

Caregiver load has also been a source of stress, with women almost three times more likely than men to be looking after children full-time on their own during COVID-19.

While we don’t have enough evidence yet to tell us conclusively whether family violence incidents have increased during the pandemic, this may add to the mental health burden for some women during COVID-19.

Further, younger female workers are disproportionately affected by the economic crisis in the wake of COVID-19. The fact women make up a majority of the casual workforce makes them highly vulnerable at this time.

Read more: Coronavirus: it’s tempting to drink your worries away but there are healthier ways to manage stress and keep your drinking in check

Together, it seems COVID-19 is having a different mental health impact on women compared to men. And this is likely to be intertwined with their increased drinking during the coronavirus pandemic.

Whether we’ll see higher rates of problem alcohol use or dependence in women after the pandemic remains unclear. However, we know women who drink at unsafe levels experience complications more quickly, and enter treatment later, with perceived stigma a barrier to help-seeking.

It’s vital we draw our attention to these gender-specific differences in mental health and alcohol consumption as we formulate our mental health pandemic plan.

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

– ref. Women are drinking more during the pandemic, and it’s probably got a lot to do with their mental health – https://theconversation.com/women-are-drinking-more-during-the-pandemic-and-its-probably-got-a-lot-to-do-with-their-mental-health-139295

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Douglas, Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Western Australia

Part of growing up is learning to take responsibility for the hurtful things you say. As a person who often says stupid things, I often need reminding.

Defamation law reflects that lesson. When you say something that hurts another person, it can cost you.

A recent decision has stretched this commonsense intuition. According to the New South Wales Court of Appeal, media companies are not just responsible for the content written by their journalists. Now they are also “publishers” of comments made by readers on their social media accounts.

The decision means those who encourage engagement on social media – including media companies, journalists and “internet famous” people — can be held responsible for things said by random people who “engage” by commenting on content produced by others.

The Dylan Voller case

Dylan Voller is the young man whose poor treatment in custody at the Northern Territory’s Don Dale youth detention centre inspired a 2016 Royal Commission. Countless stories about him have been published by media companies, which then shared them on their social media pages.

Read more: Can you be liable for defamation for what other people write on your Facebook page? Australian court says: maybe

This is not unusual. On the contrary, it is a core part of their business model. Content producers want “engagement”, such as comments, because it helps them make more money by selling advertising.

Many social media users commented on posts about Voller. Some said awful things, and Voller sued for defamation.

But he did not sue the people who made the awful comments. Rather, he sued the media companies behind the Facebook pages: the publishers of The Australian and the Sydney Morning Herald, among others. Voller argued they were responsible as “publishers” for the defamatory comments written by others.

Last year, to the shock of media companies, the Supreme Court of New South Wales agreed with Voller. Justice Rothman decided the media companies had “published” the comments of third-party users, opening the door to the companies’ liability in defamation.

The media companies argued Justice Rothman made a mistake, and they could not possibly be publishers of their readers’ comments. So they appealed.

Dismissal

In rejecting the media companies’ arguments this week, the Court of Appeal drew on defamation law that has been centuries in the making.

The court’s majority ruling explained: “defamation is an actionable wrong that lies in the publication to a reader, listener or observer of matter that injures another person’s reputation”. It does not require intention.

All members of the court agreed that, generally, a person who participates and is instrumental in bringing about the publication of defamatory content is potentially liable, even though others may have participated in the publication to different degrees.

In this case, the media companies maintained and encouraged comments on their Facebook pages by users, and therefore were “publishers” of those comments.

Arguably, this is the logical application of old common law to the needs of contemporary society, and that is exactly what the common law is meant to do. As the Court of Appeal majority said, “it is not uncommon for persons to be held liable for the publication of defamatory imputations conveyed by matter composed by another person”.

It’s not over

The Court of Appeal’s latest decision was the sequel to the determination of a “preliminary question” by Justice Rothman. This means there will be more to this fight. The media companies will likely be able to argue other defences. They might still be able to avoid paying Voller damages.

Yet losing this battle could mean they will also lose the broader war against anyone who sues them for defamation. Worried about the precedent, the media companies are considering pursuing a further appeal to the High Court.

The case is sure to attract the attention of the New South Wales Defamation Working Party currently considering defamation law reform. Until legislatures or the High Court intervene, it will remain the law.

Read more: Australia’s proposed defamation law overhaul will expand media freedom – but at what cost?

A big loss for big media

For the media, this case isn’t good news from a business point of view. Companies will have to invest more in moderating comments. But this is not as unjust as some may suggest.

It’s common sense that you are responsible for the hurtful things you say. It’s also common sense that you are responsible for the damage you cause.

Media companies want to publish controversial stuff that keeps us engaged. Spicy content inspires spicy comments from your weird old uncle. Media companies may want those comments even if they cause damage. Before now, those comments were a moral hazard rather than a legal one.

But it’s also true that a failure to act can cause damage just as much as a “positive” act. We hold politicians to account for what they fail to do all the time, or at least try. Omissions can be intentional and have moral weight, deserving the attribution of responsibility through law.

The Voller case holds media responsible for a new class of omissions. It’s a new high-water mark of media responsibility. The media may not like it, but others will.

– ref. Media companies can now be held responsible for your dodgy comments on social media – https://theconversation.com/media-companies-can-now-be-held-responsible-for-your-dodgy-comments-on-social-media-139775

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Penny van Oosterzee, Adjunct Associate Professor James Cook University and University Fellow Charles Darwin University, James Cook University

We know the virus that causes COVID-19 is linked to very similar viruses in bats, possibly passed to humans via an intermediate species such as pangolins. The chance of a similar pandemic breaking out in Australia might seem far-fetched. But in fact, we tick all the boxes.

Hotspots for emerging infectious diseases exist where human activities collide with a richness of animal species – and hence, high rates of microbial biodiversity.

Read more: Most laws ignore ‘human-wildlife conflict’. This makes us vulnerable to pandemics

As research has shown, Australia is such a place. Across the continent, particularly the east coast, natural landscapes have been severely damaged by human activity such as land clearing and mismanagement of river systems. This has led to forest loss, drying wetlands, biodiversity decline and bushfires.

All animals harbour viruses and other pathogens. And when environmental pressures force animals into contact with humans, the results can be catastrophic.

A world of disease

In humans, around three-quarters of all emerging infectious diseases are spread by non-humans. A new infectious disease emerges in humans every four months.

In Africa, the Ebola virus resulted from human contact with fruit bats, and AIDS was caused by a pathogen that jumped from non-human primates during road-building.

In the United States, Lyme disease is caught from deer ticks. And the brain-damaging Nipah virus originated in Malaysia after bats infected pigs, which passed the disease to farmers.

In China and elsewhere, the deforestation of pangolin habitat makes them easy targets for hunters and poachers, who covet the animals for their meat and scales.

Australia is not immune

In Australia, a 2013 review found at least 20 human diseases associated with disturbed natural environments between 1973 and 2010. They include:

Hendra virus: This virulent disease first broke out at a racing stable in Hendra, Brisbane in 1994. It causes catastrophic neurological and respiratory symptoms in horses, and more than 100 died. Seven people have been infected, four of whom died.

The virus is endemic to Australian flying foxes. It spilled over to people via horses who ate pasture containing flying-fox urine. Habitat loss forced flying foxes to move close to humans to find food.

West Nile virus: This causes brain inflammation and death in humans, horses and birds. An endemic strain in Australia is transmitted by mosquitoes from wild birds. In 2011 an outbreak affected about 900 horses in southeastern Australia of which about ten per cent died.

The virus emerged in Australia unexpectedly, probably due to changed environmental conditions such as climate change and habitat clearing.

Australian bat lyssavirus: this rabies-like virus can be transmitted from bats to humans, causing serious illness leading to paralysis, delirium, convulsions and death.

A vaccine administered after exposure can prevent the virus from taking hold. But since 1996, three people who did not receive the vaccine after being bitten or scratched by bats died of the virus.

Buruli ulcer: this disease, also known as Bairnsdale ulcer and Daintree ulcer, is caused by a bacterium that destroys skin cells, small blood vessels and the fat under the skin. It causes long-term deformities. The bacterium, Mycobacterium ulcerans, occurs naturally in mosquitoes, vegetation and some possum droppings.

Australia is the only developed country with significant local transmission of Buruli ulcer and the only country to report the disease in wild animals such as possums. The number of people infected in Australia recently increased significantly in Victoria, to 340 new cases in 2018.

Australia: a disease-risk hotspot

A map published in Nature Communications in 2017 showed Australia’s east coast to be a global hotspot for risk of emerging infectious diseases.

Australia continues to lose forest cover at alarming rates and biodiversity is suffering unprecedented decline and disruption. This increases the probability of animal-human interaction.

Drying wetlands such as in the Murray Darling Basin destroy mosquito competitors such as aquatic animals that eat mosquito larvae. This allows mosquitoes to emerge in large numbers when water returns. This may trigger the emergence of infections such as the debilitating chikungunya virus.

Read more: Australia’s drought could be increasing Q fever risk, but there are ways we can protect ourselves

Environmental damage can also make humans more susceptible to the effects of infectious diseases. For example, bushfires (driven in part by human-caused climate change) trigger smoke plumes that increase the risk of dying from coronavirus.

Such diseases can also be catastrophic for species other than humans. Chytrid fungus, the most devastating disease on record to affect vertebrates, was first found in Australia in the 1970s. It had emerged in the early 20th century on the Korean Peninsula , alongside a commercial trade network in amphibians. It continues to cause the extinction of amphibian species worldwide.

What goes around comes around

It’s clear human health depends on healthy ecosystems. But this undeniable fact is too often overlooked in policy decisions that allow environmental destruction.

Australia is an environmental and disease-risk hotspot. As a recent open letter from prominent health leaders warned, the failure to conserve our environment dismantles our life-support systems and accelerates catastrophic climate change.

For humans to survive in our rapidly changing world, we must urgently strengthen and link policies of human health, environment and climate reform.

Read more: From the bushfires to coronavirus, our old ‘normal’ is gone forever. So what’s next?

– ref. The next global health pandemic could easily erupt in your backyard – https://theconversation.com/the-next-global-health-pandemic-could-easily-erupt-in-your-backyard-138861

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cait Storr, Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Technology Sydney

Last weekend, NASA launched US astronauts to the International Space Station for the first time in a decade, in a rocket designed by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

Under President Donald Trump, the US mission to reassert itself as the dominant power in space has rapidly gathered pace. In the process, the US has also begun to reshape international space law to suit its purposes – a move that has many countries concerned.

In April, Trump released an executive order restating US support for corporate exploitation of lunar and asteroid resources.

Read more: Giant leap for corporations? The Trump administration wants to mine resources in space, but is it legal?

The order also rejected a long-held view in international law that space is a global commons and that commercial use of space resources should occur under international oversight.

