Now, let’s examine the way I composed the above sentence.
I included the word “serious” to signal to readers that this news is of significant importance. The reason is that I believe there is already extensive frustration at media coverage of news — and therefore anything that erodes trust in our major media should be taken seriously.
Later in the sentence, I used the word “edited”. Initially, I had used the word “altered” but I made a conscious decision to change it to “edited”. I did this because I thought the word “altered” might suggest a higher type of wrongdoing — one that could be linked to fraud and criminality, such as being paid by a foreign agent to alter documents.
There is no evidence that this was the case at RNZ. The word “edited” suggests the use of some sort of journalistic judgment which, in this particular case, regardless of the factuality or falsehood of the edits, were clearly unethical because they were unauthorised and undeclared.
The reference to “an individual employee” was to ensure that other journalists at RNZ, and the organisation as a whole, were not implicated in the revelation. If I had thought RNZ was systematically biased in its reporting, I probably would have just written that RNZ had been found to be altering wire service news.
So my choice of words to form the first sentence of this column was informed by my personal perspectives, as well as the impression I hoped to create in the minds of those reading it.
The subject of this column isn’t about what happened at RNZ. We will be informed of this, in time, when the result of the ongoing inquiry is made public.
Unbiased reporting? The question I intend to explore here is if there is such a thing as unbiased reporting.
I went back to university later in life to study journalism because it was important to me to understand how the news was produced. My course placed a lot of emphasis on the importance of objectivity and impartiality as ideal standards of news reporting, without much discussion about the limits of achieving such unrealistic standards.
News is produced by reporters and shaped by editors who cannot help but inject their own perspectives and personal experiences into the final product. Even when reporting live from the scene, journalists often have to form a judgment as to what is newsworthy, and so depending on who is reporting the story, the information we receive may alter.
In general, the idea of “unbiased”, “objective” or “neutral” reporting cannot be entirely divorced from the editorial guides journalists use to determine what information to report, and also what they believe is the truth.
Omitting context or the decision to exclude some key words can, in some instances, produce a misleading report.
For instance, my interest in the Palestinian cause has meant that I notice the journalistic language used in reporting on Palestine. I consider that Gaza and the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) should always be referred to as “occupied Gaza” and “occupied West Bank” because this is their legal status under international law.
But in many articles about Palestine, the word “occupied” is often dropped even though its use matters because it gives relevant context to reporting of political and military events there.
Impartial presentation Some journalistic codes refer to “balanced” and “fair” reporting. The idea here is that, where there is controversy, there should be an impartial presentation of all facts as well as all substantial opinions relating to it.
A fair report, it is said, should avoid giving equal footing to truths and mistruths and should provide factual context to any inaccurate or misleading public statement.
In recent years, The New York Times has used a series of articles known as Explainers to, as they describe it, “demystify thorny topics”.
Stuff’s Explained follows a similar format to help deconstruct topics that are complex and challenging to understand.
The notion of bias in news writing has become the most common criticism of the media.
Ultimately, the solution to increasing trust in journalism lies in transparency and disclosure of the standards, judgments and systems used to produce and edit news. It is therefore right that RNZ has announced an external review of its processes for the editing of online stories.
But there should also be a mind shift in our understanding of the notions of unbiased and objective reporting — namely that these notions have always existed and continue to operate within power dynamics that give privilege to certain perspectives.
The best approach, therefore, is to always allow for an element of doubt — and only believe something to be true just so long as our active efforts to disprove it have been unsuccessful.
Donna Miles-Mojab is an Iranian New Zealander interested in justice and human rights issues. She lives in Christchurch and works as a freelance journalist and a columnist for The Press. This article is republished with the author’s permission.
New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.
New Zealand Politics Daily is a collation of the most prominent issues being discussed in New Zealand. It is edited by Dr Bryce Edwards of The Democracy Project.
Our nation is experiencing its lowest productivity growth in 60 years, according to the Committee for the Economic Development of Australia. And this downturn is reflected across most advanced economies worldwide.
So it’s not surprising some see the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) as productivity’s saviour. Media articles herald a new era of high productivity enabled by AI, and particularly by generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and DALL-E.
Similarly, the world’s top journals are filled with accounts of how AI has enabled transformative leaps in research. Machine learning has been used, for example, to predict the shape of proteins from DNA information, or to control the shape of super-heated plasma in a nuclear fusion reaction. One team at CSIRO designed an AI-based autonomous system that can manufacture and test 12,000 solar cell designs within 24 hours.
Does that mean we can flick the switch, leave it on auto, and go to the beach? Not quite.
As much as the above examples provide hope, they also distract from the many AI applications that haven’t quite worked. These are the cases, often not captured in journals and media, where using AI has been costly and time-consuming and failed to generate the desired result.
In 2021, the AI community had to pause when 62 published studies that used machine learning to diagnose COVID-19 from chest scans were found to be unreliable and unusable in clinical settings, mostly due to problems with the input data. It was a stark reminder AI is fallible.
That’s not to say AI can’t be used to boost productivity – just that it isn’t an off-the-shelf panacea to our productivity woes. AI can’t magically fix problems related to inefficient processes, poor governance and bad culture.
If you drop advanced AI into a dumb organisation, it won’t make it smart. It will just help the organisation do dumb stuff more efficiently (in other words, quicker). This will hardly lead to a productivity gain.
Where AI applications work
One recent study by the US National Bureau of Economic Research found a 14% increase in productivity among customer service agents who used an AI tool to help guide conversations. In Australia, Westpac says AI has provided a 46% productivity increase for its software engineers, with no loss in quality of work.
In many ways these examples aren’t surprising. It’s obvious AI can boost productivity when used effectively; Google Maps is clearly better at getting someone from A to B than an old road atlas.
So what’s common among the situations where AI performs well?
Successful applications of AI tend to be characterised by a clear need and function for the AI system. They are well integrated within the business or organisation’s broader processes, and do not interfere with employees’ other tasks.
They also tend to have high-quality, fit-for-purpose and curated datasets used to train the algorithms, and are applied safely and in accordance with ethics principles.
Where AI applications fail
However, it’s difficult to achieve AI productivity benefits across an entire organisation, let alone an entire economy. Many organisations still struggle with much more basic digital transformation.
Consulting firm Deloitte estimates 70% of organisations’ digital transformation efforts fail. Perhaps the real solution to the productivity dilemma lies less in using AI, and more in managing the organisational inefficiencies associated with adopting new technology.
Modern offices are chock-a-block with pointless emails, unnecessary meetings and bureaucratic processes that sap workers’ energy and motivation. Research has established that productivity decreases when workers face this onslaught of busywork and distractions.
It’s unlikely AI will solve this. The currency of the modern day is attention; an AI that’s built to shield us from unnecessary busywork may end up nagging us. We may even see a future where AI tools designed to shield us from distraction are competing with AI tools designed to distract us.
University of Leeds economist Stuart Mills points out that if tools such as ChatGPT merely automate bureaucratic inefficiencies, they won’t raise productivity at all.
We once asked a friend, a senior manager in a global engineering company, if he uses ChatGPT for his work. “Oh yes,” he exclaimed enthusiastically.
“I use it for generating all those reports management keeps asking me for. I know no one will ever read it, so it doesn’t need to be high quality.”
Towards long-term productivity gains
It seems very likely AI will improve productivity at a societal level in the long run, and some of these improvements may be transformative.
As of September 2022, research found 5.7% of all peer-reviewed research published worldwide was on the topic of AI – up from 3.1% in 2017, and 1.2% in 2000.
It’s clear innovators everywhere are exploring how AI can supercharge their productivity – and perhaps help them make discoveries. We can expect effective solutions that genuinely solve problems will self-select and organically rise to the top.
Successful AI implementation requires understanding the context within which the technology is being applied. It requires picking up the correct tool for the task at hand, and using it in the correct way. And even before that, it requires working through issues of process, governance, culture and ethics.
For 60,000 years, many First Nations peoples managed the land that sustained us. Fire, for us, was not destructive. It created new life. We believe bringing back cultural burning is an important step towards creating a more just and sustainable future.
We are from the Githabul and Ngarakbul peoples of the Yoocum Yoocum Moeity. Our traditional lands span what is now northern New South Wales and southern Queensland. But the knowledge of how to burn and when to burn spans the entire continent.
We want to pass this knowledge on, from First Nations to the ones who came later. Farmers, landholders, people with bush blocks – these are the people who need this knowledge.
Over a decade ago, we ran a workshop for Jayn Hobba, a non-Indigenous woman who has a nature reserve property outside Stanthorpe. We taught her about the art of tree thinning and cultural burns.
She writes:
Working alongside traditional owners who are the fire, soil and water keepers of their culture, I’ve also gained much practical knowledge in thinning out native black cypress, conserving old growth eucalyptus and mosaic cool burning. A decade later, I can see culturally appropriate fire regimes and conservative thinning of vegetation are benefiting the ecosystems and reducing fuel load.
Cultural burns are cool burns which do not escape into the canopy. FIRE LORE, CC BY
Why is cultural burning undertaken?
Every group burned country differently. The knowledge of what to burn – and when to burn – is known as lore. By burning the right areas at the right time, we burn off the fuel loads and keep Australia’s fire-loving trees from starting dangerous fires.
The way we burn is known as mosaic cool burning – burn this area, leave this area – which produces a pattern of newer and older growth across the landscape. Traditionally, these mosaics produced new growth attracting kangaroos and wallabies, which could then be hunted.
Our thousands of years of cultural burning made much of Australia look like a park – stands of trees, large tracts of grass and shrub, as historian Bill Gammage has detailed.
After the colonists came, much knowledge was lost. Cultural burning, too, could have been lost. But it survived.
How does it differ from hazard reduction burns?
Cultural burns are cool, low intensity burns which stay on the ground. Hazard burns are usually hot burns, done with more intensity.
Cool burns are best done at night or early in the morning. Many Australian trees sweat flammable oils during the day, making it a more dangerous time. Early morning dew helps to cool the fire. The wind is often gentle during a morning burn, assisting us as we direct the fire.
Cool fires do not bake seeds or nutrients into the soil, nor do they destroy root systems. Because the flames are so low, they cannot leap up to set tree canopies on fire and can only char the bottom bark.
Cool fires help change ground vegetation by reducing the density of plants such as bracken fern and casuarina, which lead to high fuel loads. Hot fires will encourage their regrowth.
If fires are started too early in the season, thick shrub grows afterwards which adds to fuel loads. If fires are started too late, dried-out fuel can make fires more intense and even lead trees to explode.
Hazard reduction burns are performed to control overgrowth of bush. If cool burns aren’t done, fallen branches, leaf litter and dead trees keep building up and up. Australia’s trees are very messy – many of them shed bark and leaves and branches to encourage fire.
First Nations people did everything they could to avoid intense, destructive bushfires. By burning small and burning often, we made sure the fuel never built up to extreme levels.
But after we were colonised, cultural burning almost entirely stopped. Forests grew back, covering some grasslands. Fuel began to build up. And immense bushfires began. Black Friday, 1939. Black Saturday, 2009. And the devastating Black Summer of fire in 2019-2020. These show us what happens when we do not burn country properly.
Cultural burning is complex and nuanced. To do it properly, you need thorough knowledge of the natural environment. You can’t simply walk into a field or forest and set it alight.
Fire lore is passed on from knowledge holders to initiates. We are taught to read signs in the land and signals in the environment to know when to burn, from different grasses drying out to trees beginning to flower, seed or fruit, to animal breeding and migration.
The reason for this is simple. Burning at the wrong time in the wrong place risks a cool burn running hot. As our firefighters know, it’s very hard to find the right time to do burns.
Each country contains its own season for fire – the time when fire can help cleanse, reset and safekeep the land, ready for the rebirth that comes after burning.
The return of cultural burning
The Black Summer had many causes, ranging from climate change to misuse of land and bad land and water use. The absence of cultural burning and traditional land management practices made matters worse.
Cultural burning and land management can improve soil health, dampen down the impact of weeds and invasive species, control pests, sequester carbon and improve runoff and water quality.
Cultural burning was used to protect against large-scale fires like those which burned through the NSW town of Tathra in 2018.
Cultural burning could help create a better future
Using fire in this way is an ancient artform. We consider it a sacred tool.
As we grapple with ever-larger bushfires, it’s time to start involving Traditional Owners more in talks, negotiations and planning – especially when it affects our own country. Our knowledge of this continent may help save lives, land, flora and fauna – and help protect all of us from the ravages of climate change.
Our organisation and others like it work with non-Indigenous Australian landowners and farmers to undertake cultural burns – and to pass on the lore.
So what has happened to the billions set aside to improve mental health services?
Almost a quarter of the funding has gone to health improvement practitioners (HIPs) and health coaches based within general medical practices. The aim of these practitioners and coaches is to give fast and early access to people presenting to their general practitioner (GP) with mental health concerns.
Considerable investment has also gone into making mental health apps widely available to the public, a move that was at least partly sparked by the COVID-19 lockdowns.
These initiatives focus mainly on providing proactive support to people with mild symptoms and/or upskilling the general population to help prevent psychological distress occurring.
Robbing Peter to pay Paul
This investment approach by the government has several problems, which mean the country’s collective mental health needs have not been successfully addressed.
Firstly, while the aims of the HIPs programme are to be lauded – it allows a quick and “warm” handover from GP to mental health clinician – it has done little to increase the pool of mental health professionals. The practitioners are drawn from the existing health workforce. Many nurses and psychologists have taken up practitioner roles, meaning we have robbed Peter to pay Paul as clinicians move from one area of the mental health sector to another.
Secondly, while mental health apps often include excellent psychological tools and techniques that can enhance wellbeing, they are still largely untested, can suffer from low levels of uptake and don’t always meet the need for human interaction.
Thirdly, it appears the Ministry of Health’s focus on one or two approaches to meeting our mental health demands has blinded it to other possible solutions.
Yet this line of intervention has only recently received government support. Even then the investment is relatively limited.
Going global for ideas
Unsurprisingly, Aotearoa New Zealand is not the only country to be grappling with high demand for mental health services. We can learn from what other countries are doing in response to gaps in their services.
The United Kingdom, for example, has attempted to address its own mental health services shortfall with a programme called Increasing Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT). This is a limited talking therapies programme that is commonly offered to people struggling with anxiety and depression.
Since its launch in 2008, 10,500 additional psychological therapists and practitioners have been trained to work with IAPT referrals. According to recent National Health Service data, 75% of people referred to IAPT services start treatment within six weeks of referral, and 95% start treatment within 18 weeks.
As with any programme developed overseas its applicability in New Zealand would need to be tried and tested but, on its face, IAPT offers some potential solutions. Yet there has been little to no interest in this approach from the current government.
Real action is long overdue
The government’s singular focus on one or two new mental health initiatives has been at the expense of training programmes. In 2021, the then health minister, Andrew Little, claimed New Zealand did not need an “army” of psychologists but given we are at least 1,000 psychologists short a battalion would be welcome.
If even a quarter of the funding that has been funnelled to new initiatives had been invested in 2019 in existing psychology training programmes, we could have doubled the numbers of psychologists graduating into the health workforce.
To give the government its due, there has been some recent investment in clinical psychology training but it feels like an afterthought. It is also still very small compared to investment in other areas.
The four years that have passed since the government’s bold commitment to addressing our mental health crisis has included several large bumps in the road that would have disrupted even the best-laid plans. Our leaders have had to deal with a physical health pandemic and a restructure of the entire health system. The former was out of anyone’s control, the latter very much of the government’s own making.
Nonetheless, looking at our mental health system in 2023 it feels like very little progress has been made. A blinkered approach to how to spend the $1.9 billion of our health dollars has stymied any good intentions that were behind the original plan.
Dougal Sutherland is an Adjunct Teaching Fellow at Te Herenga Waka and also works for Umbrella Wellbeing.
Australia’s financial crime laws are unfit for purpose. The problem: there are many professionals currently facilitating money laundering within the country who are exempt from the laws and regulations set up to stop it.
To illustrate the extent of the problem, nine people were arrested on money laundering charges this year. They were allegedly involved in a Chinese-Australian syndicate that moved around A$10 billion offshore and amassed at least $150 million in luxury assets and properties.
The suspects allegedly relied on lawyers, accountants and real estate professionals to launder such large sums of money. These are the industries currently not regulated by our anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing laws.
But there is a ray of hope: the Albanese government recently invited public consultation on proposed reforms of these laws. If the government lives up to its commitments, the draft reforms will go through the legislative process and be passed into law.
Money laundering is the process of “cleaning” dirty money to give its source a legitimate appearance. The dirty money is generated from illicit activities such as fraud, bribery, corruption and drug trafficking – either within Australia or internationally.
On the surface, money laundering may initially appear to be a victimless financial crime. Large corporations get fined and syndicates are interrupted, and we move on.
The reality is money laundering results in serious harm: socially, politically and economically. Dirty money inflates the cost of housing, fuels gang violence, exacerbates foreign interference in our politics, and enables human and wildlife trafficking. It finances nuclear weapons proliferation and helps countries evade international sanctions, such as those currently imposed against Russia for its war on Ukraine.
Money laundering also results in reduced revenue for the government that could be used for the benefit of Australians. Our tax dollars are also being spent on fighting the organised crime rings that are behind these activities.
In short, money laundering is a global problem and affects all of us. Still, the federal government has long failed to act. For 16 years, it has been shirking the implementation of crucial reforms to strengthen our regulations.
The act addressed “high-risk” sectors: financial institutions, cash-carrying services, bullion dealers, casinos, remittance service providers and stored value card providers. However, soon after it passed, numerous weaknesses were identified.
One major weakness was the fact that a wide range of professionals operating outside the traditional financial system were not included under the law. This includes real estate professionals, lawyers, accountants, dealers in precious metals and stones, and trust and company service providers. Collectively, they are known as “designated non-financial businesses and professions”.
These professionals are vulnerable to exploitation for a number of reasons. They may have extensive networks to facilitate high-value, cross-border transactions. They often handle large amounts of cash. They also have insider knowledge on how to conceal or integrate large amounts of funds into the financial system.
Several multi-agency investigations in Australia have revealed the use of such professionals in concealing the source of illicit funds, financing criminal activities and disguising the true ownership of companies and trusts through the use of associates or fake identities.
Similarly, in a joint investigation last year, the Australian Federal Police and the US Federal Bureau of Investigations identified the involvement of lawyers, accountants and other professionals in organised crime activities across Australia and abroad.
Australia remains vulnerable to financial crime
To overcome this problem, the Howard government started to talk about reforming the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act in 2007. But these reforms have still not been implemented.
As a result, Australia is currently failing to meet international commitments on cracking down on money laundering and terrorist financing set by the global financial crime watchdog, the Financial Action Task Force. The Paris-based task force was established in 1989. It currently has 39 members, including Australia, and 205 jurisdictions committed to meeting its standards.
Astonishingly, Australia is one of the only three countries that have not extended or promised to extend its money laundering laws to cover professionals like lawyers and real estate agents. Haiti and Madagascar are the other two.
This regulatory gap opens Australia up to potentially grave consequences. It has made the country an attractive destination for financial crimes and leaves us ill-equipped to deal with evolving threats.
Extending the law to include these professionals would give Australia a more robust framework to combat illicit activities in line with international standards. Better reporting, due diligence and oversight of these individuals must be a priority.
The need for implementing these reforms cannot be overstated. By seizing this opportunity, Australia can demonstrate its dedication to safeguarding its financial system. While it may just be the tip of the iceberg, it is a necessary step that can no longer be neglected.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicole Allard, Post doctoral researcher and medical epidemiologist, The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity
When it comes to COVID, people living in disadvantaged communities are hit with a triple whammy. First, they’re more likely to get infected, and when sick, are more likely to have serious disease. Second, they’re more likely to develop long COVID. Third, our recent research suggests they’re less likely to get antivirals and when they do, it’s on average later.
We’ve just published the data to map how disadvantage is linked with access to COVID antiviral drugs you can take at home.
Here’s why our findings matter and what we can do to level the playing field for this critical part of Australia’s COVID response.
Our team looked at Victorian and national prescribing data trends for the oral antiviral medications eligible Australians can take at home – Paxlovid (nirmatrelvir/ritonavir) and Lagevrio (molnupiravir).
My health department colleagues linked data from the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme with information from the Victorian health department’s COVID surveillance database. They then matched levels of socioeconomic disadvantage by postcode, according to criteria from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Their analysis showed people living in the most disadvantaged postcodes were 15% less likely to receive oral antivirals compared with those in the most advantaged postcodes.
Those in the most disadvantaged postcodes were supplied with the antivirals on average a day later (three days versus two days) than those in the most advantaged postcodes.
There are some limitations to our analysis. Not everyone who tests for COVID reports their positive result. And we suspect there may be more under-reporting of infections in disadvantaged areas.