Then, last month, NASA released the “Artemis Accords”, named after its Artemis Program, which aims to return humans to the moon by 2024. The accords claim to

establish a common set of principles to govern the civil exploration and use of outer space.

What the Artemis Accords would do

Although NASA has only released a high-level summary of the accords, two issues for international space law are already clear.

First, the Artemis Accords go beyond simply rejecting the unpopular 1979 Moon Agreement, which declared lunar resources to be the “common heritage of mankind” and committed parties to establish an international regime to oversee space mining. Only 18 countries have signed the treaty.

In its place, the accords envisage a US-centric framework of bilateral agreements in which “partner nations” agree to follow US-drafted rules.

Second, the accords introduce the concept of “safety zones” around lunar operations.

Although territorial claims in space are prohibited under international law, these safety zones would seek to protect commercial and scientific sites from inadvertent collisions and other forms of “harmful interference”. What kinds of conduct could count as harmful interference remains to be determined.

Read more: The costly collateral damage from Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite fleet

The accords claim to comply with the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, a widely supported agreement that declared space the “province of all mankind” and permitted commercial resource exploitation as a “peaceful use” of space.

However, in practice, the accords have the potential to challenge the Outer Space Treaty’s ban on territorial claims in space. They could also intensify international conflict over space resources.

Will space continue to be treated as a global commons?

The Artemis Accords effectively kill off the prospect of international oversight of space mining.

The Moon Agreement committed signatories to establish an international regulatory framework when space mining was “about to become feasible”. This moment is clearly now, as Japan’s Hyabusa2 mission to the Ryugu asteroid and China’s Chang’e 4 lunar mission have demonstrated. Both missions are collecting mineral samples.

Although the Moon Agreement itself has attracted little support, the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space has revisited the framework of space resources law in recent years and commissioned a working group to draft a new regime to govern space mining.

These draft principles were due to be considered at a UN meeting this year, but it was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Now, by releasing the Artemis Accords, the US has potentially scuttled these international negotiations for good.

The real difference between the Artemis Accords and an international framework negotiated within the UN turns on whether space will be treated as a global commons when space mining begins.

Read more: SpaceX reaches for milestone in spaceflight – a private company launches astronauts into orbit

Under current international law, the benefits from commercial mining in global commons areas, including the international seabed, must in principle be shared equitably by “all mankind”.

The idea that the profits of space resource extraction should be shared via an international body garnered much support among developing nations and their supporters in the 1960s and ‘70s.

But entrepreneurs in the US space sector have long contested the global commons principle. And the US rejection of a global commons framework for space is ultimately a rejection of profit sharing. Mining and tech companies would retain all the profits.

And this, in turn, would further entrench existing wealth inequalities in the space resource industry.

Territorial claims and ‘safety zones’

The safety zones under the Artemis Accords would require all commercial and government ventures to share information on the location and nature of their space operations and notify and coordinate any approaches to other sites.

The practical sense of safety zones is clear. However, such zones seriously test a fundamental principle of the Outer Space Treaty – the ban on territorial claims in space.

This revives an old legal debate over whether the distinction between private property and sovereign territory can actually be maintained in space.

Property rights provide commercial certainty, which space mining entrepreneurs have been demanding. But property rights are only effective if the threat of legal enforcement is real.

Whether safety zones can be enforced without amounting to a breach of the ban on territorial claims remains to be seen.

Russian officials have already denounced Trump’s executive order as an attempt to “expropriate space” and “seize territory”.

Chinese space experts have also concluded that safety zones amount to sovereign claims.

These criticisms have been fuelled by US space entrepreneurs, including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, actively promoting “space colonisation”.

Which countries are likely to sign on?

States already friendly to commercial space mining, including Luxembourg, the United Arab Emirates and India, will likely sign on to the Artemis Accords.

Early reports suggest Russia will not participate, though, and given the current state of US-China relations, Chinese participation is even less likely.

But the real impact of the accords will be determined by the countries in between. The response of the European Space Agency, which has partnered with Roscosmos in its own lunar prospecting mission, remains to be seen.

Australia, for its part, faces an awkward decision. As a party to the 1979 Moon Agreement, it will have to withdraw if it intends to sign an accord with the US.

Significant diplomatic manoeuvring can be expected over the coming months as the US seeks support for its attempt to redirect international space resources law.

– ref. Could corporations control territory in space? Under new US rules, it might be possible – https://theconversation.com/could-corporations-control-territory-in-space-under-new-us-rules-it-might-be-possible-138939

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jacinta Koolmatrie, Lecturer in Archaeology, Flinders University

A day before Reconciliation Week and the day Australia was meant to be acknowledging and remembering the Stolen Generations, news came of something that seemed to put Australia back a few decades in their journey towards “Reconciliation”. Rio Tinto had detonated a 46,000 year old site known as Juukan Gorge.

This news was simply gut-wrenching.

Artefacts found at the site were among some of the oldest in Western Australia, making it incredibly significant not only for the Traditional Owners, the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura people, but also for the history of this continent.

Read more: Rio Tinto just blasted away an ancient Aboriginal site. Here’s why that was allowed

Also startling for many was this detonation had been in process for several years. The dating of the site to 46,000 years old had been uncovered through salvage excavation in preparation for this destruction.

I cannot speak for the Traditional Owners, nor can I speak on the complexities surrounding the approval of the blast, but the removal of artefacts from their place has impacted every single Aboriginal person on this continent. That is what I can speak on.

Salvage excavations

Salvage excavation is archaeological work conducted to record and collect all evidence of human occupation at a site that has been or will be impacted by development.

Excavation itself is destructive. The moment a trowel is inserted into the ground, the site has been destroyed. Salvage excavations, like all excavations, require this destruction to be worth it. Comprehensive recording of every aspect of an excavation is necessary, from changes in soil to recording each artefact found.

Archaeology also considers how artefacts will be cared for in the long term: where they will be kept and who will be caring for them. It is preferable for artefacts to remain at their location. In cases where this proves impossible, salvaging is required.

At a surface level, it seems unproblematic if everything was collected from the ground, analysed and placed in a box: those artefacts would be preserved for all of eternity. Now, they are no longer subject to erosion, animal activity or (the more perplexing argument) the threat of humans. But cultural institutions are not immune to disaster.

In 2019, Brazil’s national museum was devastated by a fire. This summer, Australian galleries closed due to the potential impact of smoke on collections. The South Australian Museum has repeatedly discussed the threat of water leaks to their collections.

These institutions are built to preserve heritage but they should not be viewed as the only preservation option, especially for heritage heavily intertwined with place.

Why is place important?

There is a common narrative Aboriginal people wandered this continent aimlessly. Rarely is there discussion our ancestors moved with intention, demonstrated clearly in the ways they passed down generational knowledge to us. Why else would they have mapped this land?

Read more: It’s taken thousands of years, but Western science is finally catching up to Traditional Knowledge

Where they chose to leave their presence should be viewed as intentional and as representation of that significance.

This significance has flowed through time, strengthening the connection of this place to us. In cases where there is a physical presence of our ancestors, it is integral we maintain the connection of this physical history to place.

For many, Juukan Gorge was mainly significant because of its early date. But not all Aboriginal heritage is afforded this same interest. Not all of our heritage can be dated that early, and a lot of our heritage simply is not tangible. A vast majority of our heritage is found in our knowledge of the land that traverses this continent. Mostly, this heritage goes unseen by our colonisers, making it easily overlooked in favour of development.

Sometimes, the tangible heritage found in these places is the only thing standing in the way of destroying a place. It is the only thing demonstrating we are a people who have deep connections to this land. Not only from a spiritual side, but also from a linear western view of time.

Aboriginal knowledges of these places, and how this knowledge links to the archaeological record, is what can fully contextualise the meaning of these places for our ancestors – and for us today.

The importance of empathy

Maintaining the connection of place with our ancestors’ possessions found at these places may be solidified through the implementation of stricter laws. But if a company wants something and our heritage is standing in the way, those laws can always be bent. The value of destroying these places is much higher than the value of keeping them – at least in the eyes of our colonisers. A loophole will be found, and our communities will suffer and grieve another loss.

If we want something long lasting, something transcending laws, empathy needs to be much stronger, something embedded into the mind and heart. Not the type of empathy that emerges when one has to say “sorry”, but the type existing before “sorry” is even considered.

With empathy, how could you justify the hurt Aboriginal people on this continent experience when we find out another culturally significant place has been destroyed?

– ref. Destruction of Juukan Gorge: we need to know the history of artefacts, but it is more important to keep them in place – https://theconversation.com/destruction-of-juukan-gorge-we-need-to-know-the-history-of-artefacts-but-it-is-more-important-to-keep-them-in-place-139650

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cassandra Steer, Lecturer, ANU Center for International and Public Law; Mission Specialist, ANU Institute for Space, Australian National University

At the weekend, Elon Musk’s commercial giant SpaceX launched two NASA astronauts in a spacecraft named Crew Dragon which, from the inside, looked like a souped-up Tesla.

The Falcon 9 rocket launched the spacecraft, returned to Earth and landed on a ship to later be re-used. And the Crew Dragon eventually docked autonomously with the International Space Station (ISS).

The flight marks the first time in history:

• a commercial company has launched astronauts
• a crewed spacecraft has docked with the ISS while “self-driving” and
• a reusable rocket has been used to launch people, sparing us from debris re-entering the atmosphere, such as the rocket pieces that recently burned up over Victoria and Tasmania.

SpaceX has well and truly revolutionised space travel. But what does this mean for the many Australian companies making up a new space sector Down Under?

A burgeoning local industry

Globally, the space sector is worth at least US$415 billion, and is expected to grow to US$1 trillion over the next decade. By then, the Australian space sector is also expected to be worth A$12 billion.

Read more: SpaceX astronaut launch: here’s the rocket science

An estimated 770 Australian entities already develop space-related infrastructure. This includes satellites, and technologies for telecommunications or television, bushfire monitoring, weather and climate tracking, search and rescue, navigation, deep space research, and defence and security.

In 2018, the Australian Space Agency (ASA) was established with a mandate to the support Australian space industry, rather than develop a national civil space program.

The global commercial space sector is now watching Australia with excitement, and possibly some envy. Many countries over-regulate their space industries, or fail to give them legislative support. But Australia is a new entrant to the space sector that benefits from full government support through an industry-dedicated space agency.

The commercialisation of spacefaring

The 20th century space race began with government programs spurred by a technological and ideological competition between the US and the Soviet Union. However, today’s space race is highly commercial.

Many national space programs and militaries outsource to commercial entities for space services. Just this month, the Australian Department of Defence signed a contract with Queensland company Gilmour Space technologies to develop rockets for small military cargo and satellites.

Rather than large, expensive technologies developed for single purposes by government agencies, we’re now in an era of “NewSpace”. This is a term associated with small and medium sized companies developing smaller, lighter, and therefore cheaper technologies that can be repurposed and turned into “off the shelf” components.