Nevertheless, our findings about the influence of disadvantage on antiviral supply are not surprising. In the United States, there have been similar results.
We know early access to antivirals, within the first five days of symptoms starting, is important to reduce the chances of severe disease and hospitalisation in those at risk.
So why are people in disadvantaged areas less likely to have access to COVID antivirals? The answers are multiple and complex.
Some relate to disadvantage that existed before the pandemic – for instance, poverty, homelessness, lower levels of English or formal education, and being less likely to have a regular GP.
Some factors relate specifically to antivirals. For instance, to access antivirals, you first have to know they exist and whether you might be eligible, then know how to access them and when. There may be out-of-pocket costs to see a GP to be assessed, then there’s the cost of filling the prescription, even with a concession card.
We have an opportunity to address this inequity, whether that’s by addressing social determinants of health more broadly, or specifically related to antivirals access.
Equity depends on continuing to address the structural inequalities in our health system that create barriers to people accessing primary health services, and tailoring responses to communities.
For instance, earlier in the pandemic we saw funding to house homeless people, provide COVID-related health care to non-English speaking communities, and for people isolated at home. These initiatives need to continue.
Other countries have also recognised the need for more equitable access to COVID antivirals. Initiatives have included:
COVID medicine delivery units in the United Kingdom. These identify, triage and arrange for high-risk people to receive antivirals at home
“test to treat” services in the US. This is where people can get tested, assessed and access antivirals in one spot, in one visit.
In New Zealand, pharmacists can prescribe COVID antivirals. Shutterstock
What needs to happen next?
As COVID waves continue, we must focus on reducing deaths and hospitalisations. Antiviral treatments are part of our armour and equity must drive our response.
Our ongoing COVID response should be designed with consumer input, supported by an adequately funded public health system and be data driven.
Here’s what needs to happen next:
encourage a tired public to see COVID testing as an important first step to accessing antiviral treatment, and why they should consider treatment
address the health care inequality in primary care (for instance, boosting timely access to a GP people can afford to visit) by increasing resourcing in areas where we know there are gaps
provide culturally safe health care, delivered in community languages, co-designed with community input
evaluate current and future antiviral medications
communicate up-to-date information to the public and health professionals about antivirals, particularity GPs
access more data on the coverage and equity of antiviral COVID treatments, to help direct us to the gaps in the health system that need to be plugged.
Why this matters now
For many of us in the past year, COVID has become another “cold” we encounter and may not even bother testing. Yet, we continue to see deaths and hospitalisations across the country.
Serious COVID infections continue to affect our most vulnerable people. These include elderly people, especially those over 80, First Nations people, people living with a disability and people who are socioeconomically disadvantaged.
We have a chance to ensure antivirals are used to reduce existing disparities in hospitalisation and death – not to make them worse.
Nicole Allard is affiliated with the WHO Collaborating Centre for Viral Hepatitis, Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity. She is a senior lecturer, Department of Infectious diseases University of Melbourne, and is a general practitioner at
Cohealth, a community health centre in Melbourne.
Australian primary schools are becoming increasingly reliant on commercial programs for teaching students. This means the content and the way students are being taught is outsourced to a third-party provider, who is not your child’s teacher.
Pre-pandemic research, commissioned by the New South Wales Teachers Federation in 2017 showed 28% of the state’s public school teachers already regularly used commercial products. We know the use of commercial programs increased since the start of COVID with increasing demands on schools.
The use of programs has grown to the point where some state education departments provide guidance about their use and even have endorsed resources.
These programs may seem like a good solution when teaching resources are stretched and the community demands evidence of learning progress. But their use can threaten children’s engagement in learning and undermine the value of professional teaching staff.
These are programs developed by commercial organisations and sold to schools in prepackaged form. Some parents may already be familiar with literacy programs used to teach reading. But commercial programs are developed and sold across all areas of the curriculum.
Packages include programs of work with prescribed lessons and timing for delivery. They can even include scripts for teachers to read aloud during lessons. Teachers are trained how to use these programs by the provider. They are told it will only be effective if they copy the provider’s content and methods.
The developers also advocate a “whole school” approach, which means the program is taught across all year levels and incorporates its assessment tools, interventions and extension programs.
The cost to schools can be thousands of dollars, plus associated resources like worksheets and tests, and professional development. They are paid for out of school budgets via both government funding and school fees.
Why are schools using commercial programs?
The use of commercial programs in Australian schools has increased dramatically over the last 15 years since the introduction of NAPLAN and publication of test results on the MySchool website.
More transparency around school performance was intended to empower parents to make informed choices and drive school improvement.
However, pressure to prove a school’s academic performance has created urgency for schools to find strategies that will give them a competitive edge.
At the same time, there has been a broader, global shift in education towards standardisation, high-stakes accountability and the use of corporate management models.
It is easy to see why schools use commercial programs. They offer efficient, consistent delivery of content across year levels. They also save teachers planning time and come with ready-made resources for lessons.
But schools often adopt these programs to reduce workload or because they have become widely accepted by other schools, rather than investigating whether they are endorsed and peer-reviewed by Australian or international education experts.
Most commercial programs claim to be “evidence-based”. But this can be based on small, selective or inadequate research that cannot be generalised to all students.
They may rely on “direct instruction” teaching methods – where the teacher stands at the front and instructs students – and prioritise a quick pace for rapid academic gains.
This is despite broad understanding that hands-on, play-based experiences support meaningful learning and are more inclusive in the classroom.
Commercial programs also require teachers to “trust the program”, which can limit the teacher’s capacity to meet individual children’s needs.
All the while, it is taking autonomy away from teachers, while devaluing their professional knowledge and skills.
Reliance on commercially driven third parties is at odds with the evidence-based training teachers receive at university. It also makes it harder for education students to develop essential teaching and programming skills during their professional placements.
Commercial programs can take autonomy away from teachers if they are told what to teach and how to teach it. Shutterstock
What do parents need to know?
It is important parents ask who (or what) is behind their child’s learning at school.
Commercial programs are inherently generic and may rely on teaching methods including repetition of content and skills, often without opportunity for “real life” application that sustains children’s motivation to learn.
This can have an impact on a child’s engagement at school, because they are being “talked at” rather than allowed to explore ideas and develop thinking and communication skills that lead to understanding.
Particularly in the early years of school, homogeneous teaching makes it harder for children to learn at their natural pace – and to support their social and emotional development.
Schools need to be transparent about the commercial programs they adopt so parents are aware of the costs, how the programs are delivered, and what that means for their child’s engagement in learning on a daily basis.
Amelia Ruscoe is affiliated with the Literacy Education Network, Western Australia (LENWA) and the Schools Curriculum and Standards Authority, W.A. (SCSA).
Fiona Boylan is affiliated with the Schools Curriculum and Standards Authority, W.A.
Pauline Roberts is affiliated with Early Childhood Australia (ECA).
“Animation is cinema. Animation is not a genre. And, animation is ready to be taken to the next step – we are all ready for it, please help us, keep animation in the conversation.”
This was Guillermo del Toro’s testament accepting the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film in 2023 for Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, released by Netflix. As one of the most acclaimed modern auteurs – and one who has announced his intention to stick with animation as his preferred medium – his acceptance speech reads like a plea directly to the academy.
Animated films at the Oscars
The Oscars have had a storied history of engaging with animated cinema. Since 2002, they have awarded a Best Animated Feature award, first won by Shrek. This was a time of technological innovations for 3D animation (think Toy Story or A Bug’s Life), and of standout A-list voice performances (Robin Williams in Aladdin, or Shrek’s star-studded cast).
By including animated films as a standalone category, the Oscars ended up segregating them: animation was treated as its own thing. Beauty and the Beast broke ground as the first-ever animated nominee for the Best Picture Oscar in 1992, but only two films have achieved such a feat since.
Up (2009) and Toy Story 3 (2010) were Best Picture Oscar nominees (and Best Animated Feature winners) of their respective years. However, such recognition only came after the academy expanded its Best Picture category from five nominees to up to 10. This was a concerted effort to include more popular films in the Oscars due to waning audience interest, after Best Picture snubs of The Dark Knight and WALL-E.
If animated films have had difficulty breaking into the Oscars’ vision of a Best Picture, then voice talent has been outright bypassed for consideration in acting categories. Since Shrek, stars have increasingly taken on voice work for animated projects in ways that elevates them from a side-hustle to key parts of their CVs.
For instance, Chris Pratt and Anya Taylor-Joy’s promotional duties for The Super Mario Bros. Movie represent significant time and stardom investments for the sake of animated intellectual property.
Yet without the physical body to observe, the Oscars have ignored voice work in animated films. The most meaningful push to have a voice performance nominated was for Scarlett Johansson’s in Her where she played a computer operating system. Johansson’s performance was nuanced, played with chemistry against her co-stars, and, ironically, Her was not an animated film.
Are things changing?
The Oscars this year shifted their brand of “prestige” to value the “cinematic experience” (and box office money) in the age of streaming.
The sweep of Everything Everywhere All at Once and Best Picture nominations for Top Gun: Maverick and Avatar: The Way of Water in 2023 signal the academy conspicuously praising populist fare for bringing audiences into the physical cinema. This then hopefully attracts more audience eyeballs to an Oscars telecast where they are likely to have actually seen some of the nominees.
Popular film’s infiltration of the Oscars even seeped into the acting categories. Everything Everywhere All At Once’s indie cred made nominations (and three eventual wins) for its stars logical and welcome, but even Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’s Angela Bassett scored a Best Supporting Actress nomination, the first acting recognition for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Its online fandom was instrumental here, having opined the academy’s biases against their beloved franchise.
Now, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse has arrived ahead of the 2024 Oscars race. The animated film boasts a star-studded cast, including past Oscar nominees and winners like Daniel Kaluuya and Hailee Steinfeld in key supporting roles. Shameik Moore’s lead vocal performance as Miles Morales is also exceptional. Still figuring out what it means to balance being Spider-Man with a complicated home and social life, he sounds remarkably recognisable as a modern teenager.
Credit for this extends to a snappy script and intricate editing that bounces through its complex multiverse setting and superhero super-stakes to focus on moving character development. Thematically, it reflects on the artistic value of the superhero genre, unpacking the Spider-Man lore across its many iterations. And, of course, the visual artistry on display is mind-blowing, truly pushing cinematic excess in ways that only animation (currently) can.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is the kind of popular cinema that the academy is currently primed to take more seriously. It’s on track to become one of the year’s box office successes, serves a dedicated fandom, showcases a stacked cast and dynamically plays with genre and narrative conventions.
As part two of a trilogy, it is unlikely to take out the Best Picture race altogether (Beyond the Spider-Verse, coming in 2024, is the more likely candidate if it sticks the landing). But it is still well-positioned to break through the confines of the Best Animated Feature category.
Robert Boucaut does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
A long-exposure photo reveals the Sun’s path in the sky every day for a six-month period.Bob Fosbury / Flickr, CC BY-SA
Happy solstice everyone! The mid-year solstice in 2023 falls at 2:58 pm UTC on 21 June (or, in more advanced time zones like the one I’m writing from, in the early hours of 22 June).
Depending on where you are reading this, this will either be your winter solstice (for those in the southern hemisphere) or the summer solstice (for our northern readers).
But what is the solstice? What does it mean for our day-to-day lives? Well the answer all boils down to orbits – the way Earth whirls and wobbles as it wends its way around the Sun.
The seasons: the result of a moving platform
Earth is a moving platform – orbiting the Sun in a little more than 365 days. Despite our incredible orbital speed (around 30 kilometres per second), we don’t feel this motion. Instead, it appears to us as though the Sun is moving through the year.
Imagine for a moment you could remove Earth’s atmosphere, revealing the background stars at the same time as the Sun. Those stars, incredibly distant, rise and set every 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4 seconds – the true rotation period of Earth.
The Sun, though, rises and sets roughly every 24 hours – making the “solar day” 3 minutes and 56 seconds longer than Earth’s true rotation period.
That difference is the result of the Sun’s apparent motion against the background stars. From our imaginary airless Earth, we would see the Sun gradually sliding through the constellations of the zodiac, making one full lap of the sky in one year.
But things are a little more complicated. You see, our moving platform is tipped over, tilted on its side by about 23.5 degrees.
As we move around the Sun, our planet alternately tilts one hemisphere towards our star, then away again. This is the cause of the seasons.
The length of the day changes over the year due to the slight tilt in the Earth’s axis. Bureau of Meteorology
When your hemisphere is tilted towards the Sun, you have summer – long days, with the noonday Sun high in the sky. Six months later, when you are tilted away, you have winter – the noonday Sun is low, days are shorter, and there is a chill in the air.
Between those extremes, the Sun gradually drifts north and south. At the extremes of its motion, it would be overhead from 23.5° north of the Equator (northern hemisphere midsummer) or 23.5° south (southern midsummer).
In total, then, the Sun’s motion moves it between two extremes some 47° apart. Low in the sky in winter, and high in summer.
So what are the solstices?
The two solstices are the points at which the Sun is either the farthest north in the sky (which is what we have today), or at its most southerly location.
A map of the entire night sky, like a map of the Earth, showing (in red) the path followed by the Sun through the course of the year – a path known as the ‘ecliptic’. Pablo Carlos Budassi/Wikipedia
When the Sun is farthest north in the sky, it will appear lowest in the sky at noon from locations in the southern hemisphere. This also means the shortest period of daylight of the calendar year.
For the northern hemisphere, the situation is reversed – the summer solstice places the noonday Sun high in the sky, with the longest period of daylight of the year.
In six months’ time, on December 22 this year, we will have the other solstice – marking the point at which the Sun is at its most southerly point in the sky. That will bring with it the longest day for those in the southern hemisphere, and the shortest for those in the north.
It’s easy to find out when the Sun will rise and set at your location. Many websites provide this information these days – here, for example, is all that information for my home town – Toowoomba, in southeast Queensland.
Defining the seasons: climate or cosmology?
To an astronomer, and to many people around the world, today marks the change of the seasons. In the southern hemisphere, it is the first day of winter. In the north, the first of summer.
Strangely, the solstices are also known as midsummer’s day and midwinter’s day – which leads to the strange idea that winter starts at midwinter!
By this astronomical definition for the seasons, summer runs from midsummer to the autumnal equinox (when the Sun crosses the Equator). Autumn runs from that equinox to midwinter’s day. Winter goes from midwinter to the spring equinox, and spring goes from the spring equinox through to midsummer.
In Australia, however, most people are familiar with seasons beginning on the first day of the months of March, June, September and December.
The reason is down to how our climate behaves. In a simple universe, one would expect the longest day to be the hottest (with most time for the Sun to heat the Earth) and the shortest day to be the coldest (the most hours of darkness for things to cool down).
However, things are somewhat more complex. The atmosphere, the ground, and particularly the oceans, take a long time to heat up and to cool down. The result? The warmest time of the year for many places (but not all!) comes a few weeks after midsummer.
While the days are getting shorter, the ocean, ground and air continue to warm up. Similarly, the coldest time in winter is usually a few weeks after midwinter.
Our concept of summer (rather than the astronomer’s definition) is built around this. We think of the middle of summer being the hottest time of year, and the middle of winter being the coldest.
There’s always another secret
Before I leave you to enjoy the rest of the year’s shortest (or longest) day, there’s one extra cool fact about the seasons that most people don’t appreciate. We imagine the seasons are of equal length – three months of each, in a 12-month year.
But we forget. Not all months are alike. Some are shorter than others (poor February).
Look at a calendar, and add up the days in each astronomical season, and you find something surprising.
The southern hemisphere summer (northern winter), from December 22 to March 21, lasts just 89 days. The southern winter (northern summer), by contrast, is almost 94 days long!
The southern autumn (March to June) is almost 93 days long, while the northern autumn (September to December) is only 90 days.
The reason behind these variations is, once again, all down to Earth’s orbit. As we move around the Sun, the distance to our star varies slightly.
Sometimes, we are closer to our star, and Earth moves faster in its orbit. At other times, we are more distant, and move slower.
In just a couple of weeks time, on July 7, Earth will reach its farthest point from the Sun, which astronomers call “aphelion”. On that date, we will be more than 152 million kilometres from our star.
Six months later, on January 3 2024, we will be at our closest to the Sun – “perihelion” – just over 147 million kilometres distant.
This really highlights one of the beauties of astronomy. Simply put – there’s always another secret – the deeper you look into something, the more beautiful complexity you will find.
So here’s to another 93 days of winter!
Jonti Horner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
There was much celebration in the Albanese government this week at the passage through parliament of the bill to set up the referendum on the Voice. Anthony Albanese sent out a national rallying call ahead of the vote later this year: “I say to my fellow Australians: parliaments pass laws, but it is people that make history”.
But the parliamentary week showed that if the government is to maximise the chance of a “yes” result, it needs to sharpen its performance – in particular, that of the lead minister on the issue, Linda Burney.
Burney, minister for Indigenous Australians, handled poorly questions on the scope of issues on which the Voice would be able to advise parliament and executive government.
On Tuesday in question time, Burney declared, “I can tell you what the Voice will not be giving advice on. It won’t be giving advice on parking tickets. It won’t be giving advice on changing Australia Day. It will not be giving advice on all of the ridiculous things that that side has come up with.”
In regard to Australia Day, this is either wrong or, if correct, absurd.
In his second reading speech, Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said the “primary function” of the Voice would be to make representation “about matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people”.
Dreyfus said these included matters specific to these people, as well as “matters relevant to the Australian community, including general laws or measures, but which affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people differently to other members of the Australian community”.
On any commonsense view, of course the issue of Australia Day is one on which the Voice could advise. The day affects many Indigenous people “differently”, in that they feel January 26 is for them “invasion day”, and Australia Day should be moved.
Given the heat in recent years around the Australia Day date, it would be surprising if the Voice did not, at some point, have something to say about it.
That doesn’t mean the Voice’s advice would necessarily prevail. Burney said on Wednesday, “It is not the policy of this government to change the date of Australia Day”.
As the opposition in parliament has homed in on the Voice’s scope, Burney has responded by deflecting questions, rejecting “culture wars”, and concentrating on its potential role in helping in “closing the gap”.
She and the government are painting the Voice’s remit as limited rather than wide.
The government, for tactical reasons, at present wants to emphasise the part of the proposed constitutional change that recognises Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the constitution.
This is because “recognition” is considered to have more public support, including among conservative voters, than the actual Voice.
As far as the Voice goes, with the referendum campaign ramping up, Burney is concentrating on the practical things she believes the Voice will, and should, focus on. But what it might choose to highlight can’t be predicted with certainty – that would depend in part on who was on it.
Playing down how much the Voice will advise on has its own potential downside. It feeds into the argument of those such as (at the extreme end) Lidia Thorpe who say if it’s to be so constrained, it will be worth even less than other advisory bodies have been.
If the Voice gets up, in reality it could probably find ways to advise on a very wide range of issues. But if it were savvy, it would confine its operations to areas where it was well-informed and likely to make a difference. To buy in on too much could reduce its clout on the most pressing issues for Indigenous communities.
Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
For the first time, Australians have been referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for investigation into alleged Afghan war crimes.
That Senator Jacqui Lambie has instigated this process is even more extraordinary as it’s the first time any Australian MP has taken that step.
Lambie’s ICC referral focuses on the legal responsibility of Australian Defence Force (ADF) commanders who knew, or should have known, about alleged war crimes committed by their forces in Afghanistan.
This move by Lambie may not lead to any formal action by the ICC, but it does shine a spotlight on how Australia is responding to these claims.
Why the ICC is unlikely to act
The court will no doubt acknowledge receipt of Lambie’s referral, but it is doubtful whether it would commence an active investigation given the ongoing work of the Office of the Special Investigator established in 2021, with Mark Weinberg as the lead investigator.
In a Senate Estimates hearing in May, Chris Moraitis, the office’s director-general, said up to 40 alleged acts are currently being investigated by his office and the Australian Federal Police.
In March, the first charge was brought against a former Australian soldier, Oliver Schulz. He was accused of the war crime of murder under the Commonwealth Criminal Code.
No further details have been released as to current and former defence personnel who are under investigation. But the Office of the Special Investigator’s mandate is to consider all ADF conduct in Afghanistan from 2005-16, which will include senior officers and commanders.
The office is also not limited to the allegations investigated and reported on in the 2020 Brereton Report. It has its own mandate and can conduct its own investigations.
The ICC was only ever intended as a court of last resort in these matters. That means it will only investigate and prosecute people for alleged war crimes when a country is unwilling or unable to do so itself.
This may arise if the state is incapable of pursuing prosecutions because of disorder or unrest, or because of the collapse of a national judicial system. None of these situations currently exist in Australia.
The ICC is also incredibly busy with its ongoing investigation into war crimes allegations in Ukraine, which are occurring in real time on a near-daily basis.