Australian companies excel at this, as demonstrated by Gilmour, Neumann Space – which has a unique thrust technology for small satellites – and Myriota, a world leader in groundbreaking Internet of Things (IoT) technologies.

Giants such as SpaceX and Blue Origin are developing NewSpace technologies alongside their larger launch projects, and smaller companies benefit from their success when it comes negotiating public-private partnerships.

Read more: SpaceX reaches for milestone in spaceflight – a private company launches astronauts into orbit

Innovative mindsets pave the way

Even the opening of our own spaceport in East Arnhem land, expected by early 2021, is thanks to industry innovation.

NewSpace company Equatorial Launch Australia is the first commercial company ever to receive a launch contract from NASA. As a result, the company is developing the spaceport, where it will specialise in new launch technologies for small and light satellites.

With our own spaceport, Australia will join the ranks of just 13 other nations that have launch capacity from their territory.

And aside from NASA, many Australian companies and research institutes will be keen customers. Inovor, which builds tiny nanosatellites may be among the first.

Or perhaps Gilmour, as it tests a revolutionary hybrid propulsion rocket in partnership with the Australian National University. This could be the first commercial rocket of its kind to launch in the world.

Even in a pandemic, the space economy booms

According to a report released in May by accounting organisation KPMG, by 2030 every business will be a “space business”. The report suggests humans will live, work and holiday in space, and will be mining the moon for water and minerals.

And while human space flight from Australian shores may not be on the horizon, SpaceX’s launch is a beacon of hope for local commercial entities – especially because they push new technologies faster than government programs tethered to budgets and low-risk approaches.

Moreover, the ASA is considering entering into an Artemis Accord with the US. The launch technology demonstrated by SpaceX this weekend will be part of the Artemis program, which aims to return humans to the moon by 2024.

So although the national and global economy reels from the impacts of COVID-19 shutdowns, the global space economy continues to boom. And with Australia’s space industry taking off, the sky is definitely not the limit.

– ref. SpaceX’s historic launch gives Australia’s booming space industry more room to fly – https://theconversation.com/spacexs-historic-launch-gives-australias-booming-space-industry-more-room-to-fly-139760

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Blair Williams, Political Scientist, Australian National University

The Conversation is running a series of pieces on key figures in Australian political history, examining how they changed the country and political debate.

When Julia Gillard was sworn into office as Australia’s first female prime minister on a chilly Canberra morning in 2010, it seemed like the ultimate glass ceiling had been smashed.

But this momentous occasion was marred by the onslaught of sexism and misogyny Gillard endured from the opposition, and especially the mainstream media, over the next three years of her term.

Read more: Hillary Clinton and Julia Gillard: how the media shape our view of leaders as ‘women’

Since she lost the prime ministership in 2013, Gillard has fostered a legacy that extends beyond parliamentary politics, with a focus on women’s rights, education and mental health.

The two Es: education and equality

Born in Wales in 1961, Gillard’s family moved to Australia in 1966. She grew up in Adelaide as the daughter of a nurse and aged care worker.

Gillard was educated at local public schools before studying at the University of Adelaide and then the University of Melbourne.

She told the Harvard Business Review last year her involvement in the student movement, protesting education cutbacks, was a formative experience:

That’s what spurred an activism and engagement in public policy in me, and I went on to lead the student movement nationally … people had said, ‘You really should consider politics’. It was a slow dawning over time that it would be a fantastic way of putting my values into action — and realising that someone like me could do it.

Graduating with an arts/law degree, Gillard joined law firm Slater & Gordon in 1987 and was a partner by 1990.

While she has said she felt “quite at home in many ways” as a young woman in the “larrakin” culture of the law firm, she also worked on affirmative action campaigns in the 1990s. She was a founding member of Labor women’s support network, EMILY’s List Australia.

She continues to maintain this focus on gender and education in her post-politics advocacy.

Going to Canberra, creating history

Gillard was elected to federal parliament in 1998 and was a frontbencher by 2001. In 2007, with Labor’s election victory, she became deputy prime minister and minister for education, workplace relations and social inclusion.

However, despite the popularity of prime minister Kevin Rudd, the Labor party became increasingly frustrated with his leadership style ahead of the 2010 federal election.

These tensions saw Gillard challenge Rudd for the top job in June 2010, in one of the most dramatic episodes in recent Australian political history.

Gillard’s unexpected promotion would have lasting consequences for her, the Labor Party and Australian political culture.

It initiated a “coup culture” in Australian politics, where a series of challenges saw the removal of four out of the five most recent prime ministers.

A sexist backlash

The unprecedented removal of a popular first-term prime minister during an election year also prompted an overwhelming backlash from the opposition, the media and the public.

Gillard faced accusations of disloyalty that marred the historic significance of her victory and status as the “first woman”. It also unleashed what seemed like a ceaseless tirade of sexism and misogyny that she endured for the next three years of her term.

The more prominent examples include broadcaster Alan Jones saying Gillard should be put in a “chaff bag” and taken “out to sea”. A menu at a Liberal National Party fundraiser described a dish as “Julia Gillard Kentucky Fried Quail – small breasts, huge thighs and a big red box”.

Read more: Dining out on the prime minister – time to change the ‘Menugate’?

Opposition leader Tony Abbott stood in front of – and tacitly endorsed – sexist placards.

A productive parliament

After the 2010 federal election, Gillard had to work with a minority government.

But in a sign of her formidable negotiating skills, Gillard’s term as prime minister was extremely productive.

Despite the surrounding political turmoil, 570 bills were passed by the Senate, with key achievements including the National Disability Insurance Scheme, the child abuse royal commission, a carbon price, education funding and paid parental leave.

Read more: Labor’s legacy: six years of … what exactly?

It wasn’t all warm and fuzzy

Yet not all Gillard’s policies are so fondly remembered.

On the same day Gillard delivered her famous “misogyny speech”, her government passed welfare reforms that moved single parents off the parenting payment and onto Newstart (now called JobSeeker Payment). This reduced people’s payments by $60 to $100 a week, disproportionately affecting women.

Her asylum seeker policies and opposition to marriage equality also garnered widespread criticism from progressive Australians, particularly the LGBTIQ+ community and refugee advocates.

‘I will not be lectured by this man’

Twelve iconic words have come to define Gillard’s legacy:

I will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man.

This statement launched a blistering 15-minute speech, in which Gillard called out the sexism and hypocrisy of Abbott during Question Time in October 2012.

The anger and frustration she felt about Abbott – known for his sexist sentiments – and the systemic double standards she’d endured for years, resonated with women around the world.

Though it was initially critiqued by the Canberra Press Gallery, which accused Gillard of “playing the gender card”, the speech went viral.

It has become the definitive moment of her prime ministership and is often the only thing people overseas know about Australian politics.

Read more: Gillard’s misogyny speech looks even better than it reads

Earlier this year, it was voted the “most unforgettable” moment in Australian TV history by a Guardian Australia poll. Last month, a senior advisor to former-US President Barack Obama revealed they often watched the speech whenever they were frustrated with then-prime minister Abbott.

The misogyny speech has even entered into the pop cultural canon, inspiring young women today to create memes and TikToks paying homage to those famous words.

Changing the way we talk about sexism and politics

Gillard’s misogyny speech and her time as our first woman prime minister changed the way that politics and sexism were talked about in Australia and highlighted the toxic nature of parliament.

Rather than “playing the gender card”, Gillard drew attention to it, calling out the sexism and misogyny that many women in politics had to silently endure.

Speaking with Gillard last year in preparation for my doctoral research, she noted how the conversation around gender and sexism is “everywhere now”, and that people are far more aware of and likely to challenge gendered double-standards.

In recent years, we have seen multiple women politicians breaking their silence, from Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young suing fellow senator David Leyonhjelm for defamation, to former Liberal MP Julia Banks calling out “gender bias” and “bullying”.

Post-politics: ‘what would Julia do?’

Gillard lost the Labor leadership in 2013, when Rudd got his revenge and his old job back.

But she has left a lasting legacy as a role model for girls and young women. This stems not just from her political career, but for the way she has gracefully moved on.

Since leaving politics, Gillard continues to work in the areas she cares about, with high-profile appointments in education, mental health and women’s leadership. Earlier this month, she was also appointed as the next chair of medical research giant, the Wellcome Trust.

Like all politicians, she’ll continue to have her critics, but her post-political life and demeanour has largely been admired. Gillard’s former foe, Abbott, even attended the 2018 unveiling of her official portrait.

Read more: The political tragedy of Julia Gillard

And her career continues to resonate with people, particularly women.

This was recently seen when she received a handwritten note from a stranger on a flight, which thanked her for being “such a strong, intelligent and unapologetic role model for myself and so many of my peers”.

The note added that the author and her female colleagues used the phrase “WWJD” or “what would Julia do”.

As the woman explained: “It’s our rallying cry to be the absolute best at our jobs”.

– ref. How Julia Gillard forever changed Australian politics – especially for women – https://theconversation.com/how-julia-gillard-forever-changed-australian-politics-especially-for-women-138528

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

As coronavirus restrictions continue to ease, one of the key challenges we face is how to deal with people moving around a lot more.

In particular, as more of us start to head back to school and the office in the coming weeks and months, more of us will be getting on buses, trains and trams.

So what is public transport going to look like as we relax restrictions, and how can we navigate this safely?

Read more: To limit coronavirus risks on public transport, here’s what we can learn from efforts overseas

Workplaces can help

Victorian premier Daniel Andrews has emphasised working from home will be one of the last measures the state will ease.

But even when restrictions are relaxed, do we all need to go into the office as much as we used to?

Working from home has become the “new normal” for many of us, and we’ve learnt a lot about how to do this successfully. Employers have adjusted too, with some indicating they will encourage increased remote working moving forward.

So one of the obvious things we can do to reduce the numbers of people using public transport is to continue to work from home where possible.

Read more: If more of us work from home after coronavirus we’ll need to rethink city planning

Another option is for workplaces to implement flexible start times. If we can reduce the numbers of people using public transport during peak times, this will make a significant difference in reducing crowding.

Public transport providers and governments

State governments have introduced additional cleaning practices on public transport networks. These will continue, and may even be increased, as more people return to public transport.

Although increased cleaning is important, physical distancing remains the key to safely moving large numbers of people again. Governments will need to consider some changes to ensure people can keep a safe distance from others on their commute.

As we’ve seen with the easing of restrictions, different states will take different approaches.

For example, New South Wales has imposed limits on how many people can board a bus or train. A maximum of 32 people are allowed in a train carriage (normally one carriage holds 123 passengers), while buses are limited to 12 passengers (capacity is normally 63).

Further, markings on the seats and floors of buses and trains indicate where people can sit and stand.

Marshals are also being stationed around the public transport network to ensure commuters are following the rules.

In a similar move, the South Australian government revealed they will remove seats from Adelaide trains.

Read more: Coronavirus recovery: public transport is key to avoid repeating old and unsustainable mistakes

In contrast, Queensland is not imposing any passenger limits, instead asking commuters to use their common sense. The government says there is plenty of room on public transport in Queensland at present, and the risk of virus transmission is low given the small number of active cases.

Similarly, Victoria has not imposed passenger limits. But the government has indicated commuters will be able to access information about which public transport services are the least crowded to assist travel planning.

Some states have flagged extra services may be needed to avoid overcrowding, though the extent to which this will be possible is dependent on resources.

In addition to extra services, NSW has indicated it will boost car parking and enhance access for cyclists and pedestrians.

What can you do?

The main responsibility around keeping virus transmission suppressed as we relax restrictions rests with us as individuals to behave sensibly and responsibly.

The same principles apply when we use public transport as when we navigate all public spaces.

Maintaining physical distance from others and washing our hands regularly are possibly even more important when we’re using public transport, given we potentially come into contact with a lot of people in an enclosed space.

We know SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is more likely to spread indoors than outdoors. We also know prolonged contact with someone infected with the virus increases the risk of transmission, as compared to a passing encounter.

So public transport commutes have the potential to pose a significant risk of virus transmission, especially if you’re sitting next to an infected person on a long journey.

Taking hand sanitiser when you use public transport is a good idea so you can clean your hands while travelling. You may be touching contaminated surfaces, for example the bars and handles for balance.

In addition, washing your hands thoroughly with soap as soon as you arrive at your destination should become a part of your routine.

Importantly, if you’re sick you should not be leaving the house, let alone taking public transport or going to work.

What about masks?

Wearing a mask on public transport is an issue of personal preference.

But if you choose to wear a mask, it’s important to understand a couple of things.

First, masks need to be put on and taken off correctly so you don’t inadvertently infect yourself in the process.

And while masks potentially offer some additional protection to you and others, it’s still critical to follow physical distancing and other hygiene measures.

Read more: Who’s most affected on public transport in the time of coronavirus?

– ref. As coronavirus restrictions ease, here’s how you can navigate public transport as safely as possible – https://theconversation.com/as-coronavirus-restrictions-ease-heres-how-you-can-navigate-public-transport-as-safely-as-possible-138845

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julia Dehm, Lecturer, La Trobe University

The Federal Court last week ruled that VicForests – a timber company owned by the Victorian government – breached environmental laws when they razed the habitat of the critically endangered Leadbeater’s possum and the vulnerable greater glider.

Environmentalists welcomed the judge’s decision, which sets an important legal precedent.

Under so-called “regional forest agreements”, a number of logging operations around Australia are exempt from federal environment laws. This effectively puts logging interests above those of threatened species. The court ruling narrows these exemptions and provides an opportunity to create stronger forestry laws.

A legal loophole

Since 1971, the Leadbeater’s possum has been the faunal emblem of Victoria. But only about 1,200 adults are left in the wild, almost exclusively in the Central Highlands region.

Read more: Comic explainer: forest giants house thousands of animals (so why do we keep cutting them down?)

Official conservation advice identifies the greatest threat to the species as habitat loss and fragmentation caused by the collapse of hollow-bearing trees, wildfire, logging and climate change.

Australia’s federal environmental laws require environmental impact assessment of any action likely to significantly impact a matter of national environmental significance, such as a listed threatened species.

But thanks to exemptions under regional forest agreements, logging has continued in the Central Highlands – even in the aftermath of this summer’s devastating bushfires.

So what are regional forest agreements?

Regional forest agreements were designed as a response to the so-called “forest wars” of the 1980s and 1990s.

In 1995, after logging trucks blockaded parliament, then Prime Minister Paul Keating offered a deal to the states: the federal government would accredit state forest management systems, and in return federal law would no longer apply to logging operations. Drawing up regional forest agreements between state and federal governments achieved this.

Read more: Native forest protections are deeply flawed, yet may be in place for another 20 years

Between 1997 and 2001, ten different agreements were signed, covering logging regions in Victoria, New South Wales, Tasmania and Western Australia. These agreements were for 20 years, which means many have now either expired and been renewed or extended, or are about to expire.

The agreements are supposed to satisfy a number of conditions. This includes that they’re based on an assessment of environmental and social values of forest areas. They should also provide for the ecologically sustainable management and use of forested areas, and the long-term stability of forest and forest industries.

But conservation experts argue the agreements have failed both to deliver certainty to forestry operations or to protect environmental values and ensure the conservation of biodiversity.

History of the court case

The legal proceedings against VicForests were initiated in 2017 by Friends of the Leadbeater’s Possum, a small community group which relied on crowd funding to cover legal costs.

Initially, the group argued Victoria’s failure to undertake a required review of the Central Highlands regional forest agreements every five years meant the usual exemption to federal environment laws should not apply.

Read more: Environment laws have failed to tackle the extinction emergency. Here’s the proof

But in early 2018, Justice Mortimer ruled against this. But she also rejected VicForests’ arguments that any operation in an area covered by a regional forest agreement is automatically exempt from federal law.

She ruled that the logging operations will only be exempt from federal law if they comply with Victoria’s accredited system of forest management. This includes the requirements for threatened species, as specified in official action and management plans.

In response to this ruling, Friends of the Leadbeater’s Possum reformulated their claim.

They argued logging operations in 66 coupes (small areas of forest harvested in one operation) didn’t meet these requirements for threatened species, and so the exemption from federal laws didn’t apply.

The court ruling

In her ruling last week, the judge found VicForests unlawfully logged 26 coupes home to the Leadbeater’s possum and greater glider, and that logging a scheduled 41 other sections would put them at risk.

The court found the company breached a number of aspects of the Code of Practice for Timber Production 2014. This code is part of the Victorian regulatory system accredited by the regional forest agreement.

In particular, VicForests had not, as required, applied the “precautionary principle” in planning and conducting logging operations in coupes containing the greater glider.

Read more: Logging is due to start in fire-ravaged forests this week. It’s the last thing our wildlife needs

Nor had VicForests developed a comprehensive forest survey system, or engaged in a careful evaluation of management options to avoid dangers to these threatened species.

These failures meant the logging operations were not covered by the exemption from federal laws. As such, the court found VicForests had breached federal environmental law, as the logging operation had, or were likely to have, a significant impact on the two threatened species.

What now?

This case will have clear implications for logging operations governed by regional forest agreements.

In fact, the timber industry has called for state and federal governments to urgently respond to the case, and clarify the future of regional forest agreements.

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

Arguably, logging operations conducted under a regional forest agreement can no longer rely on the exemption from federal environmental laws if those operations don’t comply with the state regulatory frameworks accredited under the regional forest agreements, especially provisions that protect threatened species.

And while making logging operations subject to federal environmental laws is a good thing, it’s not enough. Federal environmental laws are weak and don’t prevent species extinctions.

In any case, the result is the perfect opportunity for state and federal governments to rethink forest management. That means properly taking into account the ongoing threats to threatened species from climate change, wildfires and habitat loss.

– ref. The Leadbeater’s possum finally had its day in court. It may change the future of logging in Australia – https://theconversation.com/the-leadbeaters-possum-finally-had-its-day-in-court-it-may-change-the-future-of-logging-in-australia-139652

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chris Tucker, Senior Lecturer in Architecture, University of Newcastle

As we’ve been living more closely with families and house mates through COVID-19, the more intensive ways we’ve used our houses has perhaps exposed some of their shortcomings. Households have had relative freedom to interact with each other, but the continual presence of our household has also made us wish part of our house could somehow partition itself into another house – a second house where we might retreat.

Having to work and school from home has highlighted the need for the spaces we share to be more flexible. Occasionally, we need to be able to separate home spaces from each other. We’ve perhaps opportunistically repurposed furniture, made makeshift rooms and stuffed blankets under locked doors in an attempt to renegotiate territories within our house.

Read more: We need more flexible housing for 21st-century lives

But working in a home office or studio, finding independence as families grow and age, or being able to accommodate extended family and friends, are also usual ways we live in houses. Having a second smaller house, within or attached to the main house, would allow these ways of living to happen in happier ways.

How small a house?

A small house can be designed to feel more spacious than its small floor area suggests. They can make good use of gardens, courtyards and leftover space around a house; use furniture and storage walls to make a small room more usable; use well-designed windows to provide natural light, ventilation and views; and use the volume within a roof for light and a sense of space.

Some larger houses might already be organised well enough to effectively have a second house within them. But, in the context of regulatory approvals, this is where it begins to get tricky.

Separate to the ways we might use our home, a house is also defined through legislation.

Depending on where you live in Australia, it will be defined in subtly different ways. In New South Wales, a house is simply a room, or series of rooms, capable of being used as a home.

While not describing what those rooms might be used for, case law suggests a house needs to at least maintain the facilities of a bathroom, a kitchen and a place to sleep. If these rooms were able to gain independent access to the street, they would then meet the legislative definition of a house.

Read more: Flatting in retirement: how to provide suitable and affordable housing for ageing people

However, to be approved as a second house it would also need to comply with other legislative and planning policies. These requirements can be complex and layered, as they interact with other codes, but it’s the lot size of your property that will have the greatest effect on whether you’re allowed to have a second house.

If you want to avoid the discretion of your local council assessing a development application that is outside minimum planning requirements, your house (at least in NSW), will need to sit on more than 450 square metres of land. That’s substantially more than both most inner-city lots and newly released greenfield lots in Australia. That second house might be further away than you’d thought.

Read more: Tiny houses: the big idea that could take some heat out of the housing crisis

The second house and the affordability crisis

The flexibility for individual land owners to determine how their household lives within their house, and how they might contribute to making houses more affordable, has been given over to those who already own relatively large blocks of land. Those with smaller, more affordable lots are effectively prevented from leveraging the potential of their house as this type of asset. Those with more to spend on housing also stand to gain the most.

Having more houses in places where we want to live, and in ways that maintain the character of those places, are critical ways of sustaining communities. The small size (20-50 square metres) of a second house often has little impact on the appearance of a house. And because they’re accommodating an existing household, they also have little impact on car parking.

Read more: Size does matter: Australia’s addiction to big houses is blowing the energy budget

Rooms within houses can be made to work harder for the families they hold, while the often wasted open space down the side of a house can be activated as courtyards and bathrooms. As a second house is on the same land title as the primary house, it can’t be sold as a separate house like a duplex might – it isn’t a commodity in itself. This positions the second house as a fundamental way of affordably meeting multiple needs:

• the lack of houses in urban areas at street level

• ageing in place

• social cohesion

• the confidence Australians should have in well-designed small houses.

Read more: From 8 to 80: designing adaptive spaces for an ageing population

As we begin to move out of our pandemic-related home-stays, perhaps the ways we’ve been intensively using our houses will linger a bit longer. And perhaps we’ll be in a better position to more seriously ask our house how it might also become a second.