This is on top of its other work. To date, the ICC prosecutor has received some 12,000 requests to investigate alleged war crimes committed worldwide over the past 20 years.
What the ICC is investigating in Afghanistan
The legal landscape for war crimes prosecutions has radically changed in recent decades due to the creation of the ICC.
The court has jurisdiction with respect to war crimes committed by the nationals of state parties, such as Australia. Its jurisdiction extends to “grave breaches” of the laws of war, which sets a high threshold for the most serious and egregious acts.
Presently, the ICC prosecutor is already investigating alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes committed by various sides in the Afghan conflict including Australian, UK and Taliban forces and the Islamic State – dating back to the early 2000s. The US is not a member of the court and does not respect its jurisdiction.
With regard to Australian soldiers, Lambie’s concern is that the Office of the Special Investigator is focused on troops and officers, not ADF commanders.
International criminal law and the ICC recognise “command responsibility”, which is the legal responsibility of commanders when their forces commit war crimes. However, commanders must have directed such conduct or had reasonable knowledge that such conduct was being committed.
Australia has been an enthusiastic supporter of the ICC, but its recognition of ICC jurisdiction was contingent on a formal declaration in 2002 made by the Howard government which provided, in part, that
no person will be surrendered to the court by Australia until it has had the full opportunity to investigate or prosecute any alleged crimes.
Additionally, Australia would only surrender a person to the ICC for prosecution following the Commonwealth attorney-general issuing a certificate.
The government response to the Brereton Report – with its establishment of the Office of the Special Investigator – means it is taking the lead in prosecuting war crimes allegations. As such, an Australian soldier or commander would only be handed over to the ICC in the most exceptional of cases.
Over the past seven years, we have gotten a much clearer picture of the alleged actions of Australian soldiers in Afghanistan. Much was revealed in investigative reports by the Nine newspapers, which was highlighted during former SAS corporal Ben Roberts-Smith’s recent defamation case.
The legal system will likely soon be dealing with a wave of war crimes charges arising from the Brereton Report and the work of the Office of the Special Investigator and Australian Federal Police.
Australia has no recent history of war crimes trials involving Australian soldiers. However, following the second world war, Australia was involved in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo, which was established to prosecute Japanese war crimes suspects. Japanese soldiers were also prosecuted between 1945 and 1951 in Australian military courts.
More recently, Ivan Polyukhovich, a former Nazi soldier who became an Australian citizen in 1958, was put on trial in Australia for alleged war crimes committed in Ukraine between 1942-43. He was ultimately acquitted by the South Australian Supreme Court in 1993.
Australia may now be on the brink of its first modern war crimes trial, though, with the prosecution of Oliver Schulz.
The Australian legal system is about to be severely tested. As difficult as these legal processes may well be for the nation, the public will have a legitimate expectation these allegations are scrutinised in court. Lambie’s actions have reinforced that expectation.
Donald Rothwell receives funding from Australian Research Council.
In November 2022, Ticketmaster was forced to cancel the general sale for Taylor Swift’s North American Eras tour after unprecedented demand. More than 3.5 million fans had registered to try to get a presale code – a number far exceeding the number of available tickets for the 52 shows.
The story made international headlines and led to a congressional hearing into Ticketmaster’s processes.
Dates for the Australian leg of the Eras tour were announced today. Swift will be performing three shows in Sydney and two in Melbourne. Fans from other cities – and New Zealand – will have to travel should they wish to see her perform locally for the first time in over five years.
Tickets for the five performances will go on sale next Wednesday, with less than 500,000 seats available. While this may seem like a lot, the disappointment seen in North and South America is likely to also be seen here.
Swift is unique among celebrities in that she actively courts these connections.
By handpicking fans for “secret sessions” before album releases (often held in her own home) and hosting post-show meet and greets, over the past 16 years she has carefully built the illusion of these relationships as reciprocated friendship.
For these events, she memorises facts about each fan in attendance, surprising them with comments about new haircuts, academic achievements and relationship milestones.
She also has a history of sending fans surprise gifts in the mail, ranging from handwritten letters of support to gift boxes full of things she says “remind her” of the fan in question.
Based on the North American performances, it appears Swift is not conducting meet and greets during The Eras tour. But fans believe there is always the chance they will be noticed and chosen to meet her.
When Swift’s official social media team, Taylor Nation, engage with fans – by liking, replying to, or retweeting their messages – individuals often put the date and type of interaction in their bio to broadcast the attention they received to others within the fandom community.
The belief among fans (which has never been confirmed) is that being noticed on social media puts you a step closer to meeting Swift in person – something many of the participants in my research into her fandom described as the ultimate motivation behind their engagement.
To be noticed, however, fans must participate in particular, approved ways.
The Taylor Nation twitter account retweets and engages with fans who have shared screenshots of merchandise receipts (from increasingly frequent, themedmerchandise releases), pictures of themselves with multiple copies of albums, or particularly over-the-top displays of emotion and creativity.
This sets a baseline of what it takes to get their – and Swift’s – attention.
Fandom communities are often discussed as spaces of friendship and community.
More realistically, they are hierarchical structures in which fans have their status elevated by participating in certain ways.
For Swift fans, these hierarchies are heavily tied to practices of consumption, including the purchasing of concert tickets.
The most expensive package for the Australian tour dates will set fans back A$1,249. For that price, fans will get an “unforgettable A Reserve floor ticket” and “exclusive VIP merchandise”.
If fans are just after a seat, A Reserve is listed at $379.90, dropping down to $79.90 for G Reserve.
Within the fandom, fans who travel to shows, attend multiple nights, or have seats near the stage are labelled “dedicated” and “committed”. Those who miss out on tickets often express their frustration at missing out to others who they don’t deem to be “real” fans.
The higher the levels of sacrifice reported, the more someone can project to other members of the fandom just how big a fan they are. This can result in increased attention and a reputation as someone who “deserves” to meet Swift.
In her song Karma, Swift sings “my pennies made your crown”. When tens of thousands of fans scream this back at her every night, they are reflecting the reality of Swift’s celebrity.
Swift’s business model is largely built on fan desire to meet her. How do you meet her? You prove you are the biggest fan – and you’ve made the sacrifices (and spent the money) to show it.
Georgia Carroll does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
In this episode of A View from Afar Paul G. Buchanan and Selwyn Manning will examine how a real war of global proportions has been waged to shape opinions.
Paul and Selwyn will deep dive into the battle to control a narrative, waged by all sides in a polarised combative world, and how modern mainstream media institutions, like Radio New Zealand, fall vulnerable in the absence of robust all-sides-considered analysis and debate.
In this episode, Paul and Selwyn will analyse how fourth Estate bias, propaganda, and conflict-force fact-vacuums are the challenge of our times in this disinformation age.
Upon this context, Paul and Selwyn will consider:
* Why Is the Radio New Zealand sub-editor pro-RU-content debacle symptomatic of a fact-vacuum environment?
* Why is all media vulnerable to disinformation in the absence of robust NATO-Ukraine-Russia analysis?
* What are the unspoken of ‘big picture’ shifts in Russian Federation / Global South relations?
RECOGNITION: The MIL Network’s podcast A View from Afar was Nominated as a Top Defence Security Podcast by Threat.Technology – a London-based cyber security news publication. Threat.Technology placed A View from Afar at 9th in its 20 Best Defence Security Podcasts of 2021 category.
You can follow A View from Afar via our affiliate syndicators.
Keith Rankin, trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.
Analysis by Keith Rankin.
Keith Rankin, trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.
The Pandemic can be assessed a bit like games of football, with deaths being the score. (Or, given that there are many ‘teams’ competing together, a better analogy may be a Marathon race. Nevertheless, I will use the language of the football metaphor.)
The winning country would be that with the fewest number of deaths attributable to Covid19. While this football metaphor is indeed useful, our perceptions of ‘who did best’ are strongly coloured by the pandemic’s first year, when media attention was greatest, when public health measures were most ‘in our faces’, and when the pandemic response was at its most bureaucratic.
As a result, the half-time scores are the scores that most seeped into public consciousness. Then, deaths which were classed as ‘covid-deaths’ were implicitly seen as more tragic, more requiring of daily tallying, than other deaths.
The two Tables below look at this Pandemic ‘World Cup’ through the simple demographic criteria of increases in deaths, all deaths. We may note four ‘ordinary-time’ phases of the pandemic. Together, they add up to a period of four years.
First, the warm-up, from May 2019 to February 2020. The warm-up, going back to 2019, is important to include because countries with unusually low numbers of deaths due to respiratory illnesses in 2019 would typically have higher death tallies in the next respiratory epidemic, whatever virus that might be.
Second is the first half of the Pandemic proper, which I would date as March 2020 to March 2021. Third is the second half, from April 2021 to April 2022, which includes the waves associated with the Greek-alphabet variants (especially Alpha, Delta and Omicron).
Following ‘ordinary-time’, there was ‘extra-time’ which I define as May 2022 to April 2023. We may note that the WHO declared the Pandemic to be over at around the end of April this year. So, we may formally categorise the period from May 2023 as ‘post-pandemic’.
Table 1 below indicates the score at the end of ordinary-time. It shows the percentage increase in deaths for a number of countries for the three years from May 2019 to April 2022, compared to the three years from May 2015 to April 2018. In the right-hand column is a counterfactual which is a best estimate of what the increase in deaths would have been in the pandemic period had there been no pandemic. (The counterfactual is calculated by comparing deaths in the 24 months ending April 2019 with deaths in the 24 months ending April 2017. I have used April years because, in both hemispheres, the period in late April and early May is generally free from epidemic respiratory deaths. This method minimises the impact to this calculation of the severe influenza global epidemic which lasted from late 2016 to early 2018.)
Table 2 indicates the ‘extra-time score’, comparing the year-to-April 2023 with the year-to-April 2019. It uses the same ‘trend’ counterfactual as Table 1. Whereas Table 1 is sorted to place the ordinary-time ‘winners’ at the top, Table 2 is sorted to place the ‘extra-time losers’ at the top. (We note that, for Table 2, some countries are laggards in publishing their mortality data; and also that the most recently published numbers are subject to upwards revision. The countries which are problematic in this regard have their data marked with asterisks, the number of asterisks indicating the degree of estimation required.)
Table 1:
Covid19 Pandemic, Quadrennial Death increase
pre-covid
total deaths
2015-18*
2019-22**
increase
‘trend’ #
Norway
121910
124328
2.0%
-0.1%
Sweden
273953
279647
2.1%
0.3%
Taiwan
513421
536778
4.5%
4.8%
Denmark
159609
167217
4.8%
4.1%
Australia
479135
506047
5.6%
3.5%
Finland
160722
169764
5.6%
1.7%
Iceland
6725
7135
6.1%
-0.8%
New Zealand
96888
102820
6.1%
8.6%
Lithuania
122115
130237
6.7%
-5.5%
Belgium
326509
349047
6.9%
1.7%
Germany
2771609
2963292
6.9%
3.1%
Latvia
85908
91964
7.0%
0.1%
Northern Ireland
47317
50996
7.8%
1.9%
Scotland
173049
186510
7.8%
3.5%
Japan
3966371
4279784
7.9%
7.6%
Macao
6340
6848
8.0%
5.1%
England & Wales
1596119
1724340
8.0%
2.4%
Ireland
91602
99126
8.2%
2.0%
Estonia
46289
50370
8.8%
1.1%
France
1753867
1909700
8.9%
3.6%
Switzerland
197610
215602
9.1%
2.5%
Austria
241654
264187
9.3%
1.6%
Spain
1245332
1361891
9.4%
4.1%
Italy
1925852
2110174
9.6%
1.8%
Portugal
327679
360709
10.1%
5.2%
Netherlands
448613
494739
10.3%
2.9%
Hungary
386532
426435
10.3%
1.6%
Uruguay
100453
111114
10.6%
0.3%
Croatia
157228
174114
10.7%
0.0%
Greece
362938
406346
12.0%
-0.5%
Qatar
7001
7861
12.3%
0.0%
Thailand
1422886
1598280
12.3%
3.5%
Israel
131776
148073
12.4%
1.5%
Canada
813705
916325
12.6%
7.0%
South Korea
846922
956456
12.9%
8.0%
Singapore
61372
69616
13.4%
11.6%
Slovenia
59850
68193
13.9%
3.3%
Romania
776088
898703
15.8%
1.5%
Hong Kong
140151
162338
15.8%
7.0%
Czechia
329416
383404
16.4%
2.7%
Malaysia
492293
577972
17.4%
12.5%
Slovakia
159056
187181
17.7%
2.1%
Serbia
306998
361514
17.8%
-2.7%
United States
8298245
9887701
19.2%
4.7%
Poland
1191739
1424874
19.6%
4.3%
Egypt
1673221
2002362
19.7%
-2.5%
Bulgaria
324016
389845
20.3%
-0.4%
Chile
316222
385240
21.8%
1.9%
Kazakhstan
394198
481768
22.2%
-1.6%
Philippines
1729585
2131505
23.2%
7.7%
Brazil
3900789
4880760
25.1%
3.9%
North Macedonia
60549
76264
26.0%
-4.6%
Colombia
666531
928395
39.3%
6.9%
Mexico
2052802
2963381
44.4%
9.4%
Ecuador
206271
301956
46.4%
6.4%
April years:
3-year periods 4 years apart
*
3 years ended April 2018
**
3 years ended April 2022
# comparing 24-months to April 2019 with previous 24-months
In the pandemic proper, the two countries with easily the least increases in deaths were Norway and Sweden. The others in the ‘Top Eight’ (the ‘quarterfinalists’, to use the football metaphor) were the other Nordic countries, Australia and New Zealand, and Taiwan.
Based on the media coverage in New Zealand and the world news channels that New Zealanders mainly follow, the only surprise in that Top Eight would be Sweden, which pursued a very different policy response, especially in the ‘first-half’ of the Pandemic. In the 2020 New Zealand election campaign, political parties generally agreed that Taiwan was the exemplar for other countries to follow.
We may note that only New Zealand and Taiwan had counterfactuals showing higher projected increases in deaths than what actually happened. Thus, these two may be declared the ‘ordinary-time’ winners. The problem is that the Pandemic World Cup had ‘extra-time’. (It must also be noted, however, when we take the ‘non-death costs’ of the pandemic and its associated health policies, Sweden’s non-death costs were easily the lowest. So, on this basis, it could be argued that Sweden was the true ordinary-time winner, despite having been way behind at ‘half-time’.)
Extra-Time
When we look at Table 2 we see clearly that the East Asian countries performed very poorly. Most of these were deemed to be success stories in ordinary time. Taiwan is very prominent here. So is South Korea which has a conservative estimate in this table for its ‘extra-time’ increase in deaths. Macao is very important here, because it is the best proxy we have for China. Taiwan has had a recent resurgence in deaths in May 2023, and Macao has had a resurgence of Covid19 cases in recent weeks. So, these countries’ pandemic problems are far from over. (There are also signs that New Zealand’s seasonal death tally is picking up early this year.) The Macao situation, combined with other reports that all is not well in China right now, suggest that China may be presently going through a significant third wave of Covid19. This will add to global supply-chain problems.
New Zealand and Australia are in the top (ie worst) half of Table 2. So are two of the Nordic countries, Iceland and Finland, the Nordic countries which imposed more restrictive health mandates than their neighbours. So is Ireland near the worst, more restrictive in its public health mandates than the United Kingdom countries. Norway, top of Table 1, is in the middle of the Table 2 pack. Of the Nordic countries, only Sweden – easily the least restrictive in Europe, especially in the first-half of the Pandemic – performed well.
Quirky Counterfactuals
Creating consistent counterfactuals for each country is difficult because there are quirky demographics at play. First, we note that there are three main reasons why death increases might trend high for a given country. The first is a general increase in the population of a country: more people, more deaths. Second is the aging of a country, represented by increases in the median age of living persons. Third is a deterioration of general health, especially of those middle-age cohorts whose deaths ‘come under the radar’, given that deaths are dominated in most countries by people aged over 75.
It is likely that the high counterfactual for New Zealand is due to a mix of these. We know that New Zealand has some of the same issues of underclass deprivation as the United States, which include obesity, diabetes, and substance abuse. And we know that the United States has a lower life expectancy than other ‘western’ countries; a life expectancy now known to be falling.
The other two main quirks to look out for are birth rates in the troubled second quarter of the twentieth century. The Great Depression and World War Two were the main events that impacted on birth rates. There was also warfare in the 1950s in Korea and Malaysia. Sweden is an interesting case, comparable with Switzerland, neutral in World War Two, so having a lesser demographic impact from the War. Also, Sweden came out of the Great Depression early, meaning it will have had comparatively high birth numbers in the 1930s; Sweden’s peak deaths since 2015 will have been higher than otherwise, on that account.
While New Zealand is possibly the western country with the fastest population growth this century, this is offset by the fact that low birth numbers in the 1930s are translating to lower deaths since 2015. (See my recent ‘Smithometer’ analysis, in Granny Smith.) Aging and population growth are not the whole story of New Zealand’s upper quartile trend of increasing deaths. (Unlike, say Portugal, which is known to attract retirees in Europe as Florida does in the United States.)
New Zealand also has the additional factor of having, in June and July 2022, too many vulnerable people who were denied, for unexplained political reasons, a timely second booster Covid19 vaccination. The July 2002 mortality peak, almost entirely experienced by older European-ethnic New Zealanders – the Granny Smiths – came to a prompt end once these people became eligible for second-boosters. This sharp July peak – and drop-off – appears to have been a New Zealand specific phenomenon.
High counterfactual notwithstanding, New Zealand performed very poorly in extra-time, though not as badly as the East Asian countries which imposed the most ‘sterile’ public health policies on their people.
East Europe
I would like to note two other groups of countries. First, it was Eastern Europe which had the highest reported per-capita Covid19 death tolls. These countries do not look as bad in this analysis, though they (except the Baltic states) still look bad in Table 1, especially in light of their often negative counterfactual death trends. The main demographic problem that these countries have been facing is emigration of working-age adults, especially those Eastern European countries in the European Union. Generally, these countries look much better in Table 2, in extra-time.
Most of these countries successfully imposed severe public health restrictions in the first half of 2020, but abandoned those restrictions – or were unable to easily reimpose them – in the later stages of ‘the game’. The result was that these countries’ populations had substantially compromised immunity going into the winter of 2020/21. Their death peaks were much higher than the death peaks in the west earlier in 2020. The second problem was that, on account of their departed youth, their populations were aging as well as falling. Hence the high Covid19 per capita death tolls that savage winter.
In ‘extra time’, East Europe has ‘performed’ best. This would appear to be in part because so many of their most vulnerable people had already died; respiratory viruses had lost much of their human ‘fuel’. Also, these countries had re-established (the hard way) high levels of natural immunity to respiratory illnesses.
Russia continues to supply mortality data, though it excludes deaths in the Ukraine conflict zone; so its not included in the tables. And Ukraine has certainly stopped supplying data, due to governmental priorities as well as a lack of will to publicise its present demographic plight. Kazakhstan is probably the best proxy for assessing the impact of the Pandemic in Russia.
South America
These countries (plus Mexico) are among the worst performers in both Tables. Typically, they exhibit many of the ‘underclass’ socio-economic problems apparent in the United States, United Kingdom, and New Zealand: inequality, poverty, homelessness, obesity, crime, violence. It is likely that they will see ongoing increases in annual mortality on account of these factors; factors exacerbated by both the Pandemic and its associated mandates.
While Latin American populations are much younger than Eastern European populations – due to both higher births and less emigration – there will also have been a significant growth of numbers of people of peak-dying-age (over 75) contributing to ‘trend’ counterfactuals in some cases as high as New Zealand’s.
Another factor in these American countries is the high proportions of people living in or near the tropics at high altitudes. Under normal circumstances, these are unusually healthy environments, in which seasonal respiratory illnesses do not circulate as much as in temperate climes. But, it makes people living in these zones more vulnerable to pandemic respiratory illnesses when they do happen. It’s an old story that goes back to the time of Spanish colonisation in the sixteenth century.
This last factor is only apparent here in Colombia and Ecuador. Other similarly affected countries – Peru and Bolivia – had very high early death tolls, but (presumably due to political crises) have not released ‘extra-time’ data. Venezuela was even less forthcoming with useful data.
Africa including Qatar
Mortality statistics from Africa are rare. Egypt is now the best, and it certainly suffered. South Africa, which in ‘ordinary-time’ had a similar experience to that of East Europe, used to supply good quality data; but no more as its present economic crisis deepens. Signs are that the African continent was less impacted directly by Covid19 than other regions, though its more fragile economic supply-chains have become victims of the Pandemic’s ‘extra-time’ environment.