The broader question, of course, is for our various levels of government: why not allow small houses on small lots to help with the housing affordability crisis?

Read more: Affordable housing shortfall leaves 1.3m households in need and rising – study

– ref. Life in lockdown has shown us our houses need to work harder for us – https://theconversation.com/life-in-lockdown-has-shown-us-our-houses-need-to-work-harder-for-us-138307

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Geczy, Senior Lecture, Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney

In 1995, after the fall of the Wall, Berlin had started to be rebuilt, but was still in a state of disrepair.

There, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, two of the world’s most important land artists, wrapped the entire Reichstag, the seat of German parliament, in over 100,000 square meters of fabric.

The wrapping expressed more than words ever could about the complex and harrowing culture of guilt, forgetting and memorisation still inextricable from German identity.

It was a swaddling of old wounds. At the same time, it offered the new Germany gift-wrapped to what would soon be the European Union. And knowing of the beleaguered state of the EU, the work – in memory and reproduction – speaks to us still.

Born in Bulgaria in 1935, Christo Vladimirov Javacheff began his career as a painter. But it was in land art where he made his name, alongside wife and longtime collaborator Jeanne-Claude.

Emerging in the 1960s, land art saw artists preoccupied with bringing art outside of the house, gallery, or museum to bridge the gap between art and nature. Land art is, more often than not, heroic in size, operating on a scale of energy and logistics at which most artists would balk.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude were responsible for a number of massive works that remain burned into the memories of many in reality and in reproduction: works of effort and massive gesture. Other works had an audacity tinged with witty and poignant politicisation.

Jeanne-Claude died in 2009, and Christo continued working under the name of their partnership until his death this weekend in New York City at the age of 84.

The starting place of a legacy

Christo’s work has a particular significance for Australia: the very first wrapped work was staged in 1968-1969 at Little Bay in Sydney.

An enormous swathe of the landscape was covered in tonnes of plastic tarp, and wrapped to the coastline. It was something the Australian art community and public had never seen before or since, offering previously unseen sense of ambition and scale. It also inspired Australian artists to be more active abroad to try their own interventions there, albeit more modestly.

But too often conveniently forgotten about the work is it was devastating to the region’s wildlife and local ecosystem. Hundreds of birds who depended on the region for their sustenance and habitat died during the life of the project.

Ironically then, given the present predicament we are in, Wrapped Coast gives us more to think about than we might previously have anticipated. It is certainly a work that would not have been sanctioned today. We might remember it as an example of excesses of spectacle that have precipitated many worse consequences.

Read more: The heady sense of being at the heart of public art: 50 years of the Kaldor Foundation

This does not discredit the work – far from it. Rather, it is a work of talismanic importance standing now not only as an example of the possibilities of scale in art, but also as a corrective that may speak to our future actions and attitudes afresh much as it spoke to the generation of artists who were able to experience it in all its hubristic glory.

Bigger than man

Following from Sydney, Christo and Jeanne-Claude would become known around the world for their work. They wrapped walkways in Kansas City, islands in Miami’s Biscayne Bay, trees in Basel, piers in Brescia, Italy. Their work played on other scales, too: placing 7,503 fabric gates throughout New York’s Central Park, and hundreds of umbrellas placed simultaneously in Japan and California.

They encouraged the viewer to look on landscapes and buildings through new eyes. The absence of what was there causing the viewer to look deeper than they previously have. Their body of work is now firmly etched into 20th-century art.

It could be the nature and scale of their projects – given the logistics and art’s future due to the present – have receded faster into history than we had anticipated.

This may give us cause us to mourn more than the man, but what art had once been.

– ref. In remembering Christo, we remember what art once was – https://theconversation.com/in-remembering-christo-we-remember-what-art-once-was-139766

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

There’s no doubt Australia’s construction industry is facing tough times. COVID-19 has caused migration to slow to a trickle. Some 2.6 million Australians have either lost their jobs or had their hours cut in the past two months. Many economists expect property prices to fall.

It all adds up to fewer homes being built in the coming months. That means fewer jobs in the construction industry, which employs nearly one in 10 Australians. The sector has already lost nearly 7% of its workforce since March.

The Morrison Government is set to anounce a stimulus package for the construction sector as soon as this week. But what should it include?

More home-buyer grants on the way

The federal government has signalled it will offer cash grants of at least A$20,000 to buyers of newly built homes. Unlike past schemes that have targeted first home buyers, it seems these new grants will be available to everyone including upsizers and investors. Grants may also be extended to renovations.

Large handouts would prompt some more residential construction by encouraging some people to bring forward their home purchases. It’s why in 2008 the Rudd government tripled the first home buyer grant to A$21,000 for new homes in response to the Global Financial Crisis.

But under such schemes, governments also end up giving grants to people who would have bought a home anyway. Even the more pessimistic industry forecasts expect 110,000 homes to be built in Australia next year. Giving A$20,000 to all of these home buyers would cost A$2.2 billion without adding a single construction job. Grants of A$40,000 would double the bill.

That’s a lot of spending for little economic gain.

Nor do grants to home buyers actually make housing more affordable. They are typically passed through into higher house prices, which benefits sellers more than buyers. In this case, that is likely to include developers eager to clear their existing stock of both newly and nearly built homes.

Read more: The brutal truth on housing. Someone has to lose in order for first homebuyers to win

Cash grants for renovations would likely hit the economy quicker since they don’t necessarily require building approvals. But they bring their own problems. Grants will likely see in-demand tradies raise their prices, especially if the government is effectively paying for most of the work done. It will be also be harder for officials administering the scheme to determine if the work has been done before paying out the money.

Nor is it clear the renovation sector needs further stimulus: reports suggest COVID-19 is driving a renovation boom across many parts of Australia. Research by credit bureau Illion and economic consultancy AlphaBeta shows spending on home improvements is already 33% higher than pre-COVID levels.

There’s a better option

There’s a better way to support residential construction without providing such big windfalls to developers: fund the building of more social housing.

Social housing – where rents are typically capped at no more than 30% of household income – provides a safety net to vulnerable Australians.

In particular, the Morrison government should repeat another GFC-era policy, the Social Housing Initiative, under which 19,500 social housing units were built and another 80,000 refurbished over two years, at a cost of A$5.2 billion.

Under the initiative the federal government funded the states to build social housing units directly or contract community housing providers to act as housing developers

Public residential construction approvals spiked within months of the announcement.

Building 30,000 new social housing units today would cost between A$10 billion an A$15 billion. Because state governments and community housing providers won’t have to worry about finance, marketing and sales, they’ll be able to get to work building homes much quicker than the private sector.

The boost to the economy would be pretty immediate.

Just as important, building social housing would also help tackle the growing scourge of homelessness. At the most recent Census (2016), more than 116,000 people were homeless, up from 90,000 a decade earlier. COVID-19 has shown us that if we let people live in unhealthy conditions it can help spread disease – affecting everybody’s health.

Read more: Coronavirus lays bare 5 big housing system flaws to be fixed

The drivers of homelessness are complex. Nonetheless the best Australian evidence and international experience shows social housing substantially reduces tenants’ risk of homelessness. But Australia’s stagnating social housing stock means there is little “flow” of social housing available for people whose lives take a big turn for the worse.

Funding social housing won’t boost house prices or provide windfalls for developers. It will do more to keep construction workers on the job, while also helping some of our most vulnerable Australians.

– ref. Money for social housing, not home buyers grants, is the key to construction stimulus – https://theconversation.com/money-for-social-housing-not-home-buyers-grants-is-the-key-to-construction-stimulus-139743

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ari Mattes, Lecturer in Communications and Media, University of Notre Dame Australia

Review: Escape from Pretoria, directed by Francis Annan

There is something undeniably appealing about prison escape films. Who doesn’t want to watch a bunch of underdogs band together and escape the clutches of their gaolers?

We empathise with central characters whose imprisonment is usually unjust, if not illegal. We cringe, watching them tortured by cruel and psychopathic guards. We feel uplifted as we see – even in this context of absolute abasement – the fabled “human spirit” (whatever this thing is) able to soar above the misery of the situation and, through cunning and ingenuity, set the body free.

They are perfect examples, in other words, of the kind of cinematic escapist fodder that thankfully numbs our brains and bodies to the brutalities of reality.

Escape from Pretoria does its best to exploit both our disposition towards underdogs, and our historical knowledge of the barbarity of apartheid in South Africa.

Based on Tim Jenkin’s 2003 memoir Inside Out: Escape from Pretoria Central Prison, this is the first major feature film from UK-based director Francis Annan. Like so many low- to medium-budget films in the 21st century, it is a transnational production, with the investment (and therefore risk) spread between Australia and the UK. Indeed, it was shot on location in Adelaide and surrounding suburbs, and looks like it.

A film about mechanics

Formally, the film is uninspired. There is nothing notable about its technical construction. This seems to be a perennial problem with so-called “true story” films, which often depend on the interest generated by this label at the expense of dramaturgy and aesthetic quality.

(This, of course, is not always the case – the true story heist film American Animals was one of the most formally engaging films of 2018.)

What is interesting about Escape from Pretoria is the absolutely minor tenor of its narrative. It eschews melodrama and sentimentality, focusing on the mechanics of escape itself. The film goes into great detail in its examination of the design and manufacturing of the tools and technologies Jenkin and his crew use to get free, including nine different wooden keys, and their testing under tense conditions.

In this sense, the film is procedural rather than character driven. This suits the curious nature of the event on which it is based, and there is something refreshing about the narrative’s minimalist approach.

It doesn’t labour excessively to depict guards as disgusting demons, or prisoners as paragons of virtue. It doesn’t, in the style of American countercultural prison films like Cool Hand Luke and The Longest Yard, fetishise the eccentricities and idiosyncratic personas of different inmates.

Ex wizard Daniel Radcliffe gives an earnest if forgettable performance as Jenkin, managing to pull off a pretty convincing accent and sweating and frowning in the right places. His fellow escapees are solid, especially Australian Mark Leonard Winter as Leonard Fontaine. Nathan Page, as the particularly unpleasant guard Mongo, endows the role with a quality of Eichmann-esque understatement that stops it from descending into super-villain caricature.

Disappointment at history

Yet, like so much post-apartheid media about apartheid-era South Africa, the film exists as a kind of channel for profound disappointment regarding the African National Congress’s post-apartheid rule.

This is realised in the film’s background echoes of faint nostalgia and in the painfully banal platitudes that end the film, posturing about freedom and democracy, the ANC and Nelson Mandela.

This kind of nostalgia is becoming increasingly difficult to stomach in a post-Marikana massacre context, in which the ANC were implicated in the lethal repression of protests about mine workers’ rights.

Read more: Marikana tragedy must be understood against the backdrop of structural violence in South Africa

It seems that, in an age of increasing inequality in South Africa, the cultural spirit needs to return to the apartheid era to generate some semblance of hope about the future. In the era the film attempts to document, the name “ANC” was still synonymous with dreams of equality and a prosperous future for many South Africans.

In a current day South Africa of growing inequality – captured in films set in the present (Necktie Youth) and future (District 9) – it is an easy strategy to return to the apartheid era to leverage the emotional investment of the viewer.

In any case, Escape from Pretoria offered an engaging diversion from news about coronavirus and police brutality. It’s the kind of minor, visually uninteresting film one senses would feel like a flop if projected onto a cinema-sized screen. It is better suited to the small screens with which we’re all currently forced to make do.

Escape from Pretoria is now available in Australia through video on demand services.

– ref. Escape from Pretoria review: a film of anti-apartheid nostalgia for apartheid – https://theconversation.com/escape-from-pretoria-review-a-film-of-anti-apartheid-nostalgia-for-apartheid-139475

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Claire Breen, Professor of Law, University of Waikato

New Zealand is often described as a great place to grow up. We must also ask ourselves whether it is a great place to grow old.

The question becomes increasingly urgent as the impact of COVID-19 becomes clearer. While New Zealand has been one of a small number of countries to have seemingly controlled the spread of the virus, it has been older people who have borne the brunt of the disease.

The elderly have not only died and become critically ill in greater numbers, as shown below, they have also suffered most under the stringent control measures adopted and from lapses in adequate health care.

There has been no shortage of debate about the impact of New Zealand’s strict lockdown on rights and liberties. But, given the burden of the disease has fallen mostly on older New Zealanders, their absence from that debate speaks volumes.

The establishment of an official advocate for the elderly is clearly overdue.

About 15% of the population is aged 65 or older and that will double in the next few decades. The 22 New Zealanders who died from COVID-19 were 60 and older. Many of those deaths occurred in residential care facilities that struggled to adequately test residents and staff or provide personal protective equipment (PPE) and training.

Read more: Low staff levels must be part of any reviews into the coronavirus outbreaks in NZ rest homes

New Zealand’s aged care has fallen behind

This situation is sadly ironic because New Zealand has been a world leader in passing laws to protect older people, starting with the Old Age Pensions Act in 1898. Nearly a century later, the Human Rights Act 1993 prohibited discrimination on the basis of age.

In fact, the United Nations was still unsure whether this type of discrimination applied to older people’s rights to health, housing, work and social security. It wasn’t until 2009 that it finally concluded it did.

More generally, the rights of older people are not enshrined in any dedicated global human rights treaty. There are longstanding plans of action and principles in this area, but these fall into the category of “soft law”. They do not create legally binding obligations for countries.

Nonetheless, the UN is now focusing more on the human rights of older people and is considering whether there should be a treaty. It has taken a further step by appointing a UN Independent Expert on the enjoyment of all human rights by older people.

Rosa Kornfeld-Matte, who held the role until recently, visited New Zealand at the invitation of the government just before we locked down due to COVID-19. Her findings suggest New Zealand’s leadership in protecting the rights and interests of older people has stalled.

UN expert’s call for a commissioner

Although there were things to be proud of in what Kornfeld-Matte found, including recent government strategies to cope with an ageing population, and our universal superannuation, there were also concerns.

Those included violence, poverty, affordable housing, availability of long-term care workers, structural biases in the health system that disproportionately affect Māori and Pasifika, and increasing rhetoric portraying the elderly as a burden.

To deal with these issues Kornfeld-Matte called for the establishment of “an independent national commissioner on the enjoyment of all human rights by older persons”.

Read more: Recession hits Māori and Pasifika harder. They must be part of planning New Zealand’s COVID-19 recovery

There is real merit in this recommendation. Although there is a minister and an Office for Seniors that has developed commendable strategies, there is still a risk this approach to advocacy will either be too timid or too tied to the views of whichever political party is in power.

NZ already has good models to copy

New Zealand already has a number of commissioners who are obliged to represent the interests of particular groups or concepts. Their advocacy role is based in legislation and they are independent of any political party or the partisan reach of any political cycle.

The best example is the Commissioner for Children whose role it is to advocate for the youngest New Zealanders. In the nearly two decades since its establishment, the Office of the Commissioner has managed to develop a system of advocacy across a wide range of areas, including children in the judicial system, children’s welfare, with the placement of children into state care.

The commissioner has consistently highlighted the issue of child poverty and hailed the passing (with cross-party support) of the Child Poverty Reduction Act in 2018 as “a historic cause for celebration”. The commissioner has the support of an international legal framework that has been accepted by every UN member state except the US.

Fortunately, New Zealand has been spared the devastation COVID-19 has caused elsewhere. But our lives have still been changed dramatically. The challenge now is to ensure the voices of those most at risk from the disease (and from the current means of controlling it) are heard loudly and clearly.

The appointment of an independent national commissioner to advocate for older New Zealanders would be a significant step towards restoring this country’s reputation as a great place to live – at any age.

– ref. The coronavirus crisis shows why New Zealand urgently needs a commissioner for older people – https://theconversation.com/the-coronavirus-crisis-shows-why-new-zealand-urgently-needs-a-commissioner-for-older-people-139383

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gisela Kaplan, Emeritus Professor in Animal Behaviour, University of New England

Love, sex and mate choice are topics that never go out of fashion among humans or, surprisingly, among some Australian birds. For these species, choosing the right partner is a driver of evolution and affects the survival and success of a bird and its offspring.

There is no better place than Australia to observe and study strategies for bird mate choice. Modern parrots and songbirds are Gondwanan creations – they first evolved in Australia and only much later populated the rest of the world.

Here, we’ll examine the sophisticated way some native birds choose a good mate, and make the relationship last.

Single mothers and seasonal flings

For years, research has concentrated on studying birds in which sexual selection may be as simple as males courting females. Males might display extra bright feathers or patterns, perform a special song or dance or, like the bowerbird, build a sophisticated display mound.

In these species, females choose the best mate on the market. But the males do not stick around after mating to raise their brood.

Read more: How the Australian galah got its name in a muddle

These reproductive strategies apply only to about tiny proportion of birds worldwide.

Then there are “lovers for a season”, which account for another small percentage of songbirds. Males and females may raise a brood together for one season, then go their separate ways.

These are not real partnerships at all – they’re simply markets for reproduction.

Birds that stick together

But what about the other birds – those that raise offspring in pairs, just as humans often do? Those that form partnerships for more than a season, and in some cases, a lifetime?

More than 90% of birds worldwide fall into this “joint parenting” category – and in Australia, many of them stay together for a long time. Indeed, Australia is a hotspot for these cooperative and long-term affairs.

This staggering figure has no equal in the animal kingdom. Even among mammals, couples are rare; only 5% of all mammals, including humans, pair up and raise kids together.

So how do long-bonding Australian birds choose partners, and what’s their secret to relationship success?

Lifelong attachment

The concept of assortative mating is often used to explain how humans form lasting relationships. As the theory goes, we choose mates with similar traits, lifestyle and background to our own.

In native birds that form long-lasting bonds, including butcherbirds, drongos and cockatoos, differences between the sexes are small or non-existent – that is, they are “monomorphic”. Males and females may look alike in size and plumage, or may both sing, build nests and provide equally for offspring.

So, how do they choose each other, if not by colour, song, dance or plumage difference? There’s some research to suggest their choices are based on personality.

Many bird owners and aviculturists would attest that birds have individual personalities. They may, for example, be gentle, tolerant, submissive, aggressive, confident, curious, fearful or sociable.

Read more: Magpies can form friendships with people – here’s how

Research has not conclusively established which bird personalities are mutually attractive. But so far it seems similarities or familiarity, rather than opposites, attract.

Cockatiel breeders now even use personality assessments similar to those used for show dogs.

There is practical and scientific proof to support this approach. In breeding contexts, seemingly incompatible birds may be forced together. In such cases, they are unlikely to reproduce and may not even interact with each other. For example, research on Gouldian finches has shown that in mismatched pairs, stress hormone levels were elevated over several weeks, which delayed egg laying.

Conversely, well-matched zebra finch pairs have been shown to have greater reproductive success. Well designed experiments have also shown these birds to change human-assigned partners once free to do so, suggesting firm partner preferences.

More than just sex

Now to some extraordinary, little-known facets of behaviour in some native birds.

Bird bonds are not always or initially about reproduction. Most cockatoos take five to seven years to mature sexually. Magpies, apostlebirds and white winged choughs can’t seriously think about reproducing until they are five or six years old.

In the interim, they form friendships. Some become childhood sweethearts long before they get “married” and reproduce.

Socially monogamous birds, such as most Australian cockatoos and parrots, pay meticulous attention to each other. They reaffirm bonds by preening, roosting and flying together in search of food and water.

Even not-so-cuddly native songbirds such as magpies or corvids have long term partnerships and fly, feed and roost closely together.

All in the mind

Bird species that pair up for life, and devote the most time to raising offspring, are generally also the most intelligent (when measured by brain mass relative to body weight).

Such species tend to live for a long time as well – sometimes four times longer than birds of similar weight range in the northern hemisphere.

So why is this? The brain chews up lots of energy and needs the best nutrients. It also needs time to reach full growth. Parental care for a long period, as many Australian birds provide, is the best way to maximise brain development. It requires a strong bond between the parents, and a commitment to raising offspring over the long haul.

Read more: Bird-brained and brilliant: Australia’s avians are smarter than you think

Interestingly, bird and human brains have some similar architecture, and the same range of important neurotransmitters and hormones. Some of these may allow long-term attachments.

Powerful hormones that regulate stress and induce positive emotions are well developed in both humans and birds. These include oxytocin (which plays a part in social recognition and sexual behaviour) and serotonin (which helps regulate and modulate mood, sleep, anxiety, sexuality, and appetite).

The dopamine system also strongly influences the way pair bonds are formed and maintained in primates – including humans – and in birds.

Birds even produce the hormone prolactin, once associated only with mammals. This plays a role in keeping parents sitting on their clutch of eggs, including male birds that share in the brooding.

The power of love

Given the above, one is led to the surprising conclusion that cooperation, and long-term bonds in couples, is as good for birds as it is for humans. The strategy has arguably led both species to becoming the most successful and widely distributed on Earth.

With so many of Australia’s native birds declining in numbers, learning as much as possible about their behaviour, including how they form lasting relationships, is an urgent task.

Much of the information referred to in this article is drawn from Gisela Kaplan’s books Bird Bonds, Bird Minds and Tawny Frogmouth

– ref. What Australian birds can teach us about choosing a partner and making it last – https://theconversation.com/what-australian-birds-can-teach-us-about-choosing-a-partner-and-making-it-last-125734

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Monique Robinson, NHMRC Early Career Fellow, Telethon Kids Institute

If you’re pregnant during the COVID-19 pandemic, you might be feeling a unique type of stress.

You might be uncertain about how an infection could affect your unborn baby. That’s over and above the stress you might be feeling about the pregnancy itself, and its impact on your relationship, job or lifestyle.