Qatar is an interesting case, because of its unusual demographics. Qatar’s resident population is heavily weighted towards the younger working-age population. So, while its death rates per capita have been very low, its percentage increases in deaths have not been low. We do need a good comparative analysis of the health impact of Covid19 on working-age populations, though made difficult by demographic data today still focusing on sex and ethnicity rather than age or occupation or labour force status.
South Asia
After China, the biggest Pandemic uncertainties relate to South Asia, with Inda being the largest country. We may also add the very populous country that is Indonesia. This region is a demographic black hole, which experiences high levels of emigration as well as of death. (We may note here – see Hundreds of Pakistanis dead in Mediterranean migrant boat disaster, CNN 19 June 2023 – that the majority of victims of the overcrowded refugee boat which sank last week off the coast of Greece were from Pakistan.) This region has suffered a huge upheaval since 2020, with the Pandemic a significant contributing factor.
Conclusion
There remains a lack of competent demographic analysis of recent and former pandemics, partly due to poor (sometimes politically-motivated) record-keeping, and partly due to the low status of demography among the social sciences. Analyses like mine here – amateur in the sense of being unpaid, but not in the sense of quality – help to fill the gap.
The most striking conclusion is that the ‘extra-time’ of the Pandemic gives a very different picture of the Pandemic’s human cost. The imposition by governments of sterile environments for long periods is not a recipe for good health outcomes, although it may give good headlines in the early phases of a pandemic when the Press is at its most attentive.
*******
Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.
Hauke-Christian Dittrich/picture alliance via Getty Images
As the global economy moves away from fossil fuels, green hydrogen could be critical to achieving a zero-carbon world by 2050.
Green hydrogen offers a solution to decarbonising “hard-to-abate” industries such as steel and fertiliser production, heavy-duty transport and shipping. Recent announcements by high-emitting countries suggest the switch to green hydrogen might be greater and come sooner than expected.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a US$2.3 billion green hydrogen mission, expected to increase 400% by 2050. India’s steel industry and heavy-duty transport will consume about half of this production.
According to its latest government plan, China would produce 100,000-200,000 tons of renewable-based hydrogen annually and have a fleet of 50,000 hydrogen-fuelled vehicles by 2025.
New Zealand’s national grid is far more renewable than the Australian grid, which is still dependent on coal. Nevertheless, both countries are investing in green hydrogen as a future fuel.
The Australian government has allocated A$2 billion in its 2023 budget to accelerate large-scale green hydrogen projects. In New Zealand, the proposed Southern Green Hydrogen project has moved to the development stage. Final investment decisions are expected later this year.
Green hydrogen is produced by using renewable energy sources to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, either through electrolysis or photolysis. The former technology is more advanced at this stage.
At present, 98% of all hydrogen is produced using fossil fuels (“grey hydrogen” or “blue hydrogen” if carbon is scrubbed). To meet Paris Agreement targets, hydrogen production needs to be decarbonised. Installed production capacity for green hydrogen will need to increase 75 times before 2030.
The good news is that the cost of green hydrogen is projected to fall to US$2-3 per kilogram by 2030 due to improved production methods and economies of scale. The falling cost of renewables, the increasing demand for energy and the climate change emergency have created unprecedented momentum for clean hydrogen.
Grey and blue hydrogen have their existing industrial uses but will be transition fuels. They’ll eventually be replaced by green hydrogen, which will also meet a rapidly growing range of new uses, such as green steel.
A hydrogen-powered ambulance was displayed at the last climate summit. Ian Forsyth/Getty Images
Some hydrogen applications are well under way. Airbus is involved in the development of electric planes that use a combination of hydrogen combustion for take-off power and hydrogen fuel cells for mid-flight power.
While most electric vehicles will continue to be powered by batteries, some car makers have had successful hydrogen-fuelled cars in commercial production.
High cost of production is the main factor behind the low uptake of green hydrogen. But a price of US$2/kg is considered a potential tipping point to make green hydrogen competitive against other fuel sources. Once this tipping point has passed, projected for 2030, green hydrogen is expected to progressively displace fossil fuels across most sectors.
The cost of electrolysers has roughly halved over the past five years. This trend is expected to continue. The recent development of solid-oxide electrolysers that can deliver 100% efficiency at an elevated temperature range promises further growth.
Potential for developing countries
The immediate challenges for green hydrogen are that it will need to gain global acceptance and expand infrastructure urgently.
Future international hydrogen partnerships are expected to benefit both developing and developed economies. An example is Africa, which is well positioned to develop green hydrogen projects given its renewable energy potential. Africa also has rich platinum resources, which are needed for water-splitting catalysis.
Global installations of electrolysers are set to expand by a factor of 120 from 2GW today to 242GW by 2030, according to analysis by BloombergNEF. Major manufacturers include EvolOH, which plans to produce up to 3.75GW per year of electrolysers by 2025, and Plug Power gigafactory, which sources its power from hydroelectricity from the Niagara Falls.
Barriers to uptake
This new revolution in green hydrogen energy has some important residual barriers to resolve.
The first is that the water to be used in electrolysers needs to be free of contaminants. However, the increasing shortage of clean freshwater is a looming global problem.
To obviate this challenge, a research collaboration involving Australian and Chinese universities has demonstrated that seawater can be split using a commercial electrolyser. This approach uses a non-precious catalyst with nearly 100% efficiency. This technology needs further refinement, but it does seem to offer a viable solution.
A second problem is that hydrogen in the atmosphere behaves as an indirect greenhouse gas. Hydrogen reacts with OH radicals that would otherwise decompose the potent greenhouse gas methane.
The net effect is that methane persists longer in warming the atmosphere than if hydrogen were not present. The quantification of hydrogen’s indirect greenhouse gas effect hinges on the extent of leakage. This urgently needs more detailed evaluation.
The remaining related problem is pipeline leakiness, estimated at between 2.9% and 5.6%. In an important pipeline test, China’s Sinopec plans to build the first green hydrogen pipeline from Inner Mongolia to Beijing to test hydrogen leakiness under practical conditions.
In parallel developments, the conversion of green hydrogen to green ammonia via a Haber-Bosch type process is the key to using green ammonia as a more easily transported fuel for high-power transportation, as well as a green fertiliser.
In 2100 a person reviewing the emergence of hydrogen may see a link between the coal and steam revolution of the previous centuries that created the climate crisis and the hydrogen revolution that helped resolve it.
Ralph Cooney does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
You’re a mammal. So is a kangaroo. We’ve got much in common. But one of the most interesting is we all feed our newborns with milk. The word mammal comes from mamma, which is Latin for breast.
In Australia, we have many placental mammal species, like bats and native rodents. Humans are placental mammals too. But our country is far better known for our marsupials and monotremes, which have different reproductive strategies to placental mammals. We have around two-thirds of all living marsupial species, and two of the five remaining monotreme species on the planet – the platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) and short-beaked echidna (Tachyglossus aculeatus). The other three echidna species live on the island of New Guinea.
Monotremes are the only mammals to lay eggs. When an echidna egg hatches, the baby is very underdeveloped. Marsupials, too, give birth to underdeveloped young. When a wallaby gives birth to a tiny pink joey, it’s the equivalent to us giving birth to an eight week old foetus. Most of their development happens outside the womb or egg.
To overcome this, female marsupials and monotremes produce truly remarkable milk. Their milk not only supplies nutrients for sustenance, but also has factors essential for growth and immunological protection. Their milk likely has chemicals serving to attract newborns to the teat even though they have very little sensory or movement ability at this stage.
Echidnas and platypuses lay eggs, which hatch revealing underdeveloped puggles.
It can be a fight to find a teat
All mammals possess mammary glands. These specialised glands evolved 166–240 million years ago and have diversified into a wide range of sizes and shapes.
While marsupials have teats for their joeys to suckle from, monotremes have milk patches which secrete milk directly onto the pigmented skin of the areola where their baby puggles can lap the milk from the pores. For marsupials, the number of teats equates to the number of mammary glands. The larger the marsupial, the fewer teats they have. Smaller marsupials have more teats. The highest number of mammary glands recorded in a marsupial is 13, in the gray short-tailed opossum (Monodelphis domestica), while the largest surviving marsupial, the red kangaroo (Osphranter rufus), only has four teats.
As you’d expect, teat numbers align with the maximum number of young a marsupial mother can sustain. Newborn marsupials have to seek out and firmly attach themselves to the teat. In some species, the first hours are brutal as more young can be born than there are teats for them, and only those able to latch on in the first few hours can survive. The red-tailed phascogale (Phascogale calura) – a tree-living insect eating marsupial – can give birth to up to 13 young but females only have eight teats.
A gray short-tailed opossum (Monodelphis domestica) showing pouch young attached to teats. Rob Miller. Author provided
Early on, their milk is more dilute. As the joeys and puggles get bigger, it becomes more concentrated, with more protein and fat. This peaks towards the end of lactation when the young are weaned. Carbohydrate levels peak in mid to late lactation and then decrease to weaning. Interestingly, iron levels in marsupial and monotreme milk are three times higher than in placental mammal milk. That’s because joeys and puggles are so undeveloped – they have to rely on iron-rich milk to construct proteins to build, carry and store oxygen until their liver matures.
Macropod (big foot in Latin) marsupials like kangaroos and wallabies are capable of an even more remarkable feat. They can produce tailor-made milk with different nutrients from different teats so they can feed, say, a newborn joey at the same time as feeding her older brother who is about to leave the pouch.
Producing milk takes effort and energy
As anyone who has breastfed a child will know, it’s tiring – and you get hungry. Marsupial mums need double or triple their usual amount of energy by boosting how much they eat, while echidnas have to rely on their fat stores at first, because they stay in the nursery burrow all the time when the puggles are tiny. When their offspring are a bit older, the mother leaves them alone and goes on a hunt for ants and termites.
More milk means faster growth rates for the young. Monotreme puggles, particularly echidnas, are fed infrequently. Their growth is clustered around feedings. They grow faster after having a big feed and slower when their mother is out foraging. Marsupial and monotreme milk also provides essential nutrients and additional factors required to support growth.
Red-tailed phascogale (Phascogale calura) pouch young at approximately 40 days of age showing their underdeveloped state. Photo supplied by Hayley Stannard
Milk, the immunological superhero
Marsupial joeys cannot fully defend themselves against bacteria and viruses at birth in the same way we can, because they lack mature immune tissues and cells.
That means their immune system is bolstered by milk. All mammals produce colostrum in their milk in the first few days of lactation. This milk often looks different, because it contains billions of antibodies to help defend the newborn.
In marsupials, milk carries antibodies as well as immunological cells from the mother. In marsupials with pouches, the pouch itself secretes antibacterial proteins to reduce the growth of opportunistic pathogens. For some species, such as the tammar wallaby (Notamacropus eugenii), licking and cleaning the pouch by the mother and the work of her saliva-borne digestive lysozymes are also likely to protect against bacterial attack.
Milk is essential to the survival of all mammals – but it’s especially important for puggles and joeys. The miracle and magic of marsupial and monotreme milk is how it’s tailored to help these tiny, underdeveloped creatures survive in the outside world – and how the milk changes throughout the process to match their changing requirements.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne
Andrew Harnik/AP/AAP
On June 8, former United States president Donald Trump was indicted on federal charges of mishandling classified documents. Despite the indictment, he retains a huge lead in national polling to determine the 2024 Republican presidential candidate.
Both Democrats and Republicans will select their presidential candidates for the November 2024 general election using a series of state by state contests in early 2024. Polls of early states will become more important as we approach these contests, but for now national polls are the best guide we have.
In the FiveThirtyEight aggregate of national Republican primary polls, Trump currently leads with 53.1%, with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis far behind on 21.2% and nobody else over 6%. Trump’s lead has only marginally declined from 53.5-20.8 over DeSantis in my last US politics article in late May.
If Trump is convicted at a trial before the November 2024 election, he can still run for president. This Politico article said that a Socialist presidential candidate in 1920 ran from behind bars and received 3% of the popular vote.
Section 44 of the Australian Constitution disqualifies anyone under sentence or subject to be sentenced for a crime with a prison sentence of one year or longer from serving in federal parliament, but there’s no US equivalent. If Trump were elected president from prison, he could pardon himself.
Biden’s ratings have not improved since debt limit deal
In late May, President Joe Biden agreed to a debt limit deal with Republican House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and the deal was passed by both chambers of Congress by June 1. I covered this for The Poll Bludger.
Biden’s ratings in the FiveThirtyEight aggregate are currently 54.2% disapprove, 41.2% disapprove (net -12.9). In my May US politics article before the debt limit deal was struck, his net approval was -10.4.
While the US unemployment rate has been under 4% since December 2021, the US deficit has increased in monthly tracking since the 2022 fiscal year; the US fiscal year ends in September. Large deficits were run in 2020 and 2021 owing to COVID, but with this pandemic resolved, voters may expect a reduced deficit.
The failure of Biden’s ratings to improve after the debt limit deal suggests Republican rhetoric on the need for spending cuts in the lead-up to the debt crisis was effective, and that McCarthy could have pushed for deeper cuts than what occurred.
In my May US politics article, I said that Biden could face a challenge to his assumed renomination as the Democratic presidential candidate if somebody well-known were to enter. But this hasn’t happened yet, and Biden is far ahead of his only two declared challengers: Robert F Kennedy Jr and Marianne Williamson.
With Trump and Biden likely to be the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates at the November 2024 election, general election polls between these two candidates are relevant.
This recent FiveThirtyEight article listed seven pollsters that have released Trump vs Biden polls since Trump’s indictment, and compared to polls by the same pollsters before the indictment. In the average of these seven polls, Trump led by 42.6-41.4, compared to 42.9-42.3 before the indictment.
Bad news for Trump regarding the indictment (his national favourability ratings have fallen) may be compensated by Biden’s drop in approval ratings. Neither is a young candidate. By the November 2024 election, Trump will be 78 and Biden almost 82.
Boris Johnson resigns from UK parliament
On June 9, former United Kingdom PM Boris Johnson resigned his seat in the House of Commons after the privileges committee recommended a parliamentary suspension above the ten days needed to trigger a recall petition.
If at least 10% of registered voters in a seat sign such a petition, a byelection is required. Johnson knew he would be forced to a byelection, so he resigned preemptively.
As long as Rishi Sunak remains PM and Conservative leader, he can thwart any attempt by Johnson to renominate as a Conservative candidate at a byelection or general election. As Sunak and Johnson are rivals, it’s very unlikely that Sunak will allow Johnson to return as a Conservative candidate.
The next UK general election is due by late 2024. Johnson’s resignation has damaged the Conservatives in the polls, with Labour’s lead in UK national polls back out to about 20 points after slowly sliding to about 15 points.
Right and far-right are doing well in Europe
The governing centre-left Socialists have called a Spanish election for July 23, but polls suggest the conservative People’s Party and far-right Vox will win a combined majority. If this occurs, Spain will follow Italy last year as the second major European country to fall to the right.
In Germany, the centre-left Social Democrats formed a governing coalition with the Greens and pro-business Free Democrats after the September 2021 election. Polls are showing a surge for the conservative Christian Democrats and far-right Alternative for Germany. The next German election is due by October 2025.
Adrian Beaumont does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
If you woke up this morning and thought “Gosh, it’s a bit brisk!”, you’re not alone.
Temperatures plummeted across southeast Australia this week, with Weatherzone reporting Canberra’s low of -7.2ºC was “its lowest temperature since 2018 and the lowest for June since 1986.”
Sydney experienced its coldest June morning today since 2010, with a temperature of 5.2ºC. In Victoria, temperatures of -7.2ºC were recorded.
It started off at the beginning of the week, when a low-pressure system saw a big cold front come through southeastern Australia on Sunday night. This basically means a lot of very cold air came from higher latitudes close to Antarctica, and swept across southeastern Australia.
So everywhere from Melbourne to Sydney to South Australia was getting this big pool of incredibly cold air at the start of the week.
Even though that cold front has now moved off over the Tasman Sea, it has left behind it a really big high-pressure system sitting over the southeast of Australia.
This has led to calm conditions, where winds are very light and the skies are clear with not a lot of cloud during the day or night.
So it’s getting really, really cold in the early mornings because there are no clouds to act as an insulating blanket for the Earth and trap the heat that the planet radiates to space overnight.
The result, in many places, has been very cold temperatures before sunrise, often with a lot of frost.
Remind me, what’s a low-pressure system? And what’s a high-pressure system?
The air above the Earth’s surface has mass, but it’s not uniform everywhere. The way the atmosphere is moved around by what’s going on at upper levels will mean the mass of the atmosphere is redistributed. That transmits down to the surface where we live and causes low- and high-pressure systems.
At some points the pressure is lower because there’s not as much mass of air above that point over the Earth. This is what we call a low-pressure system. Air rises in a low, reducing the pressure at the surface.
The winds around the low are clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere. So when that low is approaching Australia, the winds on the western side are bringing air from near Antarctica. That’s why a low-pressure system in Australia often means cooler conditions.
At some points above the Earth, the pressure is higher because the mass of air above that area is greater. This is what we call a high-pressure system. Air descends in a high, raising the surface pressure.
High-pressure systems tend to mean very calm weather; the wind isn’t very strong, the skies tend to be clear and there’s little to no cloud.
In summer, that means the sun is baking down all day onto Earth with no protection from cloud. So a high-pressure system in summer can mean a heatwave.
In winter, the lack of cloud in a high-pressure system means that much of the heat the Earth has absorbed during the day just re-radiates out to space again, as the cloud isn’t there to act as a blanket and keep all that heat in.
That’s why a high-pressure system can mean very cold weather in winter, especially when there are lower levels of sunlight coming in to warm up the Earth in the first place.
At its height, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted well-established patterns of migration within Australia. Reports of a regional renaissance suggested city dwellers were moving to regional areas in droves. The governments of Tasmania, South Australia and the Northern Territory were also keen to promote new migration flows to reverse long-standing declines in their shares of the national population.
Advice from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) that internal migration numbers were “implausibly high” received less attention. The ABS suspended these data releases due to this concern. Its latest population data release uses a revised model for net interstate migration.
These data indicate a new normal rather than a renaissance for South Australia, the Northern Territory and Tasmania.
Internal migration losses for capital cities have also slowed.
In reality, the data present a different story to the popular narrative. Pandemic-era ABS data for 2020 showed increased growth in non-metropolitan areas was due more to retaining residents than attracting new ones.
This is unsurprising. Much of Australia was in lockdown, restricting movement, and case numbers were highest in the capital cities. The historical main reasons for leaving regional areas – education and/or jobs – were no longer viable options.
In 2020, interstate migration fell by 29%. In 2021, it increased on paper by 45% compared with 2020.
However, the ABS advised this large increase was mainly due to people updating their addresses with Medicare during mass vaccination rollouts. The distorting effect of these belated updates prompted the ABS to suspend the release of regional internal migration estimates.
The under-counts and over-counts identified from the 2021 census show just how far off estimates of population and migration were for some areas. The ABS has revised its methodology, based on the census findings and updated Medicare data.
Last week, the ABS released details of its new assumptions for modelling interstate migration with the latest population data for the last quarter of 2022. Under this model, total interstate migration for 2022 fell 21%, compared with 2021, to levels similar to those of 2016.
As for movement between capital cities and regional areas within states, we have data for four quarters since March 2022 when the ABS resumed releases. (“Regional areas” include large centres like the Gold Coast, Geelong and Newcastle.) The numbers moving to greater capital cities have been increasing, and the numbers leaving have been declining. Even so, more people are still leaving capital cities than arriving (excluding overseas arrivals).
What does this mean for state and territory populations?
The revised data allow us to assess migration flows between states and territories for the last quarter of 2022 as well as back through time, including the pandemic.
In the peak pandemic year of 2020, South Australia recorded a net gain from interstate migration. The then premier attributed the reversal of the state’s brain drain to its “performance in containing COVID, accelerating industrial transformation and strong jobs growth”.
A closer look at the data shows the upward trend began well before the pandemic. The net loss due to interstate migration had decreased from -7,693 in 2017 to -2,885 in 2019.
The pandemic did accelerate this trend. Early in the pandemic, the net gain of 2,348 people in SA was driven by retention of people. Arrivals fell by 21.7%, but the decrease in departures was larger at 35.4%. In 2021, the net gain of 2,310 people was slightly smaller as arrivals increased by 43.6% and departures by 48.5%.
In 2022, however, the net gain was only 670 people. This suggests a return to net interstate migration losses is possible.
The revised data for the Northern Territory show a consistent net population loss to interstate migration of about 2,100 in the five years leading up to the pandemic. Then, in 2020, interstate arrivals fell considerably but departures fell even more. The result was a small net gain of 110.
When the territory’s borders reopened in 2021, both arrivals and departures surged to 1.5 times the average of the five years to 2020 at 16,992 arrivals and 19,298 departures. But in 2022 both figures wound back to 14% below the five-year pre-COVID average. Departures once again outstripped arrivals, by 2,120, very close to the average net loss of 2,306 for those five years.
The Tasmanian government is refreshing its 2015 Population Growth Strategy and plans to appoint a state demographer. In November 2021, the then premier declared people were “knocking on the door, and knocking loudly” to move to the state. This was not the case.
In 2020, interstate arrivals fell by 18% and departures by 28%. The state’s net gain was 2,633. For 2021, at the time of the vaccination rollout, arrivals increased by 39% and departures by 53%, resulting in a smaller net gain. For 2022, arrivals fell by 30% and departures by 16%, for a net loss of 941 people.
This reverses a seven-year period of interstate migration gains for Tasmania. With the lowest growth since 2015, the state has returned to the times before a population growth strategy. The level of natural increase (births minus deaths) is the lowest on record.
Claiming a population resurgence may help promote confidence for regions experiencing challenges from population ageing, economic performance and/or remoteness.
The problem with such populist narratives is they may also jeopardise the development of good policy, programs and infrastructure for key services such as housing, health and education. Funding could end up going to areas with less relative need.
These narratives may also muddy the already contentious distribution of GST revenue to the states and territories. In addition, population numbers affect how many seats each state and territory has in the House of Representatives.
We need reliable and robust data to make informed decisions. This is why we should all take personal responsibility for promptly updating our home addresses with Medicare when we move. Although this might not seem urgent for individuals, not doing so may mean their share of services and infrastructure falls short of what it might otherwise be.
Lisa Denny has received funding from the Tasmanian Department of State Growth in the past.
Andrew Taylor receives funding from the Northern Territory Department of Treasury and Finance.
George Tan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The recent tragic bus accident in the New South Wales Hunter Valley has again raised the issue of how we address the potential psychological effects of traumatic events.
It is interesting we revisit the same debate after each disaster, and few lessons have apparently been learned after decades of research. After the Hunter Valley accident, immediate psychological counselling was offered to those affected.
While we can’t say what form of counselling was offered, the traditional approach is known as “psychological debriefing”. This typically involves counsellors providing trauma survivors with a single counselling intervention within days of the event.
Although the content of the intervention can vary, it usually involves education about stress reactions, encouragement to disclose their memories of the experience, some basic stress-coping strategies and possibly referral information.
But the evidence shows this approach, however well-meaning, may not help – or worse, do harm.
The encouragement of people to discuss their emotional reactions to a trauma is the result of a long-held notion in psychology (dating back to the classic writings of Sigmund Freud) that disclosure of one’s emotions is invariably beneficial for one’s mental health.
Emanating from this perspective, the impetus for psychological debriefing has traditionally been rooted in the notion trauma survivors are vulnerable to psychological disorders, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), if they do not “talk through their trauma” by receiving this very early intervention.
The scenario of trauma counsellors appearing in the acute aftermath of traumatic events has been commonplace for decades in Australia and elsewhere.
Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City in 2001, up to 9,000 counsellors were mobilised and more than US$200 million was projected to meet a surge in mental health needs. But fewer people than expected sought help under this program and $90 million remained unspent.
What do we know about psychological reactions to disasters?
The overwhelming evidence indicates the majority of people will adapt to traumatic events without any psychological intervention.
Long-term studies indicate approximately 75% of trauma survivors will not experience any long-term distress. Others will experience short-term distress and subsequently adapt. A minority (usually about 10%) will experience chronic psychological problems.
This last group are the ones who require care and attention to reduce their mental health problems. Experts now agree other trauma survivors can rely on their own coping resources and social networks to adapt to their traumatic experience.
The finding across many studies that most people adapt to traumatic experiences without formal mental health interventions has been a major impetus for questioning the value of psychological debriefing in the immediate aftermath of disasters.
In short, the evidence tells us universal interventions – such as psychological debriefing for everyone involved in a disaster – that attempt to prevent PTSD and other psychological disorders in trauma survivors are not indicated. These attempts do not prevent the disorder they are targeting.
Not a new conclusion
In the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, the World Health Organization listed a warning (which still stands) that people should not be given single-session psychological debriefing because it is not supported by evidence.
Worse than merely being ineffective, debriefing can be harmful for some people and may increase the risk of PTSD.
The group of trauma survivors that are most vulnerable to the toxic effects of debriefing are those who are more distressed in the acute phase right after the trauma. This group of people have worse mental health outcomes if they are provided with early debriefing.
This may be because their trauma memories are over-consolidated as a result of the emotional disclosure so shortly after the event, when stress hormones are still highly active.
In normal clinical practice a person would be assessed in terms of their suitability for any psychological intervention. But in the case of universal psychological debriefing there is no prior assessment. Therefore, there’s no assessment of the risks the intervention may pose for the person.
Most international bodies have shifted away from psychological debriefing. Early intervention might now be offered as “psychological first aid”.
This newer approach is meant to provide fundamental support and coping strategies to help the person manage the immediate aftermath of adversity. One of the most important differences between psychological first aid and psychological debriefing is that it does not encourage people to disclose their emotional responses to the trauma.
But despite the increasing popularity of psychological first aid, it is difficult to assess its effectiveness as it does not explicitly aim to prevent a disorder, such as PTSD.
Wanting to help
So if there is so much evidence, why do we keep having this debate about the optimal way to assist psychological adaptation after disasters? Perhaps it’s because it’s human nature to want to help.
The evidence suggests we should monitor the most vulnerable people and target resources towards them when they need it – usually some weeks or months later when the dust of the trauma has settled. Counsellors might want to promote their activities in the acute phase after disasters, but it may not be in the best interest of the trauma survivors.
In short, we need to develop better strategies to ensure we are meeting the needs of the survivors, rather than the counsellors.
If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.
Richard Bryant receives funding from the NHMRC and the ARC.
New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.
New Zealand Politics Daily is a collation of the most prominent issues being discussed in New Zealand. It is edited by Dr Bryce Edwards of The Democracy Project.
Fraud in science is alarmingly common. Sometimes researchers lie about results and invent data to win funding and prestige. Other times, researchers might pay to stage and publish entirely bogus studies to win an undeserved pay rise – fuelling a “paper mill” industry worth an estimated €1 billion a year.
Some of this rubbish can be easily spotted by peer reviewers, but the peer review system has become badly stretched by ever-rising paper numbers. And there’s a new threat, as more sophisticated AI is able to generate plausible scientific data.
The latest idea among academic publishers is to use automated tools to screen all papers submitted to scientific journals for telltale signs. However, some of these tools are easy to fool.
I am part of a group of multidisciplinary scientists working to tackle research fraud and poor practice using metascience or the “science of science”. Ours is a new field, but we already have our own society and our members have worked with funders and publishers to investigate improvements to research practice.
The limits of automated screening
The problems with automated screening are highlighted by a new screening tool publicised last month. The tool suggested around one in three neuroscience papers might be fraudulent.
However, this tool detects suspected fraud simply by flagging authors with a non-institutional email (such as gmail.com) and with a hospital affiliation. While this could catch some fraud, it will also flag many honest researchers, and the tool flagged a whopping 44% of genuine papers as potentially fake.
One big problem with simple screening tools is that fraudsters will quickly find workarounds. For instance, telling their clients to use their institutional email address to submit the paper.
A project launched by the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers which aims to use screening tools to tackle fraud is also welcome. But automated tools cannot be the only line of defence.
A crowdfunded detective
There are remarkably few people who hunt through published research to detect scientific fraud. Perhaps the best known is the Dutch microbiologist Elisabeth Bik, who is an expert at catching manipulated images in scientific papers.
Bik has single-handedly caught multiple massive fraudsters, with the dodgy papers eventually being retracted from the scientific record.
Bik’s work is a tremendous public service. However, she isn’t paid by a university or a scientific publisher. Her detective work – which has seen her face harassment and court cases – is crowd funded.
With the billions of dollars in the publishing world, can’t a few million be found for quality control? In the meantime, one of our best-known lines of defence relies on good will and passion.
In Australia, spending just 0.1% of the annual scientific research budget on quality control would be A$12 million per year. This would be enough to fund a whole office of detectives and also training for researchers in good scientific practice, increasing the return on investment for the remaining 99.9% of the annual budget.
Call the fraud police
A solution – or at least a partial one – seems obvious: somebody should employ lots of people like Bik to check quality. However, “somebody should” is a dangerous phrase, because it could easily mean nobody will.
Research funders wait for scientific publishers to take action. Publishers expect universities and other institutions to do something. Those institutions in turn look to government for a solution.
Meanwhile, paper mills are happily making a mint, and the world’s pool of scientific evidence is becoming increasingly contaminated by rubbish.
Quality control systems need not be expensive, as we don’t need to check every paper in detail. Random spot checks might be effective.
Say one in every 300 submissions gets checked by the “fraud police”. That’s a small probability, but people are notoriously bad at judging small probabilities, as proved by the popularity of lotteries.
There would also need to be consequences, such as notifying all the institutions and funders involved, and an expectation of a rapid response. If an institution were involved in multiple cases, publishers could flag all papers from that institution for extra checks.
Publicity would be a good start
Of course, this could disadvantage honest researchers from that institution – but personally I would like to know if my colleagues had been submitting fraud. And given institutions rarely publicise the wrongdoing of their own staff, it may be the first I hear about it.
If honest researchers pressure their institutions to act, it would be a tremendous change. Publishers can’t be the only line of defence in tackling fraud.
Funding for stronger screening systems is a great start, but we also need to spend money on people. We need to turn the arms race with the fraudsters into a brains race, because we have the better brains.
Adrian Barnett receives funding from National Health and Medical Research Council. He is affiliated with the Association for Interdisciplinary Metaresearch & Open Science.
“Cassie” is an anxious adult. She stresses and puts off tasks that should be simple. Seeing others succeed makes her feel inadequate. It’s easier to avoid challenges than risk failing again. She has taken anxiety medication but it didn’t help much.
This hypothetical example illustrates a situation many people have faced. Social media abounds with stories of people who have, without success, taken medication for anxiety and are now wondering about possible undiagnosed ADHD.
So, how can you tell if it’s anxiety or ADHD, or both? And why does it matter?
Anxiety and depression can mimic ADHD. Either can be associated with lack of motivation and difficulty focusing the attention.
On the other hand, a pattern of being late, missing deadlines and forgetting appointments due to ADHD may lead to anxiety and a sense of failure.
Anxiety and depression are both commonly associated with ADHD, particularly in women. Anxiety tends to be more severe and persistent and with a younger age of onset in people with ADHD.
Generalised anxiety features symptoms such as frequent and excessive worry about different aspects life (such as work, school and family). The worry can be difficult to control. Restlessness, fatigue, irritability and sleep problems are common.
For some, anxiety can be controlled through therapy, mindfulness techniques, a change in life or at work and/or medication.
For others, no amount of anxiety treatment seems to help. The problems persist. For these people, it could be worth investigating whether undiagnosed ADHD is a factor.
Successful treatment of co-existing ADHD may, for some, be the best way of getting relief from chronic anxiety.
Could ADHD be a factor?
ADHD is often subtle in girls and women, who are less likely to show the disruptive hyperactive behaviour that draws attention to ADHD in men and boys.
Old school reports may give telling clues, such as:
Cassie spends more time socialising than working. She is capable, but is frequently distracted and is not achieving her potential.
“Cassie’s” parents may recall hearing such comments from teachers. She may remember feeling bored in class and looking out the window instead of listening and concentrating.
However, not all adults with ADHD showed signs of it in childhood.
ADHD in adulthood
ADHD is generally diagnosed according to the criteria of the American Psychiatric Association.
Problematically, these criteria require that to be diagnosed with ADHD, an adult should have experienced difficulties before the age of 12.
Studies have identified ADHD in adults who didn’t show evidence of it when previously assessed in childhood.
And ADHD is generally assessed in adults as if it were a continuation of the childhood condition. The diagnostic criteria – such as interrupting, fidgeting, not completing tasks, losing things, forgetting things – are derived from observations of children.
When applied to adults, these criteria still relate to behaviour seen from the outside by an observer. They miss the depth and insight an adult can provide about their inner world and mind.
A woman with no history of ADHD-related problems in childhood and no overt signs of restlessness or hyperactivity may have had her ADHD missed, particularly if she’s developed coping skills to seemingly stay on track.
She may feel stigmatised by those who believe ADHD is being self-diagnosed in treatment-seeking adults who are over-influenced by social media.
Only consider a diagnosis of ADHD if you’re facing significant difficulties in life. Pexels/Andrea Piacquadio, CC BY
If I suspect ADHD, what now?
If you suspect ADHD but are able to get on fine in life, you probably don’t need a diagnosis. You should only consider a diagnosis of ADHD if you’re facing significant difficulties.
To be assessed for ADHD, you’ll need a GP referral to a psychiatrist. However, many people who outwardly appear to be coping well may find it difficult to convince a GP an assessment is necessary.
You could bring copies of school reports if they suggest ADHD. Checklists with ADHD criteria can help, but cannot reliably either diagnose or exclude ADHD.
Clear descriptions of difficulties you experience when attempting mentally demanding task can help.
These may include repeated lapses in attention, or having to multitask to provide sufficient stimulation to keep working.
You might detail, for example, the average number of minutes per hour of your working day you are actually working productively or how long you can focus on a hard task before losing concentration. How often do you get distracted? How long does it take to get back on task? What strategies have you tried?
An ADHD diagnosis can be a relief for some, who may find treatment helps alleviate problems they’d previously blamed on anxiety. It can also provide an explanation for past difficulties attributed to personal inadequacy.
ADHD treatments can include medication, learning more about it, developing new strategies, counselling and having an ADHD coach.
Alison Poulton is affiliated with the Australian ADHD Professionals Association (AADPA). Dr Poulton discloses personal fees and non-financial support from Shire/Takeda, and royalties from Disruptive Publishing for her book: ADHD Made Simple.
Recent spikes in ocean heat content and average global air temperature have left climate scientists across the world scrambling to find the cause. The global average air temperature, relative to 1850-1900, exceeded the 1.5℃ lower Paris Agreement threshold during part of March and the first days of June. This last happened in 2020, and before that during the powerful 2015-16 El Niño.
What makes these most recent temperature spikes so alarming is that they’ve occurred before a forecast El Niño event in the Pacific, rather than during one.
It is now clear that Earth’s climate system is way out of kilter and we should be very concerned.
Global average temperatures, showing the 1.5℃ and 2.0℃ Paris Agreement thresholds. World Meteorological Organization (2023). Twitter @CopernicusECMWF
We already know El Niño events are associated with above-average global temperatures. Given the impending El Niño, we all need to take extra notice of what lies ahead for the next few years. This is especially so as this forecast warming event will follow the recent rare triple La Niña event that usually brings cooler average global temperatures, meaning the trajectory of this year’s uptick in average temperatures is likely to be even steeper.
The Earth Energy Imbalance – the difference between the amount of energy arriving from the Sun and the amount returning to space – is now running at an all-time high. This is the most crucial measure of the prospects for continued global heating and human-driven climate change.
This metric will also be vital for monitoring our overall success in meeting the Paris Agreement’s targets, which call for humanity to hold average warming ideally to 1.5℃ above the pre-industrial average, or at least to as much under 2℃ as possible.
How much warmer are the oceans this year?
Since 1971, about 89 % of the excess heat in Earth’s climate system has been stored in the ocean (with 6 % on land, 1 % in the atmosphere, and about 4 % going towards melting ice on land and sea).
Because of this, any significant upward trend in average ocean heat is considered a harbinger for the acceleration of human-driven climate change more generally.
Scientists monitor the status of Earth’s energy imbalance by considering how much the average sea-surface temperature differs from the historical average, for a vast slice of the oceans covering everywhere between the Arctic Circle (60°N) and Antarctic Circle (60°S). These “sea surface temperature anomalies” are calculated each month, relative to the 1971-2000 baseline.
The global sea surface temperature anomaly on June 13 was about 4.5 standard deviations above the baseline global average. Put another way, this means the likelihood of current temperatures happening totally at random, if the climate this month was unchanged from the baseline period, are about 1 in 1.2 million.
The 36-month running average for the Earth Energy Imbalance is now at a record 1.36 Watts per square metre. This looks like a small value, but it corresponds to an average of 11 Hiroshimas of excess energy per second accumulating in Earth’s climate system over the past three years.
Earth Energy Imbalance: 36 month running mean (Feb 2003 – March 2023) Professor Eliot Jacobson
The early arrival of El Niño may also be playing a lesser role, as the warming in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific is not expected to peak until next year.
The submarine volcano Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai erupted in January 2022 and ejected record-breaking amounts of water vapour into the stratosphere. Water vapour acts as a potent greenhouse gas, and this may be contributing to the currently observed warming.
Views from the satellites GOES-West and Himawari-8 of the violent eruption of the underwater volcano Hunga Tonga-Hunga Haʻapai. It blasted an enormous plume of water vapour into Earth’s stratosphere – enough water to fill more than 58,000 Olympic-size swimming pools. Public Domain.
Other possible agents of warming include new regulations around sulfur aerosol emissions from shipping, and even a recent lack of Saharan dust. Both these forms of atmospheric aerosols have a cooling effect, as they reflect a small percentage of sunlight back to space.
Greenhouse gases from human sources continue to rise and accumulate in the atmosphere. Rising emissions will fuel global heating, resulting in shifting climate baselines – what is often termed the “new normal” brought about by climate change.
Climate models predict with high certainty that as these climate baselines shift, so will the increased risk of extreme weather events. Effects of natural climate drivers, such as El Niño patterns in the Pacific, are likely to be amplified as the background climate warms.
Scientists will watch the current spike in global ocean and atmospheric temperatures very closely as the forecast El Niño strengthens later this year. What is less well understood is how other climate drivers may interact with the warming effects of El Niño.
Notably, how will the lingering atmospheric water vapour from the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai eruption amplify any El Niño warming? All we can do is prepare for more record-breaking weather.
Steve Turton has previously received funding from the Australian Government. Steve is the vice chair of the Australian Citizen Science Association.
The traditional idea of a one-or-two-storey school, spread over a vast campus is no longer an option for some new schools. Population growth and a lack of land in urban areas mean some schools have to go up.
Some academics argue vertical schools are not well suited to children’s need for space and learning. But what do children want?
I asked students for their opinion
My study published this week surveyed students at three vertical schools. The schools had between five and ten storeys and were in Brisbane and Melbourne. They enrol students from the first year of schooling to Year 12.
I interviewed 38 students in years 3 to 7 through walking tours. They led me around their school, telling me what they liked and didn’t like about their environment.
Children still want space to play
Students told me they wanted access to outside and inside play spaces, even when the weather was bad. They said covered terraces, rooftop gardens and wide hallways allowed students to play in rainy weather.
This is where vertical schools can have an advantage over regular schools. Regular schools often have limited indoor play spaces or their covered outdoor learning areas are easily flooded. As one 9-year-old student said:
We play out here [on the terrace] a lot […] when there’s a wet day […] It’s very good to get fresh air when you’re stuck inside.
While vertical schools generally have limited space on school grounds, they are usually built in central urban locations with parks or green spaces close by. These provided children with access to a variety of outdoor environments within walking distance, an opportunity which is not necessarily available in a suburban school.
A roof-top garden, partially covered and can be used during rainy days. Author supplied.
They don’t want to spend breaks climbing stairs
Children had to travel via the stairs multiple times a day, for recess or lunch breaks or to change classes.
Students said having to line up to walk up or down the stairs during the peak recess or lunch time wasted their breaks. This was particularly a concern for the primary school participants in years 3 to 5 who found climbing the stairs “tiring” and said it “hurt [their] legs”.
Children tried to limit their use of stairs by using learning and recreational facilities close to their home rooms, if permitted.
Some common facilities in one of the schools were located on intervening floors, a design feature that children described as “really convenient”. As one 12-year-old student said:
You just need to walk up one or two levels […] and you are at where you want to be.
Play spaces close to home classrooms mean students don’t have to climb stairs. Author supplied.
They don’t want too much noise
Open-plan classrooms and atrium stairways, where the stairs hug the edges of an atrium, are common features in vertical schools.
Students said they were major sources of noise pollution. They complained “the stomping [on the stairs] could be really loud” and “could interfere with [their] learning”. As one 9-year-old student told me:
if someone drops something on level one, you can hear it from level four.
This particularly happens when the learning areas are open to the atrium and the main staircase and therefore the noise travels between the levels.
Research suggests building stairs in the corners of the building and separating them from the atrium can minimise noise.
This way vertical movement won’t interrupt any central learning spaces.
A school with stairwells located in the corners and separated from the atrium. This can help reduce noise. Author supplied.
Children said they wanted ways to meet their friends informally. They did not want to feel closed off in their class groups.