But there’s professional support to help you manage these stresses. And there’s lots you can do at home to ease your worries.

Read more: Coronavirus while pregnant or giving birth: here’s what you need to know

How will the coronavirus affect my unborn baby?

One of the first studies to look at the effect of coronavirus infection while pregnant found the health of unborn babies or newborns of women infected in their final trimester did not differ to those expected with uninfected pregnancies.

But this small study, from Wuhan in China, was rushed to publication and didn’t look at infection earlier in pregnancy.

A review of 41 pregnancies complicated by COVID-19, as well as another 38 complicated by other coronaviruses (SARS, severe acute respiratory syndrome and MERS, Middle East respiratory syndrome) gave us more information.

It found a small but significant increase in preterm birth (before 37 weeks’ gestation) in COVID-19 pregnancies.

However, the researchers couldn’t differentiate between spontaneous preterm birth and babies who were induced to arrive before 37 weeks.

So far, the evidence of harm to you or your unborn baby is limited, and should not cause concern.

Pregnancy can be stressful anyway

Separate to the fear of being infected with COVID-19 is the fear and stress related to simply living through the pandemic while pregnant.

Pregnancy can often be stressful as lifestyle, relationship and income changes create challenges for families.

Worries about the baby’s health are present in any pregnancy, but adding concerns of what infection would mean for the unborn child can exacerbate feelings of anxiety.

Before the pandemic, about 20% of women had a clinical anxiety disorder (for example, generalised anxiety, specific phobia) while pregnant.

We now have some early indicators of how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting that statistic.

Read more: Health Check: can stress during pregnancy harm my baby?

And when you add the pandemic into the mix

Canadian researchers surveyed nearly 2,000 pregnant women in April 2020 (in research yet to be peer-reviewed). They found 57% of pregnant women showed anxiety symptoms but 68% reported an increase in pregnancy-specific anxiety.

Only one of the 1,987 participants had a confirmed case of COVID-19, with another 25 cases suspected but not confirmed. So, for most participants, just being pregnant during the pandemic (without being infected) led to three times as many women being anxious during the pandemic than before it.

Read more: Coronavirus with a baby: what you need to know to prepare and respond

Pregnant women are also concerned about how the pandemic will affect their maternity care, including who can visit them in hospital and after the birth of their baby.

A review of pregnancy stress during previous infectious disease outbreaks, including SARS, MERS, Ebola and Zika, found that as well as feeling vulnerable, pregnant women were anxious about disruption to pre- and postnatal care, and exposure to treatments not fully tested in pregnancy.

We can’t avoid stress, but we can manage it

We know stress during pregnancy has been linked to a range of poor outcomes for the child, such as pre-term birth, being more susceptible to disease, and behavioural problems through childhood.

Post-traumatic stress symptoms in pregnant women following the September 11 attacks and various natural disasters have significantly affected both emotional and cognitive development in children later in childhood.

But there is good news. While we cannot avoid the stress that comes with the COVID-19 pandemic, we can manage it.

Read more: Coronavirus is stressful. Here are some ways to cope with the anxiety

In fact, it’s not necessarily the stressful event itself that can lead to poor outcomes. It’s how a pregnant woman assesses the stress of the event and how she chooses to move forward that might determine what happens to her child.

So, if we can manage our stress and not let it overwhelm us, we may be able to avoid the negative consequences of stress in pregnancy with benefits right through our children’s lives.

Here’s what you can do

Social support is key for managing stress, but social distancing makes it harder to gather with the friends and loved ones who might typically provide that support.

Still, there are many online pregnancy support and birth groups targeted to particular stages of pregnancy. These could provide reassurance and a sense of belonging while the outside world looks different.

You can still exercise outside. But if you prefer to exercise at home, there are many online pregnancy yoga and pilates classes.

You can practise guided relaxation and meditation with an app. And if you can work from home, this might give you some much-needed flexibility.

You can also use local, evidence-based telehealth to access mental health care. There are also many free, online programs providing self-guided mental health support.

As long as the COVID-19 pandemic is here, with its accompanying uncertainty, we can best focus on limiting the long-term effects of stress on our mothers, babies and families.

– ref. Pregnant in a pandemic? If you’re stressed, there’s help – https://theconversation.com/pregnant-in-a-pandemic-if-youre-stressed-theres-help-138825

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Spencer, Ph.D. student, University of Sydney

The impacts of invasive mammals such as feral horses and feral cats have featured prominently in the media over the years.

But the recent discovery of the infamous “murder hornet” (or giant Asian hornet Vespa mandarinia) in the US has shone a spotlight on a similar invasive insect in Australia, the European wasp (Vespula germanica).

Read more: National parks are for native wildlife, not feral horses: federal court

Our recent study showed this aggressive insect swarming decayed corpses, decapitating its prey and picking fights with dingoes.

Invasive plants and animals can have catastrophic impacts on wildlife. And along with habitat loss and overexploitation, they are the greatest threat faced by native Australian species.

The rise of European wasps

European wasps are native to Europe, Northern Africa and parts of Asia. But hibernating queens stowed unintentionally in ships or trucks can colonise new areas, and this is how they arrived in Australia.

They were first discovered in Tasmania in 1959, and by the 1970s had reached mainland Australia. Today, European wasps are found in every state and territory, and are considered an agricultural, urban and environmental pest. The species is firmly established in the eastern parts of the country, and constant vigilance is required to keep numbers down in other areas.

European wasps have no predators (other than humans) in Australia. And they tend to forage more efficiently than their native counterparts, such as the common paper wasp Polistes humilis.

Although they are typically most active in late summer and autumn, Australia’s warmer climate means not all European wasp queens hibernate over winter as they do in Europe. This allows some wasp colonies to build “super nests” of up to 100,000 individuals.

European wasps are commonly encountered in urban areas and, unlike bees, can sting multiple times. They also release a pheromone when threatened that quickly attracts more wasps. So if you bother a nest, you may have to contend with the whole hive.

Wasps as ruthless scavengers

Our research looks into the role of European wasps as scavengers.

In Australia, animal carcasses aren’t in short supply. Millions are produced each year due to culling, vehicle collision and drought. The recent bushfires also added to this.

Most carcasses are left to rot and provide perfect “free feed” stations for wasp colonies foraging for protein. For our study, we monitored 20 kangaroo carcasses at Kosciuszko National Park in New South Wales.

Wasps congregated in large numbers around each, and ruthlessly attacked blowflies that attempted to approach. We could sit next to a carcass and watch fly after fly tackled to the ground by wasps. Many flies showed signs of mutilation. To our surprise, some were even missing their heads.

In an effort to protect “their” carcass, the European wasps were decapitating the flies. This may have simply been defensive behaviour, but they could have also been taking bits of flies back to their nest for larvae to feed on.

We also observed the wasps bothering animals much larger than them, and our camera trap images showed dingoes snapping at wasps circling carcasses. Many of these animals retreated without feeding on the resource, presumably because the wasps were stinging them.

We can’t ignore the flow on effects

Our recent study is just the start of our investigations into European wasp impacts in Kosciuszko National Park. But it has raised important points about the fate of carcasses dominated by wasps.

For one, it seems the wasps are preventing blowflies and dingoes from doing their job of “cleaning up” carcasses in the landscape. Also, flies are major pollinators, and decapitation isn’t helpful for pollen transfer.

Moreover, if European wasp numbers are supported by prevalent carcass resources (including those resulting from culling) this may suggest a need to cull pest species when the wasps are not active, such as during the coldest times of the year.

Are wasps and ‘murder hornets’ a danger to us?

Like the European wasp, the “murder hornet” also threatens insect pollinators. The hornets have raised alarms in the US because they decimate honeybee populations, and have a nasty sting.

Similarly in Australia, there has been a focus on the threat European wasps pose to humans. But as is the case in the US, this focus is largely misguided.

Read more: What are Asian giant hornets, and are they really dangerous? 5 questions answered

While both insects have painful stings that can result in severe allergic reactions, fatalities are rare. And we would do well to redirect our concerns towards the impacts such species have on our ecosystems.

– ref. Forget ‘murder hornets’, European wasps in Australia decapitate flies and bully dingoes – https://theconversation.com/forget-murder-hornets-european-wasps-in-australia-decapitate-flies-and-bully-dingoes-139476

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Suzanne Nielsen, Associate Professor and Deputy Director, Monash Addiction Research Centre, Monash University

Several changes to the regulation of opioid supply in Australia come into effect today (June 1).

Opioids are strong medicines used for pain. The new rules – including reducing pack sizes and restrictions around prescribing – are part of a range of changes planned for prescription opioid medicines to be phased in over the next year or so.

This comes in response to the to the growing number of deaths involving opioids in Australia. From 2007 to 2016, opioid-related deaths nearly doubled – from 591 to 1,119 deaths per year.

Notably, most of these deaths involve prescription opioids used for pain, rather than illicit opioids like heroin.

Read more: Opioid dependence treatment saves lives. So why don’t more people use it?

What are the changes?

These changes will affect the quantity of opioids provided for short-term pain, limiting amounts to a single supply with a smaller quantity for each prescription. For example, smaller packs may contain 10 tablets rather than 20.

People requiring an additional supply for short-term pain will generally need to visit the doctor again (as opposed to receiving a repeat prescription).

There will also be new restrictions for patients starting on high-strength opioids for chronic pain, such as morphine and fentanyl. A person with chronic pain will need to try other types of pain relief, including lower-strength opioids, before being eligible for high-strength opioids.

Additionally, where opioid use exceeds, or is expected to exceed, 12 months the patient will need to seek a second opinion to approve ongoing prescriptions.

Are these changes positive?

These changes reflect our improved understanding around the more limited role opioids should play in pain management.

Although opioids are effective for short-term severe pain, we know for every extra day of opioid medicines supplied, the risk the person will end up on opioids long-term increases.

Research in the United States showed the number of days’ worth of opioids given on the first opioid prescription was the strongest predictor of continued opioid use.

Australian research also found receiving a larger total quantity of opioids on the first prescription was associated with a greater chance of long-term use.

This suggests smaller initial supplies may be a critical step in preventing people from developing patterns of long-term use and potentially dependence or addiction.

Read more: 2,200 deaths, 32,000 hospital admissions, 15.7 billion dollars: what opioid misuse costs Australia in a year

Reassuringly, hospitals have been able to dramatically reduce the quantity of opioids supplied after surgery with no changes in the amount of pain patients reported, and no change in complications at follow-up.

These kinds of studies indicate we have probably been supplying many more opioids than are needed.

Smaller supplies could save lives

Supplying smaller quantities is also important because although opioids work well in the short term, we know when the duration of use extends beyond the short term, the harms can outweigh the benefits.

Opioids don’t work as well after the body adapts to their effects with long-term use. The dose is often increased to get the same effect, and with an increased dose comes an increased risk of harms, such as fatal overdose.