Atriums, wide stairs, and expansive views both inward and outward can promote a sense of community at school. As a 9-year-old student described:
[Kids] can see what’s going on down there and if they see someone, they can knock on the glass and wave. And sometimes kids can watch their friends go to choir on those steps down there and they wave to them.
Wide stairs create opportunities for children to interact. Author supplied.
They also want a choice over the use of outdoor spaces
Children would like to choose their preferred outdoor space during breaks, whether they are terraces close to the learning spaces, school grounds or neighbourhood parks. As one 13-year-old student said:
I wish we could sit on [the terraces of] all of the levels […] You’re not allowed to go past level one in your lunch breaks because there is no supervision up here.
While all these opportunities might be present in a vertical school, using them all at the same time poses a challenge to the adult supervision.
Schools struggling with staff shortages may not be able to supervise students in multiple floors and the neighbourhood park during breaks. But this can make spaces overcrowded.
Additionally, vertical movement is strictly programmed in primary schools. Children rely on the teachers taking them upstairs or downstairs before and after the break.
Despite attractive architectural concepts anticipating stair landings for informal interactions, children were unable to pause at their leisure and connect with their environment or each other.
Vertical schools provide new opportunities and new challenges for the way students play and learn.
My research shows the importance of including children’s perspectives in the initial stages of school design. While architects may offer innovative visions, they will not be the ones eventually using the spaces they create.
Fatemeh Aminpour receives funding from Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH).
Afire, directed by Christian Petzold.Sydney Film Festival
Winter on Market Street, and it’s time to switch off one’s phone and retreat to the cinema cave for the 12 days of hibernation known as the Sydney Film Festival.
From the 50 or so films I caught this year, my top five (in no particular order) are below.
Afire
Afire is the latest from writer-director Christian Petzold.
Serial grump Leon (Thomas Schubert) and friend Felix (Langston Uibel) stay at a house near the Baltic Sea to spend time on their work removed from the distractions of city life (as though holidays don’t proffer more distractions!).
When they arrive at the house, they find out they will be sharing it with Nadja (Paula Beer). The scene is set for various dalliances and miscues – sexual and otherwise – as Leon tries to eke out a space to complete his second novel (it’s not going well).
Meanwhile, raging bushfires creep closer and closer, and the petty nature of the absurd mishaps in Leon’s life – and his blindness to the world – come into stark relief when the fires kill two of the group.
Much of the film is very funny, centred on the discomfort of pompous and awkward Leon. He’s the kind of person who wears a full suit of clothes to the beach, the kind of person for whom everything seems difficult – even the wind seems to be out to get him. The grace and ease of everyone around him only amplify his social and physical ineptitude.
At the same time, we empathise with Leon’s interior, muted longing, as he gazes at the happier denizens of the planet breezing by him.
Afire is a wicked comedy about everything going wrong and the capacity of “the quake of love” to transcend this, to pull us out of ourselves into a genuine engagement with the world.
A Storm Foretold
Trump’s former mover and confidant Roger Stone may be an easy target for this documentary from Danish filmmaker Christoffer Guldbrandsen.
But the genius of Guldbrandsen’s film lies in its refusal to morally condemn Stone, and in its documenting of the fraught but (apparently) tender relationship that develops between Guldbrandsen and Stone over the course of the project.
Stone’s charisma is evident throughout – he is eminently watchable, as much as we may dislike him – as he plans and prepares for the “Stop the Steal” movement that leads to the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.
With Richard Nixon as his idol, he comes across as something of a lunatic, a poser, insecure and arrogant, childish, petulant – but also a man with a good sense of humour. At the same time, Stone’s capacity to organise is impressive. More than anything else, he appears as a canny political operator, cynical but effective.
When Guldbrandsen has a heart attack midway through the making of the film, Stone reaches out to him in a gesture of friendship that helps Guldbrandsen complete the film. But we also follow Stone as he becomes increasingly militant, surrounded by his thuggish cult of defenders, routinely appearing on Alex Jones’ Infowars to drum up paranoiac support. Once it becomes clear the “Stop the Steal” movement has failed, Stone bolts from DC. When his expected pardon from Trump doesn’t come, he unleashes in a burst of fury.
Guldbrandsen’s footage from camera and phone is intercut with archival material, some involving nasty explosions of street violence. The whole thing develops with the dreadful anticipation of an apocalyptic thriller or disaster film.
Guldbrandsen’s documentary is an intimate and effective image of a political operator, remarkable for what Stone allows him to capture on camera.
Rheingold is an irreverent, riotous, rags-to-riches, macho gangster yarn from German-Turkish filmmaker Fatih Akin.
Based on the true story of German drug dealer, bandit and rapper Xatar (real name Giwar Hajabi), we follow Hajabi from his birth to Kurdish parents in Iran to his youth in a Kurdish ghetto in Bonn to his move to Amsterdam to become a serious drug dealer.
Music remains the consistent thing underpinning his criminal life. While in prison for an outlandish gold heist, he writes and records commercially successful songs.
A brilliant performance by Emilio Sakraya, who plays Xatar for most of the movie, anchors the character with humour and humanity. At times Sakraya plays Xatar like a ragamuffin street urchin comically out of his depth, at other times like a sensitive chap responding as best he can to the cards he has been dealt, strutting through life with a cheeky grin and twinkle in his eye.
Despite the absolute brutality of much of the violence, Hajabi never appears like a bloodthirsty maniac. This will rub many viewers the wrong way, though realism is far from the point of this film.
While other biopics often painfully try to recreate the sense of reality of the subject, Rheingold joyfully dispenses with any sense of reality from the beginning, delighting in its own absurdity and exploiting the fabulous nature of its premise for all its cinematic worth.
At the same time, the film does draw attention to the other continuity, along with music, throughout Hajabi’s life – imprisonment – and it is within this context of the life of the global refugee that all of the glee of the film should be read.
Rheingold is an amoral, violent and kinetic cinematic romp. It’s Akin’s most wilfully pleasurable film to date.
Sisu, from Finnish writer-director Jalmari Helander, is set in 1944. The war is winding down. The Nazis are retreating across Europe, leaving scorched earth in their wake.
Meanwhile, wizened, stoical goldminer Aatami (Jorma Tommila) strikes it rich and begins travelling with his gold and his dog back to the city. Alas, miner and Nazis cross paths.
The Nazis, led by equally stoical psychopath Bruno (Aksel Hennie), seize the opportunity and attempt to rob Aatami of his gold.
Their increasingly extreme attempts to kill Aatami continue to fail, while his vengeance exponentially ramps up. Bruno and company learn Aatami is a kind of living legend, a mythical ex-soldier who doesn’t seem to be able to die, no matter how many times he’s blown up, stabbed or shot.
The premise of Sisu is patently absurd, but it works so well because it is played seriously for all its worth.
Every aspect of Sisu is well done. The score and soundscape add intensity to the action sequences without seeming overbearing. The violence is grim, bloody and brutal without feeling like a senseless gorefest.
The tone is just right – mythical and epic, like the best westerns, but also effortlessly kinetic, as action cinema should be. An immensely satisfying film.
May December
May December, from Todd Haynes, follows actress Elizabeth Berry (Natalie Portman) as she shadows middle-aged “American mom” Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Julianne Moore) and her much younger husband Joe (Charles Melton) as they live the dream in Savannah, Georgia.
Twenty or so years earlier Gracie and Joe were all over the tabloid headlines. Gracie, in her mid-30s, had a sexual relationship with 13-year-old Joe in the pet shop where they worked. She was convicted and sentenced to prison, where her daughter was born.
Berry is playing Gracie in a new Hollywood movie and wants to understand her character. Her arrival sheds light on cracks in the façade of Gracie and Joe’s “happy marriage”.
Gracie appears as a tyrannical and desperate matriarch. Joe appears stunted, naïve and terribly unhappy. This unfolds before Berry’s cold eye as she ingratiates herself into their world.
Like much of Haynes’ work, May December takes ostensibly “ordinary” scenarios – a family dinner or a high school graduation – and endows them with a strangely disturbing, off-putting intensity.
The whole thing has echoes of Gothic melodrama, but Haynes masterfully represses the expected contours of character and story, leaving us with a far stranger experience, with this containment of dramatic action generating much of the film’s pulsing energy.
May December is about the way people represent themselves and the way they are represented, confirming the value of art that exploits the banal and weird stories of everyday people for a higher purpose. Berry’s commitment to the recreation of events, feelings, desires – her remarkably focused manufacturing of desire with Joe in order to better embody and understand Gracie – amplifies both the feeling of exploitation and the excuse for it.
As we watch the final sequences – the melodramatic Hollywood treatment of the story of Gracie and Joe – we feel both amused and mildly disgusted at the shabbiness of it all.
The problem with top five lists is that great films are invariably omitted. This year this seems to be more the case than usual, with at least ten other films that could make the list.
Silver Haze, from writer-director Sacha Polak, is a tender working-class British drama, slow and atmospheric, following a burn victim as she falls in love with a younger woman and together they plot her revenge.
A Thousand and One, starring Teyana Taylor as a mother who kidnaps her son from foster care and then raises him, stunningly recreates the feel of 1990s and early 2000s NYC culture, demanding our attention at every turn.
Aki Kaurismäki’s Fallen Leaves – a delightfully goofy romance exquisitely shot on 35mm film – and Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days – a sleepy and cerebral, lyrical film following the day to day of a fastidious toilet cleaner in Tokyo who philosophically enjoys the simpler pleasures of his life – could easily be in the top five.
The Indian films Joram and Kennedy – big-budget, cinematic thrillers interweaving political critique with traditional genre tropes – are both exceptional, as is the Serbian film, The Happiest Man in the World, based on a bizarre true story in which a woman at a Sarajevo speed-dating event meets the sniper who shot her.
The Mother of All Lies – this year’s winner of the Sydney Film Prize – is a thoroughly immersive documentary from Moroccan filmmaker Asmae El Moudir as she elicits her family’s memories of the 1981 Bread Riots.
The Mexican film Heroic also deserves mention. Set in an officer training academy built around an Aztec structure, it follows a young officer in training from recruitment to graduation as he is subjected to bullying and hazing. The whole thing is interspersed with surreal, eerie nightmare set pieces. It is an exceptional film and will probably be one of the best of 2023.
All equally impressive are the extremely well-made thriller Reality, starring Sydney Sweeney, with all dialogue taken from FBI transcripts of the interrogation of whistleblower Reality Winner; Australian horror film Late Night with the Devil; Canadian coming-of-age film Riceboy Sleeps; and the intellectually charged experimental film Connection of the Sticks from Australian artist Kuba Dorabialski.
Only two terrible films
There were only two films I regretted seeing.
The Cape is an Australian true crime story made for Stan. While the original case involving the disappearance/murder of a father and son in a fishing community on the Cape York Peninsula is certainly interesting, the film has nothing new to offer in terms of interpretation of the events or any kind of new evidence.
It is difficult to imagine why a project that unambitiously retreads a murder from 20 years earlier with no new information would have been greenlit. This kind of lurid true crime stuff is strictly bottom of the barrel. It may work on TV for true crime diehards, but it was a complete waste of time seeing this in a cinema.
How to Blow up a Pipeline is a more earnest, less cynical affair than The Cape, and it has the makings of an exciting eco-thriller, moving through the planning, execution and aftermath of an activist attack in Texas. But the dialogue is so laughably expositional, and the acting so amateurish, that the neat design (and good music) are completely undermined.
Because the acting is so bad and the dialogue even worse, the whole thing becomes very irritating to watch. I almost wished climate change had already done its worst, so I didn’t have to sit through this movie.
Alas, 50 films, around a third brilliant and only two duds? We would never find this outside of an international film festival, which is why, when winter rolls around next year, the hibernation will begin again.
Ari Mattes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susan St John, Honorary Associate Professor, Economic Policy Centre, Auckland Business School, University of Auckland
Getty Images
The Green Party made waves recently when it proposed to tax net wealth over NZ$2 million for individuals and $4 million for couples. As part of a broad range of actions, the policy aims to “end poverty”.
Reactions ranged from endorsement to accusations it was fuelled by envy, but the debate signalled what could become a major election issue: the wealth gap and how to fix it.
The claim it amounts to an “envy tax” assumes all wealth has been fully earned and fully taxed in the first place. But we know that’s not the case. A good portion of the wealth accumulated at the top is attributable to fortunate circumstances generating significant tax-free gains.
Inland Revenue’s recent survey of the wealthiest 311 New Zealand families revealed an average net worth of $276 million. At the same time, we know many households are struggling with the rising cost of living.
According to Stats NZ, around 155,000 households feel their incomes aren’t sufficient to meet everyday basic needs. Foodbanks report ever-rising numbers of families unable to feed themselves.
The major source of this lopsided wealth is the housing market. New Zealand has seen the biggest housing boom in the western world. Property owners have ridden the wave to make large tax-free capital gains, while others languish in substandard emergency housing or are forced to live in garages and cars.
Far too much of our scarce labour, building materials, imported fixtures and land have been diverted to unproductive high-end housing, leaving too little to meet the real housing need. Because it isn’t taxed properly, investing in housing has been encouraged as a way to accumulate wealth.
The trouble with a wealth tax
While the Greens’ wealth tax is a useful start to a wider discussion about inequality, it inevitably creates obstacles that in the end may be too difficult to overcome.
Probably the biggest hurdle is that this kind of tax can be incredibly complex and would provoke endless debate about what should be included.
The Greens’ proposal, for example, would capture business assets, shares, art above a certain value, and cars above $50,000. But what if you have two cars worth $49,000 each – why should they be excluded when one valued at $80,000 is included?
And how is debt factored into calculations of net wealth? House mortgages may be straightforward, but what about credit card debt, car finance or borrowing to finance overseas travel?
For all these reasons, it’s time to get away from debating notions of a confiscatory wealth tax and make the issue simply one of treating all income the same for tax purposes.
Instead of a complicated net wealth tax on everything, let’s start with the biggest culprit – housing. This would address the under-taxation of income from holding housing as an asset.
This is not the same as a capital gains tax – those days are over. Numerous tax working groups have failed over 30 years to make headway on this. Politically it is a dead duck.
Besides, the real problems – inequality and misallocation of resources – wouldn’t be touched by a capital gains tax. Such a tax can only apply to gains made on houses sold in the future, not the accumulated gains over many years, and it will always exempt the family home.
How a house tax works
Instead, let’s take the total value of all housing held by each individual, subtract registered first mortgages, and allow a $1 million exemption to reflect that everyone is entitled to a basic family home.
Then we treat this net equity as if it was in a term deposit generating a taxable interest return. When houses are held in trusts and companies, in most cases the income would be taxed at the trust or company rate with no exemption.
Calculated annually and pegged to the capital value of properties, this effective income would be taxed at the person’s marginal tax rate. It would affect those with second homes, multiple rentals, high-value properties – but without significantly affecting the great majority of homeowners who have much less than $1 million of net equity.
Thus a couple living in a $3 million house with a $1 million mortgage would fall under the threshold.
This approach would help put investment in housing, after a basic home, on the same footing as money in the bank or in shares. Better choices for the use of scarce housing resources should follow.
Landlords would no longer need expensive accountants to minimise taxable rental income. And it would reduce the blight of “ghost houses” and residential land-banking.
The simplicity of this income approach means the government can build on the existing tax system. It lives up to the mantra of a “broad base, low rate” tax system and affects only the very wealthy and those whose tax rates are highest.
Moreover, it is possible to implement quickly, using existing property valuations and registered mortgages, unlike a net wealth tax where the devil is in the contentious detail.
The effect should be positive for those struggling in the housing market, as more housing for sale or rent is opened up. Good landlords should welcome the greater simplicity.
In the longer term, the extra taxable income could produce revenue for redistribution and social investment. Critically, however, it would start to give the right price signals to reduce the over-investment in luxury housing and real estate held for capital gain.
The approach is essentially a circuit breaker that can simply and quickly address the accumulation of wealth by a small group of people.
Crucially, it has a sound economic rationale. By taking the first step and including luxury and investment housing returns that are currently under the radar, it reduces the advantages of holding housing rather than more productive investments.
Susan St John is affiliated with the Child Poverty Action Group.
The diplomatic thaw between China and Australian since the election of the Albanese government is being followed by a limited thaw in Australians’ negativity towards China, according to the Lowy Institute’s 2023 Poll.
But Australians remain deeply concerned about China as a long term potential military threat.
In the poll, more than half (56%) saw the resumption of ministerial contact as positive for Australia, while there has been a decline in those seeing China as a security threat.
Asked whether China is more of an economic partner or more of a security threat to Australia, those nominating a security threat is down 11 points from 2022 (to 52%). Those nominating an economic partner has risen 11 points to 44%.
Lowy Institute, Author provided
This still contrasts with Australians’ feelings in 2020, when more people saw China as more of an economic partner (55%) than a security threat (41%).
Also, three quarters (75%) of Australians continue to believe it is likely China will become a military threat in the next 20 years, unchanged since last year.
Nearly nine in ten people (87%) are concerned about China potentially opening a military base in a Pacific island country.
More than half (56%) say that in the event of a military conflict between China and the United States, Australia should remain neutral. This is five points above 2022.
Asked about reaction to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, 64% would support Australia sending arms and military supplies to the Taiwanese government. Six in ten (61%) would support using the Australian navy to help prevent China imposing a blockade around Taiwan. But only 42% would support “sending Australian military personnel to Taiwan to help defend it from China”.
Lowy’s executive director Michael Fullilove writes in his preface to the poll: “The sharp decline in Australian perceptions of China has levelled out.
“However, the levels of trust, confidence and warmth towards China and President Xi Jinping remain strikingly low. Five years ago, more than half of Australians trusted China to act responsibly in the world. Today, that figure is only 15%.”
The poll comprises two nationally representative surveys taken March 14-26 and April 11-26 2023, with sample sizes of 2,077 and 4,469 Australian adults, respectively. This is the 19th edition of the Lowy Poll.
The poll found that while trust in the United States has declined by four points from last year, it is 10 points higher than in 2020, the last year of the Trump presidency.
Confidence in President Joe Biden is 59%, steady since last year but 10 points under 2021, his first year in office.
More than eight in ten (82%) of people say the Australian-US alliance is important to Australia’s security. This is five points lower from last year’s 87%, which was a record high.
About half (49%) believe AUKUS will make Australian safer, while 46% believe it will make the region safer.
Two-thirds (67%) support the decision to acquire nuclear-powered submarines.
Polling in April, a month after the San Diego announcement of the detail of the submarine program, showed mixed feelings about the impact of the submarines on the likelihood of conflict in the region: 28% believed it will deter military conflict, while 20% thought it will increase the risk of conflict.
Asked whether the total cost of the submarine program (between $268 billion and $368 billion) is worth paying for the additional capability provided, 47% did not think the cost worth it.
When people were asked about threats to Australia’s vital interests in the next decade, cyberattacks from other countries ranked top (68%), ahead of a military conflict between the US and China over Taiwan (64%).
Fullilove sums up the feelings of the nation in 2023. “The 2023 Lowy Institute Poll reveals a sober optimism on the part of Australians looking out to the world. More Australians feel safe than last year. Their belief in democracy remains strong. They remain relatively hopeful about Australia’s economic outlook.
“But there has been no return to factory settings. The shocks of recent years broke many underlying assumptions about the world,” Fullilove writes.
The poll asked people how they rated the foreign performances of the six prime ministers of the past 15 years. Anthony Albanese ranked the highest with 83% saying he had done a very good or reasonable job handling foreign policy. He was followed by Kevin Rudd (78%), Julia Gillard (77%), Malcolm Turnbull (69%), Tony Abbott (50%) and Scott Morrison (46%).
Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The next federal election could be conducted under dramatically reformed electoral laws, with caps on spending and donations, and a much lower disclosure threshold for the disclosure of donations.
The changes, being worked up by Special Minister Don Farrell, would also trim the wings of third parties, such as Simon Holmes à Court’s Climate 200.
Farrell tells The Conversation’s Politics Podcast he is not waiting for the final report of the parliamentary Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, which in its interim report has recommended a set of reforms broadly in line with Labor policy. The report was tabled on Monday.
Farrell says waiting until the final report comes at the end of the year would make it harder to get legislation in place for the next election, due by May 2025. He will have negotiations over the coming months and wants as much bipartisanship as possible, despite the Coalition opposing key recommendations of the majority report.
The government’s reform package would drastically reduce the threshold for donation disclosure, from the current $15,200 to $1000, and provide for disclosure in “real time”.
On spending caps, Farrell says: “The Australian electoral system shouldn’t be just open to people with lots of money”, citing Clive Palmer’s huge spend of $117 million at the last election.
He’s hoping for “broad consensus” across parties “that we’ve got to do something to firstly restrict the amount of money that individuals can spend, but also ensure that combination of transparency so that ordinary people can run campaigns”.
“The expenditure by wealthy people to essentially buy election results is now completely out of control and we’ve got to do something about it”.