The other concern with larger supplies of opioids is that leftover medicine in the family home can become a source for non-medical use. Reducing supply of opioids will mean they’re less likely to be sitting around in the medicine cabinet, where they can potentially be misused.

One study showed the likelihood of experiencing an overdose was three times higher if someone in the person’s family was prescribed opioids.

Read more: How we can reduce dependency on opioid painkillers in rural and regional Australia

People with chronic pain

Some people using opioids for longer-term pain may find these new regulations challenging.

But the changes will hopefully help people in this group in the longer term, as opioids are not always appropriate for chronic pain. The need for second opinions may help facilitate appropriate use and discussions about alternative approaches to pain management.

However, second opinions might be hard to arrange in practice. Opioid use is higher in places where pain services are harder to access, most commonly outside metropolitan areas.

The large shifts towards telemedicine we’ve seen as a result of COVID-19 may be useful in addressing the disparity of service access in rural areas, if these changes are maintained.

The other issue that might occur is substitution towards less restricted medicines with the tightening of supply on opioid medicines. If alternative medicines are prescribed that are safer and clinically appropriate, this will be a good outcome. But we don’t want to see more dangerous or less effective medicines prescribed in place of opioids.

There have been concerns around increased and potentially inappropriate use of other pain medicines such as pregabalin – a medicine intended to be used for nerve pain.

We’ve seen a lot of focus on opioids, but these are not the only medicines that can cause harm. The challenge when using high-risk medicines like opioids for pain is with getting the right balance between benefits and harms. But these changes appear to be a step in the right direction.

What don’t we know?

Almost all the studies that help us predict the effects of these changes were conducted in the US. Opioid-related harm in the US is much more severe than in Australia, and the health-care system is vastly different.

That said, Australian trends in opioid-related harms are quite similar, though they are five to ten years behind the US.

Read more: Ambulance call-outs for pregabalin have spiked – here’s why

The aim is to use opioids for the shortest period at the lowest effective dose, rather than to avoid their use altogether. While we want to minimise their misuse, opioids are effective and important medicines for pain. In many countries, a lack of supply is a key health issue. We don’t want the pendulum to swing too far.

We will need to carefully monitor the outcomes of these changes to identify any unintended consequences.

– ref. Smaller pack sizes from today: could new opioid restrictions stop leftover medicines causing harm? – https://theconversation.com/smaller-pack-sizes-from-today-could-new-opioid-restrictions-stop-leftover-medicines-causing-harm-139558

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emily Fobert, Research Associate, Flinders University

As winter approaches, marine turtle nesting in the far north of Australia will peak. When these baby turtles hatch at night, they crawl from the sand to the sea, using the relative brightness of the horizon and the natural slope of the beach as their guide.

But when artificial lights outshine the moon and the sea, these hatchlings become disorientated. This leaves them vulnerable to predators, exhaustion and even traffic if they head in the wrong direction.

Read more: Getting smarter about city lights is good for us and nature too

Baby turtles are one small part of the larger, often overlooked, story of how light pollution harms wildlife across the land and underwater.

Today, more than 80% of people – and 99% of North American and European human populations – live under light-polluted skies. We have transformed the night-time environment over substantial portions of the Earth’s surface in a very short time, relative to evolutionary timescales. Most wildlife hasn’t had time to adjust.

In January, Australia released the National Light Pollution Guidelines for Wildlife. These guidelines provide a framework for assessing and managing the impacts of artificial light.

The guidelines also identify practical solutions that can be used globally to manage light pollution, both by managers and practitioners, and by anyone in control of a light switch.

Read more: Bright city lights are keeping ocean predators awake and hungry

The guidelines outline six easy steps anyone can follow to minimise light pollution without compromising our own safety.

Although light pollution is a global problem and true darkness is hard to come by, we can all do our part to reduce its impacts on wildlife by changing how we use and think about light at night.

1. Start with natural darkness. Only add light for a specific purpose

Natural darkness should be the default at night. Artificial light should only be used if it’s needed for a specific purpose, and it should only be turned on for the necessary period of time.

This means it’s okay to have your veranda light on to help you find your keys, but the light doesn’t need to stay on all night.

Similarly, indoor lighting can also contribute to light pollution, so turning lights off in empty office buildings at night, or in your home before you go to sleep, is also important.

2. Use smart lighting controls

Advances in smart control technology make it easy to manage how much light you use, and adaptive controls make meeting the goals of Step 1 more feasible.

Investing in smart controls and LED technology means you can remotely manage your lights, set timers or dimmers, activate motion sensor lighting, and even control the colour of the light emitted.

These smart controls should be used to activate artificial light at night only when needed, and to minimise light when not needed.

3. Keep lights close to the ground, directed and shielded

Any light that spills outside the specific area intended to be lit is unnecessary light.

Light spilling upward contributes directly to artificial sky glow – the glow you see over urban areas from cumulative sources of light. Both sky glow and light spilling into adjacent areas on the ground can disrupt wildlife.

Installing light shields allow you to direct the light downward, which significantly reduces sky glow, and to direct the light towards the specific target area. Light shields are recommended for any outdoor lighting installations.

4. Use the lowest intensity lighting

When deciding how much light you need, consider the intensity of the light produced (lumens), rather than the energy required to make it (watts).

LEDs, for example, are often considered an “environmentally friendly” option because they’re relatively energy efficient. But because of their energy efficiency, LEDs produce between two and five times as much light as incandescent bulbs for the same amount of energy consumption.

Read more: Darkness is disappearing and that’s bad news for astronomy

So, while LED lights save energy, the increased intensity of the light can lead to greater impacts on wildlife, if not managed properly.

5. Use non-reflective, dark-coloured surfaces.

Sky glow has been shown to mask lunar light rhythms of wildlife, interfering with the celestial navigation and migration of birds and insects.

Highly polished, shiny, or light-coloured surfaces – such as structures painted white, or polished marble – are good at reflecting light and so contribute more to sky glow than darker, non-reflective surfaces.

Choosing darker coloured paint or materials for outdoor features will help reduce your contribution to light pollution.

6. Use lights with reduced or filtered blue, violet and ultra-violet wavelengths

Most animals are sensitive to short-wavelength light, which creates blue and violet colours. These short wavelengths are known to suppress melatonin production, which is known to disrupt sleep and interfere with circadian rhythms of many animals, including humans.

Choosing lighting options with little or no short wavelength (400-500 nanometres) violet or blue light will help to avoid unintended harmful effects on wildlife.

For example, compact fluorescent and LED lights have a high amount of short wavelength light, compared low or high-pressure sodium, metal halide, and halogen light sources.

Read more: Sparkling dolphins swim off our coast, but humans are threatening these natural light shows

– ref. Turn off the porch light: 6 easy ways to stop light pollution from harming our wildlife – https://theconversation.com/turn-off-the-porch-light-6-easy-ways-to-stop-light-pollution-from-harming-our-wildlife-132595

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brian Abbey, Professor of Physics, La Trobe University

The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken university education, with most teaching moved off campus and students learning online at home.

But a cornerstone of undergraduate science education has been a challenge: the laboratory class.

The real joy of science is in discovery and the links between knowledge and understanding crystallise when conducting experiments in the laboratory.

Read more: No big packed lectures allowed if we’re to safely bring uni students back to campus

Lab classes solidify both the practical skills needed by future scientists and the intellectual culture of their discipline.

Labs put theory into practice

For many students, it’s only when they put theoretical concepts into physical practice in the lab that they really understand them.

Although restrictions are easing, the need to maintain social distancing in crowded laboratory classes creates a range of challenges for lab education.

How should university educators address this?

Some universities, including La Trobe, University of Technology Sydney, UNSW, Monash and Murdoch, have rolled out pilot projects trying to give students a laboratory experience off-campus.

The idea is attractive, not least because lab classes represent a significant cost to universities. Dedicated lab buildings, casual teaching assistants, technicians and safety compliance are all overheads unique to lab classes even before equipment is purchased and maintained.

So what are the options for students who want to gain a laboratory experience but are challenged with accessing the lab? Broadly speaking there are currently three models being trialled.

The mail order lab

The first and simplest idea is the mail order experiment model. In this approach, laboratory kits would be assembled at the university and sent direct to the students to conduct experiments in their own home.

This has the distinct advantage of providing students with a tactile lab experience with no specific time limits set on how long they get to learn with the equipment.

But sending equipment by post is expensive and who would cover the costs if things go wrong? For example, if equipment gets lost in the mail or accidentally damaged at home.

In addition, there are health and safety issues with trying to perform experiments without a trained demonstrator on hand to oversee the work.

The home lab

A second approach is to design experiments around what can be readily found at home. A huge amount of physics, chemistry and biology can be investigated using regular everyday items.

For example, students can measure the force of gravity with a simple pendulum, or find the latent heat of ice by observing the temperature change when added to a glass of water.

This has enormous appeal as it not only saves costs but also may improve learning outcomes for the students by making experiments more relatable to the world around us.

The downside is that some key experiments might require specialist, expensive apparatus, such as a decent optical microscope, well beyond what could be expected to be performed at home.

The online lab

The third and perhaps the most ambitious approach is to try to recreate the lab experience entirely online.

This would involve a combination of virtual reality and remote control over lab equipment that can be operated from the safety and comfort of a student’s home.

This approach enables key concepts to be explored in a practical way that can be live streamed to a student’s monitor or even to a virtual environment. It also maintains a high degree of interactivity since multiple students can be logged onto the same experiment at once.

But there are downsides to this approach too, even aside from the fact that the “hands on” element is removed.

Such online facilities are expensive to set up and maintain, involving expertise in engineering and computing as well as laboratory teaching. Academics need to carefully design and monitor the experiments.

The lab of the future

So what does the future hold for the lab class? Some of the experiments performed today have little changed for hundreds of years. For example, every physics student splits light with a prism, and every chemistry student neutralises an acid with a base.

It was perhaps only a matter of time until the way in which we educate our students in the laboratory received scrutiny.

One thing is certain: given how much financial pressure they are currently under, universities will be looking to cut costs wherever possible. Critical as it is to learning outcomes, the lab class will no doubt be examined closely.

Read more: Australian universities could lose $19 billion in the next 3 years. Our economy will suffer with them

Universities may be tempted to save money by adopting some of the new and exciting ways of teaching labs beyond the face-to-face model. But a better motivator should be achieving improved learning outcomes for all students.

Often changing to online delivery just moves costs from one sort of infrastructure to another rather than allowing simple cuts to jobs and buildings.

It’s the duty of academics to clearly articulate why the laboratory experience is central to teaching and learning, and be open to new and unconventional ways of achieving this experience.

– ref. Lab experiments in the pandemic moved online or mailed home to uni students – https://theconversation.com/lab-experiments-in-the-pandemic-moved-online-or-mailed-home-to-uni-students-138794