Farrell says caps should apply to third parties because “it’s got to be a level playing field”. There has to be as “balance” – increasing transparency, restricting the ability of rich people to by elections, and improving access to democracy.
“My job in the next six months before the final report [from the committee] will be to try and find that balance.”
Ambitiously, Farrell says: “I’d like to see a consensus outcome before the end of the year, and that implemented either this year or early next year so that the Australian Electoral Commission has got plenty of time to implement whatever we agree upon.”
He said a provision for truth in advertising, also recommended by the committee, would be in the government’s package “if we can get consensus on it in the lead up to the next election”.
Farrell hopes the date for the Voice referendum – which Anthony Albanese has said will be in the last quarter of the year – is sooner rather than later, because of the weather in the north in the latter months of the year. The speculation is that the vote will be in October.
“Look, it’s a challenge in every election getting into Indigenous communities and of course the later in the year that you go, then the more difficult it can be with storms and so forth [in the north of Australia] and of course that’s where large numbers of Indigenous Australians live.”
“I’m pleased to report that since this government came to office, we’ve lifted Indigenous enrolment from roughly 81% that it was at the time of the last election up to 84½%, and we’re expecting to get some more figures next month, which I’m confident will show an even greater participation. (At the next federal election more than 98% of the eligible general population will be on the roll.)
Farrell has made it easier for Indigenous people to enrol by allowing a Medicare card to be used as identification. “It’s a challenge but I think we have to devote more resources to getting more Indigenous Australians on the roll and I think you’ll find more Indigenous Australians will vote on this issue in the referendum.”
This week Farrell warned that the government’s legislation for its $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund, deferred by the Greens and the Coalition until mid October, could be on the way to being double dissolution legislation.
He tells the podcast: “Look, I’m not advocating a double dissolution. What I am advocating is for the Greens political party to come to their senses.”
Michelle Grattan ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.
An extensive search and rescue operation is underway to locate a commercial submersible that went missing during a dive to the Titanic shipwreck.
According to the US Coast Guard, contact with the submersible was lost about one hour and 45 minutes into the dive, with five people onboard. The vessel was reported overdue at 9.13pm local time on Sunday (12.13pm AEST, Monday).
The expedition was being run by US company OceanGate as part of an eight-day trip with guests paying US$250,000 per head to visit the wreck site. As of Monday afternoon (Tuesday morning in Australia), US Coast Guard Rear Admiral John Mauger said the watercraft likely had somewhere between 70 and the full 96 hours of oxygen available to the passengers.
The Titanic’s wreck sits some 3,800 metres deep in the Atlantic, about 700km south of St John’s, Newfoundland. Finding an underwater vehicle the size of a small bus in this vast and remote expanse of ocean will be no small feat. Here’s what the search and rescue teams are up against.
OceanGate’s Titan submersible goes missing
Submersibles are manned watercraft that move in a similar fashion to submarines, but within a much more limited range. They’re often used for research and exploration purposes, including to search for shipwrecks and to document underwater environments. Unlike submarines, they usually have a viewport to allow passengers look outside, and outside cameras that provide a broader view around the submersible.
The missing submersible in question is an OceanGate Titan watercraft, which can take five people to depths of up to 4,000m. The Titan is about 22 feet in length, with speeds of about 3 knots, or 5.5km per hour. Although submersibles are often connected to a surface vessel by a tether, video and photos suggest the Titan was likely operating independently of the surface ship.
According to OceanGate’s website, the Titan is used “for site survey and inspection, research and data collection, film and media production, and deep-sea testing of hardware and software”.
It also has a “real-time hull health monitoring (RTM) system”. This would likely include strain gauges to monitor the health of the Titan’s carbon fibre hull. A strain gauge is a kind of sensor that can measure applied force and small deformations in material resulting from changes in pressure, tension and weight.
The Titan’s carbon fibre hull connects two domes made of composite titanium – a material that can withstand deep-sea pressures. At 3,800m below sea level (the depth of the Titanic) you can expect pressures about 380 times greater than the atmospheric pressure we’re used to on the surface of the earth.
Titan on the launch platform underwater, awaiting a signal to commence the dive. OceanGate
Communication and rescue efforts
The Titan would have had an acoustic link with its surface vessel, set up through a transponder (a device for receiving a sonar signal) on its end, and a transceiver (a device that can both transmit and receive communications) on the surface vessel.
This link allows for underwater acoustic positioning, as well as for short text messages to be sent back and forth to the surface vessel – but the amount of data that can be shared is limited and usually includes basic telemetry and status information.
The Titan is a battery-operated watercraft. Given it has lost all contact with its surface vessel, it may have suffered a power failure. Ideally, there would be an emergency backup power source (such as an independent battery) to maintain emergency and life support equipment – but it’s unclear if the missing vessel had any power backup on hand.
According to reports, at least two aircraft, a submarine and sonar buoys were being used to search for the vessel. The sonar buoys will be listening for underwater noise, including any emergency distress beacons that may have gone off.
One of the major challenges in the rescue effort will be contending with weather conditions, which will further shrink an already narrow search window.
Titan commencing a dive to 4,000m underwater. OceanGate
What might have happened?
In a best case scenario, the Titan may have lost power and will have an inbuilt safety system that will help it return to the surface. For instance, it may be equipped with additional weights that can be dropped to instantly increase its buoyancy and bring it back to the surface.
Alternatively, the vessel may have lost power and ended up at the bottom of the ocean. This would be a more problematic outcome.
The worst case scenario is that it has suffered a catastrophic failure to its pressure housing. Although the Titan’s composite hull is built to withstand intense deep-sea pressures, any defect in its shape or build could compromise its integrity – in which case there’s a risk of implosion.
Another possibility is that there may have been a fire onboard, such as from an electrical short circuit. This could compromise the vehicle’s electronic systems which are used for navigation and control of the vessel. Fires are a disastrous event in enclosed underwater environments, and can potentially incapacitate the crew and passengers.
Time is of the essence. The search and rescue teams will need to find the vessel before its limited supplies of oxygen and water run out.
There’s an ongoing debate in scientific circles regarding the relative merit of manned submersibles, wherein each deployment incurs a safety risk – and the safety of the crew and passengers is paramount.
Currently, most underwater research and offshore industrial work is conducted using unmanned and robotic vehicles. A loss to one of these vehicles might compromise the work being done, but at least lives aren’t at stake. In light of these events, there will likely be intense discussion about the risks associated with using these systems to support deep-sea tourism.
Stefan Williams works for the University of Sydney. He receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Integrated Marine Observing System and the Trusted Autonomous Systems Defence Cooperative Research Centre for work related to the development and deployment of marine robotic systems.
Pakistan is experiencing a confluence of crises attributed to a decline in governance standards. Security challenges, chiefly posed by terrorism, have exacerbated the country’s economic deterioration, which in turn has given rise to energy shortages, rampant unemployment and soaring inflation rates.
As the nation’s economic predicament worsens, unscrupulous human traffickers are capitalising on the vulnerabilities of thousands of aspiring migrants who hope for better prospects in Europe. It is in this context that the overloaded ship sank into the waters off Greece.
The BBC has claimed Greek authorities failed to save the migrants vessel, which was not moving for at least seven hours before it capsized.
Initial estimates suggest that about 80 people died. It is too early to suggest how many of those were Pakistanis, but Pakistani authorities are fearing the worse. Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif declared June 19 a national mourning day.
Economic meltdown driving Pakistanis towards the deadly journey
As authorities move to act against human traffickers, there is a need to look at push factors behind this exploitation of economic migrants from Pakistan. Pakistan’s economy faces serious challenges. Its GDP growth rate is expected to drop to 0.5% in 2023, compared to 6% in 2022. Moreover, the International Monetary Fund has estimated the inflation rate might rise to 27% during 2023. The unemployment rate has also increased from 6.6% in 2020 to 7% in April 2023.
These economic hardships have led to some unprecedented scenes. Free food distribution points in major cities, organised by charities, are inundated. Such is the desperation that several people died earlier this year while fighting to receive free food.
Migrants often walk miles for days and night and pass through tough terrain to reach their destinations. shutterstock
The Pakistani government has asked for economic help from the IMF and its close friends like China and the Gulf states. But it does not have enough resources to meet the needs of its growing population.
The traditional lenders like the IMF are also very careful dealing with Pakistan where the endemic corruption of the elite has been a contributing factor to the economic crisis. While the IMF is cautious to provide further loans to Pakistan, it has imposed austerity measures and increasing general sales tax on goods and serviceslike reducing government spending.
Under such circumstances and with limited employment opportunities, millions of Pakistanis have been migrating from the country on a regular basis. Common destinations include the Middle East, Europe, and North America. Most of Pakistani migrant workforce 98 percent is in the Gulf region, from where Pakistan receives most of its remittances that support the economy.
This trend has grown sharply in recent years due to Pakistan’s economic meltdown. Because of strict rules and lengthy procedures associated with legal migration, many are opting for illegal migration instead.
People offer their support to Raja Yousaf, right, whose son Raja Sajid is missing after a shipwreck off the Greek coast, in Bindian village in Kotli, a district of Pakistan’s administrator Kashmir. Nasir Mehmood/AP
Rackets of human traffickers mushrooming
The desperate situation has led to the mushroom growth of people smugglers in Pakistan. In exchange for a large amount of money, they offer people transportation, fake documentation and other resources for a swift departure from the country.
Once on board the dangerous journey, the migrants can fall under the full control of the human smugglers, who can subject them to all sorts of exploitation. In the tragic boat accident in the Mediterranean, the women and children were forced below the deck to make space for more and more migrants on the old and rusty fishing boat.
The Mediterranean Sea has been a major route for migrants attempting to reach Europe from various countries in North Africa, the Middle East, and elsewhere. But due to overcrowded and unworthy vessels, inadequate safety measures, and harsh weather conditions, many of these endeavours end tragically, with sinking boats and loss of life. According to the International Organization of Migration, 174 migrants died in the Mediterranean in 2022 alone.
Greece has declared three days of mourning for the shipwreck that killed at least 78 people. Petros Giannakouris/ AP
Efforts have been made by international organisations and governments to address these issues. They include enhancing border controls and surveillance, implementing rescue operations, providing humanitarian aid, improving legal pathways for migration and addressing the root causes of migration. However, this might not be enough without addressing the underlying reasons millions are forced to leave their homelands.
While conflicts remain a major push factor, the grim economic situation in many countries continue to be another spur for people to leave their homelands.
Considering the latest boat tragedy, the government of Pakistan has demonstrated a reactive response only towards the issue of people smuggling.
However, it is imperative for the government to adopt a more proactive approach by formulating and implementing a comprehensive strategy that effectively addresses this complex problem.
Primarily, the government can prioritise the development of ample job opportunities at home. This can be achieved through enhanced investments in local industries and small scale enterprises, fostering economic growth and curtailing the allure of desperate measures to seek a life elsewhere.
Zahid Shahab Ahmed is a chief investigator in a research project called ‘Religious populism, emotions and political mobilisation’, funded by the Australian Research Council (DP220100829).
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David S G Goodman, Director, China Studies Centre, Professor of Chinese Politics, University of Sydney
Leah Millis/Pool Reuters/AP
A potentially significant meeting took place in Beijing this week when Chinese President Xi Jinping met US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Blinken’s visit to Beijing was ostensibly to meet his Chinese counterpart, Foreign Minister Qin Gang. Qin had previously been China’s ambassador to the US until earlier this year and was well-known in Washington diplomatic circles. Blinken’s trip to Beijing had been scheduled for some time, and then postponed.
The meeting with Xi, however, was uncertain until shortly before it happened.
Media coverage of the event seems to reflect some of the inherent uncertainties in the US-China relationship, as well. Some photographs depict Blinken as slightly concerned or ferocious, while others appears to show Xi towering over Blinken.
Some images, however, show more open, friendly gestures between the two – perhaps signalling a genuine thawing of the recent frosty relations between the two superpowers.
How relations deteriorated this year
So, what does this meeting mean in reality? In terms of significance, its not the content of the talks that matter so much as what preceded them.
When Biden came into office in early 2021, it seemed to herald a slight rapprochement between the two governments. Though there were still disagreements over many issues, the two leaders held a virtual summit at the end of 2021.
Then, on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Bali in November 2022, Xi and Biden met face to face and spoke at some length. There was a general feeling of mutual appreciation in their respective positions on global issues such as climate change. It was not so much a meeting of minds, but rather an agreement to avoid the catastrophe of open conflict.
Biden and Xi engaged in a warm handshake in Bali. Alex Brandon/AP
The leaders also agreed that Blinken would visit Beijing in the new year.
This atmosphere of gradually improving relations came to a halt in February, however, when a Chinese high-altitude balloon – dubbed a “spy balloon” in the US – drifted across North America and was eventually shot down by the US Air Force. Blinken’s visit was postponed, and China criticised the US for destroying the balloon, which it claimed was a weather balloon.
While both sides eventually emphasised the continued need for dialogue, a standoff developed. The situation only worsened when a US reconnaissance flight in the South China Sea was intercepted by a Chinese fighter in late May.
Then, three weeks ago, western media reported that the Chinese defence minister, Li Shangfu, had snubbed the US secretary of defence, Lloyd Austin, by turning down the opportunity to meet at a security conference in Singapore.
Given the several meetings between US presidential advisers and their Chinese counterparts that had taken place in May before the summit, the significance of Li and Austin not speaking in Singapore may have been exaggerated. At worst, it could be considered a lost opportunity.
The Chinese government may have wanted to ensure Blinken’s rescheduled visit to Beijing would go ahead this month, putting more emphasis on these high-level talks than the meeting between defence officials.
‘Candid, substantive and constructive’
While there were apparently no major breakthroughs in Beijing, Blinken’s visit appears to have succeeded in returning relations between the two governments to where they were in November 2022.
The leaders seemed to reinforce the sentiments of that earlier meeting in Bali, focusing on mutual respect and the need to avoid a drift to conflict. Among other things, Xi told Blinken that rivalry between great powers could not solve problems in the United States or challenges facing the world.
Neither party can shape the other according to its own wishes, let alone deprive the other of its legitimate right to development.
The State Department, meanwhile, characterised the discussions as “candid, substantive and constructive”, emphasising
the importance of maintaining open channels of communication across the full range of issues to reduce the risk of miscalculation.
Both sides still have domestic constituencies to appease and without a doubt Washington’s may prove less biddable than Beijing’s.
For example, from the Chinese reports of the meeting Beijing seems to be willing to reopen discussions with Washington on climate change and cooperation on transnational crime of various sorts.
In return, China might well expect some greater commitment from the US to not interfere in what Beijing considers its domestic interests in Taiwan. As China-based commentators have pointed out, American electoral politics may make that commitment difficult (though not impossible) for Biden and Blinken to deliver.
The next step in placing US-China relations on a more even keel would be increased interactions between the two governments. While these have been agreed for the near future in foreign affairs, finance and economic development, the two sides have apparently not agreed to resume talks between their military leaders.
Biden and Xi are expected to meet again face to face later this year, perhaps at international summits in India or San Francisco.
Biden is unlikely to visit China himself, though, in the near future. In what is increasingly becoming not just a bad-tempered but an inherently divisive presidential election campaign in the US, that might prove a difficult step for the incumbent to do.
David S G Goodman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Late last year, the Reserve Bank gave 1,000 Australians diaries and asked them to record every payment they made over the course of a week. Of the 13,000 payments, only 17 were with cheques.
It’s been an astounding collapse. Back in 1980 at the start of the credit card era, 85% of non-cash payments were made with cheques. Today it’s less than 0.1%.
Earlier this month, the government announced it was following New Zealand, Denmark, the Netherlands and others, closing our cheque system down by 2030.
Meanwhile, New Zealand is already on to the next thing. Having phased out cheques, it’s now looking at winding down the use of cash.
So how close is Australia now to becoming a cash-free nation?
The hidden costs of cheques and cash
Cheques are horrendously expensive to process. The average cost of everything that had to happen to process a cheque exceeds $5 per payment, mostly borne by banks.
But cash is expensive in its own way. The average cost of creating, sorting and trucking all those sheets of plastic and coins exceeds 50 cents per payment, mostly passed on to banks and retailers, and it is soaring as the number of payments plummets.
As recently as 2007, the vast bulk of consumer payments – 69% – were in cash. By 2019 only 27% were in cash. By 2022, after two years of COVID, it was only 13%.
At this rate, it’s hard to be certain how long cash will last.
What made cheques so slow and costly
For those who’ve never had to write one, cheques are bank-issued pieces of paper on which the owner writes the name of the person they want the bank to pay and the amount. They they hand it to that person, who then hands it to their bank, which then tries to get the money from the payer’s bank.
Behind the scenes, until recently when the electronic transmission of digital images changed things, each bank would collect all the cheques that had been presented to its branches each day and sort them into bags, one for each originating bank.
Then, late at night, its “bag man” would travel to a nondescript city location with a bag for each bank, hand the correct one to each of the other bagmen, and be given bags in return, which the bagman would take back to the bank for signature checking.
When each bank worked out what it owed the other bank, they would usually discover the flows largely cancelled each other out, and then make net payments which would be reflected in the cheque-writer’s account, up to five business days later.
Always expensive, the cost per cheque grew and grew as the number of Australians paying with cheques dwindled to a fraction of what it had been.
How moving cash became a loss-making business
It’s the same sort of story with cash. Although we don’t often think about it, cash costs an awful lot to move, sort and restock.
Printing the notes still makes money – it costs about 32 cents to make each note, whether it’s worth $5 or $100, although making some coins now does lose money.
The real expense is in moving notes and coins around, keeping them nearby and restocking banks and cash registers. Aside from payments the Reserve Bank makes to banks for returning damaged notes, the banks (and, through them, the retailers) are expected to pay for the lot.
Until recently that gave the two firms that dominate the business (Linfox Armaguard, and Prosegur, which owns Chubb Security) a pretty good deal.
Except that the volume of cash they’ve carried has dived 47% over the past ten years, 30% of it during COVID.
Both firms say their money-moving arms are incurring “heavy financial losses” and that if they increase their prices much more, retailers might move even further away from cash, pushing their costs even higher.
Linfox Armaguard and Prosegur have been given permission to merge. Linfox
Last week, the Competition and Consumer Commission allowed them to merge on the condition that they limit their price increases to the consumer index plus 7.5% per year. That increase is so steep as to suggest a death spiral: the more they charge, the less retailers will use cash, the more they’ll have to charge.
The only way out, unless they can make really big efficiencies, or unless the decline in the use of cash stops, would be for the government to return to subsidising the use of cash. It’s hard to see how it could make the case to do that when there are cheaper emerging technologies.
Bank transfers cost a mere fraction of using cash, and pretty soon we’ll be able to use them for everything, via things such as QR codes.
So when will cash go the way of cheques?
A previous federal government has already tried to eliminate the use of cash for transactions worth more than $10,000, as part of its attack on the black economy.
Announced in 2016 by the Turnbull Coalition government, the ban was due to come into force in 2019. But in 2020, the Morrison-led Coalition government backed down.
If Australia wants to ban cash (and ban it for small transactions too – cash is now used less than electronic methods for transactions of all sizes) the easiest solution might be simply to wait.
Cards are now the dominant means of exchanging money, and direct transfers are growing from a small base.
Pure extrapolation would suggest cash has less than a decade to go, but it will probably hang around for longer as an (expensive, little-used) backup that maintains privacy.
Like cheques, cash will probably die gradually, then suddenly. By the time it does, there will be few users left who care.
Peter Martin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Dry July, an Australian fundraising campaign to support people affected by cancer, is almost here again. The premise is that abstaining from booze and hangovers for a month frees up money to donate.
Traditional alcohol producers, who have expanded into the US$11 billion non-alcoholic drinks industry, have helped make the high prices charged seem acceptable to consumers by using a marketing tactic called price-anchoring.
Lured into paying more
When we encounter a new product, we latch onto whatever seems relevant in the immediate environment to estimate its value. Sellers often exploit this by staging information at purchase points. The classic is a price tag with $99 struck out and $79 written in. Whether it’s accurate or not, the $99 reference point shapes our perception of value and price.
The essence of anchoring is that we tend to rely too heavily on an initial piece of information (the “anchor”) when making decisions. This can lead to skewed judgements and poor decisions in everything from deciding whether to have surgery to buying real estate.
Anchoring has been used to reinvent and elevate the virgin drinks category by exploiting the fact we are used to paying high prices for alcohol in bottles, cans or glasses of a certain size, shape and sophistication. When alcohol-free versions with similar labels appear beside them on the shelf, website or menu, we tacitly accept they should command roughly the same prices.
It’s not just that the next bottle along provides a suggestive price. Our brains, steeped in marketing, know that alcohol prices can range far upwards from “normal”, making them not just comparison points but the proverbial $99 scratched out. So even if we spend a lot on non-alcoholic wine, we feel like we have scored compared with what we might have dropped on a bottle of Grange.
Where we are most susceptible
The effect is strongest in bottle shops and bars, where the glitz of alcohol marketing, social pressure and the sheer number of expensive items overwhelms our rational thinking. But it also works on websites of the national liquor outlets where special zero-alcohol categories have been established beside the traditional beer, wine and spirits listings.
It doesn’t take much browsing to confirm that prices are similar. Currently, on one of the big retailers’ websites, a case of 330ml bottles of Heineken Lager (5% alcohol) is $55, Heineken 3 (3.3% alcohol) is $50, and Heineken Zero (less than 0.5% alcohol) is $49. Among the non-alcoholic spirits, 700ml of Lyre’s Dry London Spirit – “crafted to capture the essence of a classic gin” – is $51 at another outlet while the same size bottle of 37% alcohol Gordon’s London Dry Gin is $45. Gordon’s own non-alcoholic offering – Gordon’s 0.0 Alcohol Free – is listed at $38.
Price anchoring in the alcohol-free market comes with an extra twist of lemon.
Brands will encourage you to think their investment in developing “healthier options” using “high-quality ingredients” means high prices are fair enough, and that a non-alcoholic drink made with arcane “botanicals” and “adaptogens” in a nice bottle is worth a splurge.
We get caught thinking it’s worth paying extra for non-alcoholic versions of well known brands. www.shutterstock.com
But look at what makes up the price. All processed drinks incur a Goods and Services Tax (GST). And drinks that contain alcohol are hit with a heavy additional excise. The exact percentage is difficult to calculate, but the alcohol-related tax on a bottle of full-strength beer can exceed 30%.
Industry players don’t pay that tax on non-alcoholic drinks. So, in a sense, they are pocketing a hefty bonus that well-anchored customers forget is not being passed on to the government. Ouch.
Supermarkets and nurturing the next generation
Seemingly at odds with price anchoring is the appearance of non-alcoholic versions of some famous brands in supermarkets.
An incentive for names like Heineken, Coopers and Gordon’s to be in supermarkets is visibility in a family-friendly environment. Their brand becomes recognisable to customers who are underage now, but will soon be ready to buy alcohol for their 18th birthday bash.
It’s a risky strategy, however, and can attract adverse publicity. In fact, to protect their reputations, several supermarket chains in New Zealand require customers to show ID when purchasing non-alcoholic lookalike drinks.
Besides awareness, you can reduce the effect by curating your exposure to price information. If you need non-alcoholic drinks for home or an event, visit the supermarket before the bottle shop. The range may not be as big, the drinks may not be any cheaper, and you may need to go to the bottle shop anyway. But the experience will put the untaxed non-alcoholic products in a fairer context – the soft drink aisle. Comparing prices under those sober lights, you might suddenly feel like picking up a bottle of ginger ale instead.
In bars and clubs, you can try to flip the script. Ask for your soda water in a fancy glass with lots of ice and slices of lemon or lime. This anchors what’s in your hand to high-priced cocktails.
Of course, if you embrace the life of a true ascetic, H₂O is a zero-dollar option that, as Nietzsche said always suffices. In Dry July, you might even join the hype and call it non-alcoholic vodka.
Cameron Shackell works for GeneriTrend, a firm using AI to quantify the genericness of brands and trademarks. Its customers at the time of publication do not include any drinks-related brands, alcoholic or otherwise.
When an extreme weather event happens somewhere in the world these days, it’s common to read quotes from climate scientists explaining this is exactly the kind of event we expect to see more often as climate change progresses. Such events are often devastating, but not surprising if you’ve been paying attention to the climate projections issued by scientists for many decades now.
But every so often, an event is so extreme it causes scientists to question our understanding of just how fast climate change is progressing. One such event was the heatwave across the Pacific Northwest region of the United States and Canada in the northern summer of 2021, when temperatures at some locations hit 49℃ (121℉) – hotter than the all-time record for Texas.
It broke heat records by such a wide margin that scientists were quoted in the media saying they hadn’t expected to see temperatures so high in the Pacific Northwest until much later this century.
The basic concern for these scientists was that our computer climate models are best at simulating things that span large areas and long time periods, such as the annual average global temperature (what we broadly mean when we say “the climate”). They aren’t as good at simulating smaller-scale things such as an individual storm or hot wind (that is, “the weather”).
It’s not that our models can’t simulate small-scale weather – they’re basically the same models we use for weather forecasting – it’s just very computationally expensive to have them zoom in and run in “weather mode” to get a highly detailed simulation. It’s feasible for a seven-day weather forecast, but not for a century-long climate simulation.
Given this limitation, the scientists quoted in the media were concerned extreme weather events might be more sensitive to climate change than our models suggest.
Quantity matters too
While these concerns around the quality of our model simulations at weather-relevant scales are valid, what’s often overlooked is the quantity of model simulations involved. Given the natural variability in the climate system, scientists prefer not to rely on just one model simulation when making climate projections. Instead, they run a range of century-long simulations – from just a handful up to 50 or more for the most well-resourced modelling groups – and look at the range of possible outcomes.
For climate metrics such as the annual average global temperature, that’s enough simulations to capture the full range of possibilities. It’s a value that doesn’t vary much from year to year because it’s an average over the entire globe, so the climate change signal dominates over natural variability. To use a slightly more technical term, we say it has a high “signal-to-noise” ratio.
In contrast, the weather can vary greatly over relatively short time frames, and therefore has a very low climate signal-to-noise ratio. Something like the hottest day of the year at a given location is especially noisy, because small variations in the alignment of weather patterns can make all the difference between a regular hot day and a record-shattering one.
In this situation, many more simulations would be required to reliably estimate the upper limit on what extreme temperatures are possible.
To try and understand how many model simulations would be needed, our recently published research used a climate model to simulate 45,000 years’ worth of daily weather at Seattle-Tacoma airport in the Pacific Northwest.
We then went through a process of picking out 1,000 random samples of 100 years of data from this population of 45,000 years, then 1,000 samples of 500 years, 1,000 years, 5,000 years, and so on. For each sample, we wrote down the maximum daily temperature we found (that is, the record temperature produced in each of these sample simulations).
Distribution of record temperatures at Seattle Tacoma airport for 1000 repeated sub-samples of varying size.
To our surprise, as the samples got bigger, the record temperatures we found showed little evidence of stabilising. They just continued to grow, indicating even samples spanning several thousand years are insufficient to capture the full range of possible extreme temperatures.
The reason we kept finding hotter days as the sample size grew is that the larger samples included more weather patterns. This meant there was a greater chance of producing a unique pattern with the near-perfect alignment of weather systems to generate even more heat at our fixed location. It turns out the weather patterns that produce the most extreme heat are very unique – and indeed far rarer than we’d expected.
The weather pattern for the hottest day at Seattle Tacoma airport (green cross) in the observational record (June 28 2021, left) and our model simulations (right). The similarity between the two suggests extremely hot days in the model are generated by similar weather patterns as in the real world.
Luck of the draw
From this perspective, the record-shattering heat experienced in the Pacific Northwest in 2021 was due not just to the overall trend of global heating, but also to the random shuffling of the weather. And our research suggests the latter factor plays an even larger role in this type of event than many climatologists had suspected.
This means that even though the Pacific Northwest heatwave broke records by such a wide margin, that is not necessarily a sign climate change is happening faster than expected, or that our models are doing a bad job of simulating how climate change increases the likelihood of extreme heatwaves.
It could simply be that our sample sizes are too small. If we had run more model simulations we could have simulated the right chance alignment of weather to generate a record-shattering day, meaning this real-life heatwave wouldn’t then have outstripped climatologists’ predictions to such an extent.
Advances in supercomputers have traditionally been used to run climate models at higher resolution (that is, to zoom in and get closer to “weather mode”). But when it comes to predicting just how extreme the weather can get in a warming world, we might get more bang for our buck by using those advances to run many more simulations as well. That will show us what kind of extreme heat is possible as a rare event now, and what will be more commonplace in the coming decades.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Artificial intelligence (AI) seems to be everywhere these days, and healthcare is no exception.
There are computer vision tools that can detect suspicious skin lesions as well as a specialist dermatologist can. Other tools can predict coronary artery disease from scans. There are also data-driven robots that guide minimally-invasive surgery.
There is no doubt that in terms of patient health, workflows and system efficiency, AI will benefit the health system.
But there are legitimate concerns about the accuracy of such tools, including how well they work in new settings (such as a different country or even a different hospital from where they were created), and whether they “hallucinate” – or make things up.
Robot-assisted surgery is already the reality in some technologically equipped hospitals. Shutterstock
Developing ‘medical grade’ tools
In our recent article in the Medical Journal of Australia, we argue using AI effectively in healthcare will require retraining of the workforce, retooling health services, and transforming workflows.
Critically, we also need to collect evidence AI tools are “medical grade” before we use them on patients.
Many claims made by the developers of medical AI may lack appropriate scientific rigour and evaluations of AI tools may suffer from a high risk of bias. This means the tests run to ensure their accuracy are too narrow.
AI tools can make errors, or stop working when the application context changes. Conversational agents such as chatbots may produce misleading medical information that may delay patients seeking care. They may also make inappropriate recommendations.
All this means we need standards for the AI tools that impact diagnosis and treatment of patients. Clinicians should be given training on how to critically assess AI applications to understand their readiness for routine care.
We should expect to be able to replicate the results from one context to another, under real-world conditions. For example, a tool developed using historical data from a hospital in New York should be carefully trialled with live patient data in Broome before we trust it.
Randomised controlled trials of AI tools, where these differences are controlled for, would represent a gold standard of evidence for their use.
There’s a view that all we need to do in Australia is adopt the best of what is produced internationally, and that we don’t need deep sovereign capabilities.
Perhaps we can rely on the regulation of AI tools under way through the European Union’s AI Act, or the United States Food and Drug Administration’s processes for assessing Software as a Medical Device.
Nothing is further from the truth.
AI requires local customisation to support local practices, and to reflect diverse populations or health service differences. We don’t want to just export our clinical datasets and import back the models built with them without adapting to our contexts and workflows. We need to monitor the clinical deployments of AI tools into our settings.
Without some degree of algorithmic sovereignty – the capability to produce or modify AI in Australia – the nation is exposed to new risks and the benefits of the technology will be limited.
The Australian Alliance for Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare has produced a roadmap for future development.
It identifies gaps in Australia’s capability to translate AI into effective and safe clinical services and provides guidance on key issues such as workforce, industry capability, implementation, regulation, and cybersecurity.
These recommendations offer a path toward an AI-enabled Australian healthcare system capable of delivering personalised and patient-focused healthcare, safely and ethically.
The plan also envisages a vibrant AI industry sector that creates jobs and exports to the world, working side by side with an AI-aware workforce and AI-savvy consumers.
AI has the potential to transform medicine. It can do so by harnessing computational power to discern subtle patterns in complex data spanning biology, images, sensory and experiential data, and more.
With care and strategic investment, innovations in AI will surely benefit clinicians and patients alike. Now is the time to act to ensure Australia is well-placed to benefit from one of the most significant industrial revolutions of our time.
Karin Verspoor receives funding from the NHMRC and the ARC. She serves as a Board member of BioGrid Australia. Karin is a co-founder of the Australian Alliance for Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare, along with the other authors of this article.
David Hansen receives funding from NHMRC. David serves as a Board member of Australasian Institute of Digital Health. David is a co-founder of the Australian Alliance for Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare, along with the other authors of this article.
Enrico Coiera receives funding from NHMRC. Enrico is a shareholder and Board member of
Evidentli, a digital health company. Enrico is a co-founder of the Australian Alliance for Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare, along with the other authors of this article.
Children are abandoned and forgotten when a large number of Fijians leave the country for work and start new relationships abroad.
Consultant Marica Tabualevu of the Fiji-Australian Humanitarian Partnership has called for measures that would hold people responsible or accountable for forgotten children.
She said adults who engaged in such behaviour forgot they had children “left behind with no income or very little parental support” just because they did not want their partner anymore.
Tabualevu told a public consultation in Suva last Friday discussing a draft of the Child Care and Protection Bill and Child Justice Bill 2023 that too many children were being “abandoned”.
Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre’s senior counsellor advocate and community educator Ilisapeci Veibuli also called on the Fiji government to ensure there was sufficient budget to support the draft law as implementation and enforcement were important.
In a separate event, the NGO Empower Pacific said that last year more than 1040 children were counselled with the bulk of them suffering from depression.
Elena Vucukulais a Fiji Times reporter. Republished with permission.
The University of the South Pacific’s regional journalism programme has penned three milestone Memorandums of Understanding that will usher in greater collaboration with media industry partners over student upskilling and training, joint workshops and seminars, and publication of the award-winning training newspaper Wansolwara.
Papua New Guinea’s National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) and the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) have formalised three-year MOU partnerships with the region’s longest running journalism programme at Laucala campus.
They were signed by NBC managing director Kora Nou and PINA managing editor Makereta Komai respectively.
The signing ceremony was witnessed by PNG’s Minister for Communication and Information Technology Timothy Masiu — a former journalist — and USP’s deputy vice-chancellor (regional campuses and global engagement) Dr Giulio Paunga.
“It is indeed history because we have never had such an MOU between this prestigious university and our National Broadcasting Corporation, which is a flagship of PNG,” said Masiu.
“The intention of this MOU is basically threefold — student training, staff exchanges and joint workshops, seminars, research activities. We are really looking forward to this; very interesting times ahead for NBC and your university.”
To further strengthen the MOU, Masiu announced a F$10,000 funding support for the journalism programme through the PINA office. NBC’s managing director is also current chair of PINA.
Masiu as a journalist Masiu also shared his excitement and delight at being part of the signing ceremony and reminisced about his time as a broadcaster for NBC, and later a journalist for The National daily newspaper in Port Moresby.
Dr Paunga said the university was also currently working closely with the PNG government and the progress of this collaboration demonstrated great things to come between the two countries, its people and future students.
USP Journalism programme coordinator Associate Professor Shailendra Singh said the programme was doing some good work in journalism in Fiji and the region. He commended Komai and Nou for their cooperation and vision over the MOU.
PNG’s Communications Minister Timothy Masiu . . . shared his background experience as a former journalist. Image: Wansolwara
“The MOU we have signed is going to take the training and development of our journalists to another level,” he said.
“We have been training journalists for a long time. Under this MOU, we will be able to decide our own agenda when it comes to training and research, instead of everything being designed from someplace else and us merely implementing it.
“We know PNG will be sending students to study at USP. Talks are underway and if that happens then there will be greater collaboration and interaction between students coming from PNG.”
Dr Singh said USP had 12-member countries and PNG was set to become the 13th member if talks went according to plan.
Fiji Times partnership
The latest 32-page Wansolwara . . . published as a Fiji Times insert thanks the new MOU.
Earlier, on May 3 — World Press Freedom Day — USP Journalism signed the first MOU with Fiji Times Limited. The partnership includes, among other supportive initiatives, the publication of Wansolwara, twice a year.
The first Wansolwara edition for 2023 was published in The Sunday Times last week and featured 32 pages of news, sports and special reports written and produced by USP journalism students across Fiji and the region.
Dr Singh said the partnership with Fiji Times Ltd was also a boost for the programme.
“This is a historic moment, not just for us but also for our students, as this will give them the exposure they need to contribute and improve the standard of journalism in our region,” he said.
“Fiji Times Ltd has been supportive of the USP Journalism Programme for many years, and this partnership will strengthen their commitment to promote a free and fair environment for journalists.”
Fiji Times Pte Ltd general manager Christine Lyons said the company would cover the printing of Wansolwara twice in the academic year. This amounted to one publication per semester.
“It will be circulated as an insert in The Fiji Times as part of its corporate social responsibility,” she said.
Fiji Times Ltd was represented by editor-in-chief Fred Wesley at the May MOU signing.
Viliame Tawanakoro is a final-year student journalist at USP’s Laucala Campus. He is also the 2023 student editor forWansolwara, USP Journalism’s student training newspaper and online publication. Republished in a partnership between Asia Pacific Report and Wansolwara.
Money in electoral politics is like salt in the human body. Essential for activity – but too much imperils the heart.
Australia’s laws for the financing of national elections are the least developed of any comparable country. The present model marks its 40th birthday this year. In that time, other nations, and most Australian states, have modernised and tightened their laws.
Parliamentary committee recommendations that have just been released – with the endorsement of Labor, Greens and crossbench members – may be the catalyst for change.
What is the current regime? What reforms are proposed? And what are the prospects for lasting reform?
The Hawke government laid down the essentials of the present system in 1983. Then, as now, they involve some public disclosure of donations, plus public funding for parties or candidates that receive over 4% of the vote.
Disclosure is meant to achieve transparency around sources of campaign money. Public funding is “clean money”, to defray the cost of electioneering. (It has particularly helped minor parties, which attract few corporate donations.) Together, these measures aimed for improved integrity and a modicum of political equality.
The disclosure net has widened, particularly under the last Coalition government, to cover all sorts of lobby groups that electioneer. But at most it only requires annual reporting.
The net is also replete with holes. Parties only have to disclose “gifts” over $15,200 a year. Smaller donations, for federal electioneering, may be given anonymously to each division of a party.
Worse, the Liberal and Labor parties charge six-figure annual sums to join their business “network” or “forum”. The Australian Electoral Commission then lets them decide if that is a “gift” or a valuable purchase. This equates the undemocratic sale of access to politicians to, say, a genuine conference fee.
Public funding started at 30 cents per vote (quaintly, the cost of a stamp for a mailout). It is now over $3.12 per vote. Without limits on spending or donations, it has acted more like bankable seed funding than an incentive to avoid big and possibly dodgy donations.
Proposed reforms
The latest recommendations aim for holistic regulation across four topics. In doing so, they approximate Canada’s system, the most comprehensively regulated of our liberal-egalitarian democratic cousins. The system would also be similar to those that have evolved, over the past 15 years, for state elections in New South Wales and Queensland.
The first topic is transparency. The report recommends that gifts over $1,000 a year to a party – or to a lobby group for electioneering – be disclosed. For greater timeliness, it follows Queensland in proposing “real-time” disclosure.
The second topic is spending limits. These are a must for fairness. For the last two national elections we witnessed the farce of Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party splurging record amounts to drown out its rivals.
Spending limits can rein in that arms race. While the UAP had little formal success, it still distorted the agenda (and vexed many electors).
The third topic is donation caps. As with spending limits, no dollar amount is yet proposed. This gives wriggle room to find a “Goldilocks” figure somewhere between the Greens’ desire for a low cap and what the Liberal-National parties and Climate 200-backed teal independents would prefer.
By comparison, state caps range between $7,000 a year to a NSW party and just $4,320 over a four-year term in Victoria. As with spending limits, it’s important to adjust for the bigger stage of national campaigns.
The freedom of expression of lobby groups also must be accommodated, without letting them dominate. (Unlike parties, lobby groups are neither up for election, nor publicly accountable.)
The final topic is public funding. To compensate for reining in donations, public funding will rise. The report also recommends “administrative funding” for parties, to assist with compliance costs. Taxpayers struggling with the burgeoning cost of living can but hope public funding does not swell to the $8+ per vote enjoyed by ACT parties.
The money spent by Clive Palmer and his United Australia Party at the 2019 election did not win seats, but it did distort the outcome. Michael Chambers/AAP
Political prospects
“It’s time for change”, as the old slogan goes. But change to what? The recommendations merely outline a model. It presumably enjoys in-principle government support.
Much needs to be thrashed out over the rest of the year. Whatever bill the government ultimately proposes to the Senate will require the Greens’ and crossbench support, or opposition backing. It is unlikely to attract the latter.
Liberal-National committee members embraced greater disclosure, but at the $8,000-a-year mark, and not more than monthly. They rejected donation and spending caps “as proposed”. Not outright: Liberal MPs felt the sting of being outspent by teal independents in 2022.
Being in opposition, they have a point. Labor will attract extra donations while it wields power. Above all, the Coalition wants the “affiliation fees” of those unions that are part of the Labor Party to be capped like donations. It also worries about unions electioneering in ways that most businesses would not.
Independent MPs Senator David Pocock and Kate Chaney broadly supported the proposals. However, they also want concessions to “recognise barriers” to independent candidates (who lack party infrastructure and nationwide branding) and new parties.
Politics necessarily mixes principle and pragmatics. In the law about politics, pragmatics includes self-interest. Reform, at last, seems likely. Yet, to be lasting, reform should also attract a broad array of parties and even lobby groups.
Graeme Orr has worked on two ARC grants involving political finance issues, including one supported by the Electoral Council of Australia. He currently is an ‘expert’ member of the NSW Electoral Commission’s iVote panel.
